Warm and Witty Side of Attila the Hun by Jeffrey Sackett Read Free Book Online Page A

of the cowboy on a cattle drive ... Teddy did it all.
    He also lost everything he owned in the Dakotas in the great blizzard of 1886/87, and then returned east to pursue a public life that led him from success to success. State assemblyman ... civil service commissioner ... New York City police commissioner ... assistant secretary of the Navy ... Rough Rider in the Spanish-American War ... crusading, reformist governor of New York ...
    He was a popular hero. It was largely for this reason that William McKinley chose him as his running mate in the election of 1900; and, of course, when McKinley was assassinated in 1901, Roosevelt became at forty-two the youngest president in American history. Republican Party leader Mark Hannah had strongly opposed Roosevelt's candidacy, exclaiming, "Don't they realize that only one human life separates that madman from the presidency?" And when McKinley was murdered, Hannah exploded, "I told Bill McKinley not to pick that lunatic! Now look! That goddamned cowboy is president of the United States!"
    One final comment: as of this writing, Theodore Roosevelt is the only American president to have leapt from horseback and, armed only with a hunting knife, wrestled a mountain lion to the ground and stabbed it to death.
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    Theodore Roosevelt's eldest daughter Alice was something of a wild girl by the standards of 1904, the year her father was elected to the office he had inherited from McKinley .She smoked cigarettes, drank cocktails, and went riding in cars with boys. She once summarized her philosophy of life by saying, "If it's full, empty it. If it's empty, fill it. And if it itches, scratch it." The president was once taken to task for not keeping her under control, and he replied, "I can govern the United States of America or I can control Alice . I cannot do both."
    Alice married a congressman named Nicholas Longworth in a White House ceremony in 1906. Lest anyone forget whose daughter she was, the bride cut the wedding cake with a samurai sword.
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    Woodrow Wilson had many sterling qualities, but a winning personality was not one of them. He was in fact, an obnoxious, arrogant, supercilious man, convinced of both his own superior moral probity and superior intellect. He believed that the treaties ending World War One would, if based upon his Fourteen Points, recreate the world as a world without war; and anyone who disagreed with him was obviously misguided. This smug attitude led him into frequent confrontations with his supposed allies at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, David Lloyd George of Britain , Georges Clemenceau of France , and Vittorio Orlando of Italy . At one point Clemenceau was heard to mutter, “Fourteen points! Fourteen points! Sacre bleu! God himself had only ten!”
    But in the rough and tumble of cut-throat European diplomacy, Wilson was outmatched. He found himself abandoning point after point and accepting destructive compromise after destructive compromise, all in order to secure the creation of the League of Nations (which, once created, the U.S. did not join.) A British diplomat present at the time described Wilson in Paris as being like "a virgin in a whorehouse, crying out piteously for a glass of lemonade."
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    The approaching election of 1920 portended ill for the Democrats, saddled as they were with an unpopular president and very unpopular wartime regimentation. Their campaign, as a matter of desperation, attempted to besmirch the Republican candidate, Warren G. Harding, by spreading the rumor that Harding had more than a drop of black African blood. In 1920, this rumor, if believed, would have been the kiss of death politically.
    A joke current at the time (... Warning! Racism alert! ...) had two black men, Jim and Sam, talking about the election. " D'yall heah ?" asks Jim. "De Erpubicans done nomernated Mistah Harding."
    " Sho'nuff ?" Sam replies. "Who did de white folk nomernate ?"
    The Republicans countered with genealogical records,