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Famous for his deadpan humor, New York Times bestselling author Senator Bob Dole here brings us his favorite witticisms and hilarious remarks of this country's commanders in chief. Great Presidential Wit collects the former senator's favorite funny stories and remarks by and about American presidents -- from George Washington to George W. Bush. Senator Dole tackles the assignment of ranking the presidents from the funniest (Abraham Lincoln) to the least funny (Millard Fillmore), and everyone in between. With chapters cleverly organized according to the senator's own opinions -- from A Class by Themselves (Lincoln, Reagan, the Roosevelts) and Yankee Wits (Coolidge, Kennedy) to The Joke's on Them (Taylor, Harding, Van Buren, Buchanan, the Harrisons, Pierce, Fillmore) -- Great Presidential Wit is the perfect antidote to the long political season and a patriotic reminder that our leaders are human and often witty and amusing.
List of contents
CONTENTSIntroduction: Backbones and Funny Bones
A CLASS BY THEMSELVES
Abraham Lincoln
Ronald Reagan
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
YANKEE WITS
Calvin Coolidge
John F. Kennedy
PLAIN SPEAKER, TALL TALES, AND A POKER FACE
Harry Truman
Lyndon B. Johnson
Herbert Hoover
CLASSROOM HUMORISTS
Woodrow Wilson
James Garfield
FUNNIER THAN THE AVERAGE PRESIDENT
George Bush
William Howard Taft
John Adams
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
Bill Clinton
AND YOU ALWAYS THOUGHT THEY WERE DULL
Dwight Eisenhower
Gerald Ford
Rutherford B. Hayes
William McKinley
Jimmy Carter
STICK-IN-THE-MUD
Ulysses Grant
James Monroe
Richard Nixon
John Tyler
Andrew Jackson
Chester Arthur
John Quincy Adams
Andrew Johnson
James Madison
Grover Cleveland
James K. Polk
THE JOKE'S ON THEM
Zachary Taylor
Warren G. Harding
Martin Van Buren
James Buchanan
William Henry Harrison
Franklin Pierce
Benjamin Harrison
Millard Fillmore
WAITING IN THE WINGS
George W. Bush
Al Gore
About the author
Bob Dole was the longest-serving Republican leader in Senate history. In 1976, he was the Republican nominee for vice president, and then in 1996, he was Republican nominee for president. He served as the chairman of the World War II Memorial campaign and as chairman of the International Commission on Missing Persons in the Former Yugoslavia. Wounded in World War II, Dole was awarded two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star, and in 2018 he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. He passed away in 2021 at the age of ninety-eight.
