Based on this list, only William McKinley liked an unusual (and quite potent) drink. My biggest surprise: Teddy Roosevelt had a reputation as a rugged, manly guy. I picture him as a “whisky, neat” kind of guy. Who knew he was an umbrella-drink pussy like me?
Many other Presidents, among those not mentioned here, liked to tipple:
Franklin Pierce was possibly our drunkest President. He was a notorious drunkard in his young days, then abstained for years until his son died, whereupon he really started hitting the bottle. Pierce’s opponents derided him with phrases like “the Hero of Many a well-fought bottle.” He died of cirrhosis of the liver.
Grover Cleveland drank about a half dozen beers every day, presumably non-consecutively.
Tricky Dick Nixon was known to get drunk in the evening and start feeling sorry for himself.
Martin Van Buren drank vast amounts of whiskey, but people said that he never seemed drunk. His nickname was Blue Whiskey Van.
James Buchanan, Chester Alan Arthur and Ulysses S. Grant were also big boozers. (Grant’s drinking was a source of one of Lincoln’s wittiest remarks. When people accused then-General Grant of being a drunk, Lincoln’s rejoinder was, “Find out what brand of whiskey he drinks, so that I can send a barrel of it to each of my other generals”)
George W. Bush, James K. Polk and Andrew Johnson sort of belong in their own category
Dubya always seemed drunk and confused, but he had actually become a teetotaler at least a decade before he was elected. As a young man, he reportedly consumed a wide variety of drinks and drugs. He was therefore both a heavy drinker and a teetotaler, like Franklin Pierce. In Bush’s case, sobriety won. In Pierce’s case, the bottle won.
Andrew Johnson was not a heavy drinker in general, but he was drunk at his own inauguration, which is pretty gangster.
Polk was not reputed to be a teetotaler (he drank wine now and then), but he forbade serving alcohol at the White House.
The following Presidents were known to be teetotalers:
Benjamin Harrison
Millard Fillmore
Rutherford B. Hayes
William H. Taft
Joe Biden
Donald J. Trump
The others were moderate drinkers.
Some of their favorite beverages are mentioned in the linked article. Others are known as well:
Harry Truman liked an occasional bourbon.
FDR liked brandy.
Gerald Ford liked an occasional gin and tonic.
Andrew Jackson preferred whiskey.
Sure W was sober. That pretzel thing was true. Remember when W. Went to the Olympics, and drunkenly fell down the stairs
Trump was a cokehead, then switched to snorting Adderall
This kind of thing is not useful. There are so many real reasons to criticize those men that there’s no need to fabricate any others.
There is no evidence of any kind that Trump ever did coke. Nobody ever said they did it with him. Nobody ever said they saw him do it. Some have claimed he used Adderall during the filming of The Apprentice, but all of that is based on anonymous “testimony.”
As far as Dubya goes, I stand by the claim that if you were to evaluate him by his behavior, you would conclude that he is always drunk. But he isn’t. His behavior is clumsy and socially awkward; he always seems befuddled when he speaks; he is not quick-witted. He’s the kind of guy who pushes when the door says “pull” and uses the wrong hand to open the fridge, thus opening it into his body. Those are all things that drunks do, but I don’t believe he drinks. He comes by it naturally. He’s not stupid, and he’s not a drunk. He’s just a doofus. (And part of the reason for that may be that he got a few wires crossed by his reputed record-setting consumption of drugs and alcohol when he was younger. Addiction is the gift that just keeps giving.)
George W Bush is what is referred to as a ‘dry drunk.’ I see absolutely no reason to not believe W when he said he gave up alcohol.
And obviously he stopped using any other drug.
Agree
Disagree.
I once saw a documentary with that Indian dude and that Korean dude.
And Dubya was smoking a doobie! Looked pretty legit to me.
I would laugh my ass off – literally, I would laugh until my ass fell right off – if Trump got drunk, then actually turned into the stable genius he says he is. Just keep feeding him Manhattans until he canceled all the tariffs, fired Heggy and RFK, apologized to Canada, called the Gazan genocide, genocide etc etc
There was an episode of WKRP in Cincinatti where that happened to Dr Johnny Fever.
You had me worried that TR was a Cosmo guy. I don’t think our nation could take that given the fragile state it is in.