Presidential Drinkers And Smokers

Lyndon Baines Johnson at age 59

Today is an exciting day in the world of actuarial statistics, as the Social Security Administration just published actuarial tables for 2023. These are the the first tables largely unaffected by Covid since 2019, and they reveal that the average American man on his 80th birthday, to choose an example at random, has a 14.63% chance of dying over the next 31 months, to choose an equally random time frame.

Anyway, we all know that averages are just that, and this made me ponder the question of the health habits of presidents in modern times in regard to smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol. I checked the Internet, which famously prohibits the publication of false information, so the following vignettes are at least something a lot of people are saying:

FDR smoked and drank A LOT. Like any good WASP of his era he loved Martinis and G&Ts (Prohibition was repealed just a few months into his first term). It’s rather startling to contemplate that he was only 63 when he died, as he at least by current standards looked 20 years older, and indeed was widely considered to be fairly close to death’s door when he was nominated for a 4th term in 1944. Harry Truman was shocked by his condition when he interviewed for the VP slot that summer. BTW the other finalist for VP was William O. Douglas of the SCOTUS, previously head of the SEC, and he would have been a REALLY interesting president.

Truman, fairly unusually for a man of his social class in his era, never smoked. He did drink quite a bit, although probably not as much as FDR. He loved bourbon during his poker games with various DC muckty mucks (it was simpler more innocent time naturally) and he often started the day with a shot of Old Grandad (yeech).

Eisenhower had a massive smoking habit — three packs a day — until a doctor told him during his first term that it was killing him, and he quit cold turkey. Ike apparently had a heart attack about every other day during his two terms. He turned 70 three months before leaving the White House, making him prior to Reagan the only 70-year-old occupant of the office. BTW Reagan was more than two years younger than Trump is today when he left office, and no other president has ever been 70 or older, so the whole Biden/Trump thing is uncharted territory from a geriatric perspective, and the way that has gone really drives home how ageism is a terrible thing when it comes to selecting presidents.

Moving right along, JFK also smoked a drank a lot, as well as getting drugged up regularly for his many serious aliments by his quack personal physician. I’m reading a fascinating book at the moment about the Nazis and drugs, and Hitler also had a complete fraud personal doctor, who injected him with meth and lots of other goodies literally thousands of times, to keep the Fuhrer in tip top operating condition. Hitler was also terrified of venereal disease, and got lots of phony treatments to block its acquisition.

LBJ, like Ike, was a cigarette fiend who quit because his ticker was in such poor shape. Incredibly, he was only 60 on the day he left office — he looked 85 on a good day — and the famous heart surgeon Michael DeBakey told him there was no point in doing heart surgery as had such advanced coronary artery disease that an operation would probably kill him and do no good anyway.

Nixon didn’t smoke, and drank only intermittently, but on the other hand he was a notorious lightweight when he did drink, and would get very easily blitzed, at which point Kissinger would have to talk him out of nuking this or that Southeast Asian country.

Ford supposedly enjoyed the infamous three Martini lunch (this was something that apparently did exist back then, and Carter railed against it when pushing for reforming the tax code so you couldn’t deduct such things as business expenses), but like any good Michigan man he held his liquor very well. He had quit smoking in middle age, and lived into his 90s.

Carter didn’t drink or smoke.

Reagan drank but apparently not a lot, nor had he ever been a smoker, despite famously promoting the health benefits of smoking during his days as a “spokesman” for various lords of capital.

GHW Bush drank quite a few G&Ts like any good preppie.

Then we hit the currently very puritanical era. Clinton never inhaled and barely drank. The second Bush was a dry drunk and also didn’t smoke, although he snorted up a few roomfuls of coke back in the decadent old 1970s. Obama drank and smoked as a college student, but had pretty much quit both by the time he got to the White House. Trump’s older brother literally drank himself to death, which terrified Donnie into strict teetotalarism. He’s also never smoked. Biden: Same.

Relatedly, it’s striking how cigarette smoking has completely disappeared in the American upper class. The percentage of American adults who smoke has declined from 42% 60 years ago to about 11% today — this is a real public health triumph — but the latter number is very heavily related to SES. Nobody under 75 who has a college degree smokes. This is an exaggeration but just barely.

Anyway let us continue to pray for the arrival of Trumpentod, with all the solemnity that that day will require of us.

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