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If Past Presidents Had Twitter
I am neither condoning nor defending Trump’s tweets, nor Obama’s. For good or ill, I suppose they’re just a sign of the times. But then I don’t use Twitter for any reason, and am thus saved having to care. That being said, I do wonder how past presidents might have comported themselves on their own tweets.
I am certain FDR would have made full use of the medium, though the thought of fireside tweets is itself very amusing. Not sure that Truman would have been enamored of it, and I can say with some certainty that Ike would have loathed it. JFK though? Now that bears some thought, and I’m guessing he would have been a frequent tweeter. LBJ’s tweets I am guessing would have been artistically vulgar, and Nixon’s would have struck fear in many. Ford’s likely would have been a tad clumsy, and Carter’s would have been sermonizing and depressing. Reagan would have made tweeting an art form. GHW Bush, or so I would guess, would have been uninspiring but reliably anodyne. Bill Clinton’s would have been focus-group tested for maximum appeal, and so would shift as with the winds while not saying anything concrete at all.
Let’s see how we can imagine if past presidents would have had Twitter at their disposal, and see how their some of their quotes would fly today as Tweets.
@FDRPOTUS: The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.
Thank you Deepak Chopra.
@FDRPOTUS: We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.
@FDRPOTUS: Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
@FDRPOTUS: We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.
Why am I picturing the Sphinx from Mystery Men? Hmm….
@PresTruman: How do you use this th… (ok, that wasn’t real, but I’m having trouble picturing Truman as an enthusiastic tweeter)
@PresTruman: The buck stops here.
@PresTruman: The Marine Corps is the Navy’s police force and as long as I am President that is what it will remain. They have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin’s. (drops mic!)
@PresTruman: Nixon is a shifty-eyed g*****n liar … He’s one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides.
Okay then! Wow! Guess I pegged Truman all wrong! But boy I’d love to see the epic tweet-fight that would follow this. This is positively Trump-esque.
@IkePres: I can think of nothing more boring for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a half-hour looking at my face on their television screens.
@IkePres: When you appeal to force, there’s one thing you must never do — lose.
@IkePres: Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.
@IkePres: An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
No surprises there. Ike would have kept it clean and laconic. Hard not to like the man.
@JFK: I am the man who accompanied Jacqeline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.
@JFK: There is no city in the United States in which I get a warmer welcome and less votes than Columbus, Ohio.
@JFK: Robert, Teddy, and I really enjoyed that song from Marilyn! (OK, I made that one up too, but why not?)
@JFK: Khrushchev reminds me of the tiger hunter who has picked a place on the wall to hang the tiger’s skin long before he has caught the tiger. This tiger has other ideas.
@JFK: Sometimes I wish I just had a summer job here.
@JFK: Look at that, I have a total fiasco and my poll ratings go up. What am I going to do to get them up further?
Hmm … Some foreign policy via Twitter, a few barbs. I think Kennedy would have been worth following.
@LBJ: If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.
@LBJ: If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: “President Can’t Swim.”
@LBJ: Making a speech on economics is a lot like pi**ing down your leg. It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else. (some salty language from
LindaLyndon)@LBJ: Gerald Ford is a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off.
@LBJ: The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character.
@LBJ: I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women. (not sure how that would play today)
@LBJ: The Air Force comes in every morning and says, “Bomb, bomb, bomb.” And then the State Department comes in and says, “Not now, or not there, or too much, or not at all.”
Guessing Lyndon would have been very expressive, and at times definitely crass in his tweets.
@Nixon: I would have made a good pope.
@Nixon: I was not lying. I said things that later on seemed to be untrue.
@Nixon: I was under medication when I made the decision to burn the tapes.
@Nixon: I want to make sure he is a ruthless son of a bitch, do what he’s told, that every income tax I want to see I see, that he will go after our enemies and not our friends. (said when Nixon appointed a new IRS Commissioner)
@Nixon: You know what happened to the Greeks! Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo. We all know that. So was Socrates.
Man, Nixon would have been terrific on Twitter!
I’ll spare you any more for now, but do add your own in the comments for other presidents. What would other presidents have sounded like on Twitter?
Published in Humor
Fewer.
RicoDebate about what really caused the downfall of Greek civilization in 3 … 2 … 1 …
I love this quote. The little bit that I garden makes me appreciate both God and farmers. :)
Back to the humor gathering. :)
Can we get the Twitter exchange between Harry Truman and Paul Hume?
The letter Truman sent back in 1950 went like this:
Mr Hume:
I’ve just read your lousy review of Margaret’s concert. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an “eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.”
It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppy-cock as was in the back section of the paper you work for it shows conclusively that you’re off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work.
Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!
Pegler, a gutter snipe, is a gentleman alongside you. I hope you’ll accept that statement as a worse insult than a reflection on your ancestry.
H.S.T.
There really is nothing new under the sun.
Seawriter
Trump twitter is the greatest exercise of civic engagement since we put a fence around the white house.
I read a story of someone going to up the white house and knocked and the president answered.
Right now, anybody in america can for all intents and purposes walk up to the white house, knock, and call the president a [redacted] to his face, and most importantly, he may respond.
Person: Hey, [redacted] you Drumpf.
Trump: Hey, no [redacted] YOU.
Its the ‘murican thing ev-ar.
It is indeed. I’m certainly enjoying the ride.
That is truly a work of art. I love it!
@GWash: Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God.
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The If Past Canadian PMs had Twitter conversation is calling you.
@QuietCalvin: I have never been hurt by what I have not said.
@QuietCalvin: If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that 9 will run into the ditch before they reach you.
@PET: Fuddle duddle.
@ReadyTeddy: Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead.
I think that LBJ, Democrat or not, would probably be thrown off Twitter for some of the things he said.
@carter Iran just needs our love and support. The Ayatollah has been democratically elected. We will find a path to peace and our citizens will be home soon, soon as they convert to Allah, peace be upon Him.
@realMillardFillmore: You guys have heard of me, right? I mean, you know I’m president. Right?
@jGarfield I am not that Garfield, though I do enjoy a good lasagna.
Just imagine what Reagan might have accomplished with Twitter, an alternative media and the ability to completely bypass the MSM narrative and take his case almost daily to the people…..
Skip,
This is a very interesting premise and gives us a sense of context about what we are going through. However, I would suggest reversing this and ask what the former Republican Presidents would have done with a White House press corps that has 50 Democrats and 0 Republicans or reverse it for Democratic Presidents.
My point is that Trump’s tweets aren’t just a new use of a new tool. They are the only tool that a Republican President has to get past a grotesquely biased press corps and speak unfiltered to the American Public.
Regards,
Jim
LBJ’s avatar
And can’t you be more creative with handles?
Obama would have been @mostExalted
Bush 43 would have been @joker
Clinton would have been @cigarMan
Bush 41 would have been @bush41 – he was that boring
Reagan would have been @jellyBean
Carter would have been @plainsPeanutFarmer
Ford would have been @helmetless
Nixon would have been @iamnotacrook
Johnson would have been @chickenS@#t
JFK would have been @lovenormajean
Eisenhower would have been @overlord
Truman would have been @haberdasher
He was assassinated on a Saturday, so that ruins my idea for a funny tweet.
@quietcal
He wouldn’t have needed it at the time.
Oh, these are very good. Well done!
@reporter: I was bet I would’t be able to get a two-part tweet out of you.
@quietcal: you lose.
I admit, not as funny.
Reagan would have been extraordinarily and wonderfully adept at it. There’s no way, even in a tongue in cheek piece like this, that I would deign to guess how he would use it.
@carter: I do not understand these rabbit pictures people keep sending me.
@LBJ Women in the military? Jumbo salutes!