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 Linda Lyndon)

@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?