The book’s packed with tidbits about each prez, and much of its fun comes in discovering the best and worst our nation had to offer. Thomas Jefferson, for example, was such a bad speaker he wouldn’t deliver a State of the Union to Congress. Metcalf hails John Adams as the best–who else could pull off a 727-word sentence in his Inaugural Address? Adams’s July 1, 1776, speech to the Continental Congress was so riveting that latecomers demanded he deliver it again. (He obliged.) The worst, says Metcalf, was Zachary Taylor, who stammered and was unable to put together a string of ideas. At least his speeches weren’t lethal. William Henry Harrison delivered his Inaugural Address outside in the rain for so long–nearly two hours–that he died from pneumonia a month later.
How does 43 measure up? Metcalf labels him the “Blunderer in Chief”–and there’s no shortage of examples to back it up. (From July 22, 2001: “I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe. I believe what I believe is right.”) Metcalf also honors him for the words he has unwittingly added to our language: subliminable, embetterment and ooching, among others. “I thought before I started my research that I’d find that the better speakers got elected,” says Metcalf. “But I found that the ones that were generally accepted to be better were not elected. That led me to think that we may need to change our definition of ‘better’.” In other words, Dubya shouldn’t be misunderestimated.
