US

How presidents spent their 52nd birthdays

Patrick Howley Political Reporter
Font Size:

As everyone knows, a person’s early fifties are a magical time – one filled with tuition planning, hot flashes, impulse car purchases, and delusional dreams of making the PGA “Champions” Tour (and maybe, if one is so lucky, a nice little massage therapist on the side to remember what it feels like to feel again…)

As President Obama spends his 52nd birthday weekend playing golf and hanging out at Camp David, The Daily Caller looks back on the 52nd birthdays of some other U.S. presidents. Bet you didn’t know John Tyler was the first president to turn 52 in office. So go ahead and read this fast before “Monk” goes to commercial and you have to pee again.

Abraham Lincoln: When Lincoln turned 52 on February 12, 1861, he was in the middle of his historic journey from Springfield, Illinois to Washington, D.C. for his presidential inauguration. Wife Mary Todd and the three Lincoln boys joined the president-elect in Indianapolis, where they took off in the morning by train, making it all the way to Cincinnati before the day was through. Hundreds of thousands of people reportedly waved to the Lincolns as they made brief stops in Shelbyville, Greensburgh, Morris and Lawrenceburg. In his speech in Cincinnati, Lincoln described his goal of befriending southern Democrats, which, as with most middle-aged pet projects, never really ended up coming together.

William Howard Taft: President Taft marked his 52nd birthday on September 15, 1909 by setting off on a 44-city tour of the United States that lasted 67 days and proved to be one of the most politically disastrous public-relations campaigns of his presidency. Though he found himself to be in “rare good humor” when he kicked off his tour, Taft quickly riled people up in Winona, Minnesota by praising the Republican-supported Payne-Aldrich Tariff, which most Americans hated. Taft lost the 1910 midterms, and finished third in his 1912 re-election bid.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Then a year into office, President Roosevelt spent his 52nd birthday on January 30, 1934 signing into law the Gold Reserve Act, which made it illegal for most people to own gold. This effectively ended “gold clauses,” which permitted gold to be substituted for cash in legal contracts. Meanwhile in Germany, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi government abolished the Reichsrat, the legislative body that represented the German States in the country’s democratic legislature. “REICH TAKES OVER RIGHTS OF STATES; HITLER WARNS FOES; Bill Passed by the Reichstag Makes States Mere Agents, Ending Legislative Functions,” screamed the New York Times headline.

Nevertheless, Roosevelt spent his evening relaxing and carousing in a Julius Caesar costume at his White House birthday dinner, where he was photographed with his eight costumed “vestal virgins,” including wife Eleanor and private secretary Grace Tully.

Lyndon Johnson: Then-Senate Majority Leader and vice presidential candidate Johnson spent his 52nd birthday on August 27, 1960 at the place he loved the most: the Capitol. LBJ was photographed cutting the cake at his birthday party at the Old Supreme Court Chamber of the U.S. Capitol, standing beside a bored-looking Senator Everett Dirksen. Just weeks later, Johnson became vice president to younger man John Kennedy, whose tragic death led to Johnson’s roughly five-year presidency, the Civil Rights Act, the “Great Society” reforms of Medicare and Medicaid, and the Vietnam War. Sadly, Johnson’s time in the executive branch never fully lived up to the promise he showed as a senator, back before he hit the “Big Five-Two.”

Jimmy Carter: Presidential candidate Carter spent his 52nd birthday in front of the cameras on October 1, 1976, sitting for a CBS television interview to address the political fallout from his pre-election interview with Playboy magazine. Carter famously told journalist Robert Scheer in Playboy, “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.”

Five days later at the second presidential debate in San Francisco, Carter scored the decisive victory of his political career by standing there when opponent Gerald Ford said, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.” Journalist Max Frankel grilled Ford on his confused foreign policy statement and in so doing effectively ushered in the Carter years – during which lust and adultery of the heart were rampant, but also the least of our problems.

Bill Clinton: Just two days after President Clinton admitted in an evening television address that he carried on a relationship with Monica Lewinsky that “was not appropriate,” CNN reported on August 19, 1998 that independent counsel Kenneth Starr was in possession of a sample of Clinton’s DNA. Instead of receiving birthday wishes from an adoring public, 52-year old Clinton instead heard House Majority Whip Tom DeLay call for his resignation.

“President Clinton is the Grand Canyon of need. He can never stay focused for long on running the country and the world because it gets in the way of his favorite pastime, a warped little mind game called ‘How Much Do You Love Me?,'” Maureen Dowd wrote in that morning’s New York Times.

On the second day of what would be a 12-day family vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, Clinton spoke to Vice President Gore and held four phone conversations with National Security Advisor Sandy Berger regarding potential cruise missile strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan to retaliate against Osama bin Laden’s bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa earlier that month. After a long, sleepless night, Clinton finally authorized the strikes at 2 AM on August 20, ending his 52nd birthday on the war path.

Follow Patrick on Twitter

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel