OMGJeremy

Not Every President Is All the Time Happy: a Look at Depression in the White House

It is once again that exquisite time of year, the favorite holiday (it is claimed) of at least one of our writers: Presidents Day!  Happy Presidents Day to all, even to our occasional foreign readers who are kindly asked to indulge this site’s single solitary annual moment of American Pride.  Well, other than when we chant thrice “USA!” while donning our Halloween costumes, that holiday being celebrated best here – the only thing we do best and right, without dispute.  Soon, Presidents Day will be alongside Halloween – but not yet.  Americans too often fail to celebrate this day properly, which is why I am here to help.  I must guide you and show you how.  Don’t be afraid, and please – do not be disdainful.

Ah, the Day of Presidents.  So noble and esteemed and occasionally reviled, these men.  However, it is important to recognize and honor the fact that our Commanders-in-Chief are not supermen.  They are not gods.  They may be a cut above the average person, but that is not so uncommon, really.  These political figures happened to win popularity contests and now have their faces in history books and presidential charts all over the place – some have even made it to our money pieces!  But they are just men, with the Flaws of Man discoloring their lives.  Some of them were sickly, some of them were shot, and some of them had crippling emotional and psychological problems.  Quite a few of them did, actually!

This year, we have decided to celebrate these mighty men by bringing a select few down to our own level for your enjoyment.  It is no secret that the humor writers on this site are some of the most bleakly depressed people on earth, and we figured that our readers cannot be much better off.  They say that “misery loves company,” so we bring you the Most Depressed Presidents.  These men of history had breakdowns.  These great men wept, you know they did.  You know they all experienced that hollowness, that lack of motivation we all feel.  They may have often felt as if they were important fellows of purpose – but what is the point in trying?  It would all spoil in the end.  They probably had moments of staring at their own hands, heaving ragged sighs, wondering if Death would offer any sort of relief or whether it would just offer more of the same.  Did they look longingly at muskets hanging over the mantle?  Did.. did any of the Presidents of the United States…  cut?

Of the president men I found exhibiting the depressive qualities I am seeking, I am going to leave a few out because I covered them last year in another article.  John Adams was an angry, bitter little man who was both hypersensitive and very, very sad – often to the point of being unable to get out of bed or be useful for months at a time!  So, too, I will not feature Franklin Pierce, the handsome president I would use a Time Machine to get to know, who was both a Depressive and an Alcoholic – always a fun combination.  I am not going to pay service to the obvious and well-known presidents.  Sorry Abe Lincoln.  I know you suffered, we all know you did.  But you can’t be the Belle of the Ball in THIS article as you are in every history book.  Maybe next year.  Similarly – sorry Taft.  We all know you were depressed and you sad-ate.  A LOT.  Nah, once again I am going for the lesser-known presidents.  They were already depressed enough in life.  No reason to make it worse by ignoring them today.  It is, after all, THEIR day too!

James Madison: Presidential Pipsqueak

Little man, James Madison, was our smallest president.  But he was not short and overcompensating, like Napoleon guys.  No.  He was tiny and frail and meek and bathed in a thimble and flew to his Inauguration on the back of a honey bee.  Frequently afraid that he would be trod upon by a normal-sized human, he spent a lot of time in quiet places such as libraries or his study.  What he lacked in form, he more than made up for with a gigantic intellect – and humongous depressions.  That’s right, l’il Jamesikins had an enormous, boundless capacity for doom and gloom, despair, and more than his fair share of wishing for death.

C'mon, fella. Things will get better.

“As to myself, I am too dull and infirm now to look out for any extraordinary things in this world, for I think my sensations for many months have intimated to me not to expect a long or a healthy life . . . therefore have little spirit or elasticity to set about anything that is difficult in acquiring, and useless in possessing after one has exchanged time for eternity.”

In his twenties, Madison had no woman, no family, no motivation, no GOOD expectations, no job, no future.  He was afraid to live and hoped to die.  Friends, he had the black bile of melancholia in his veins and he didn’t see the point of trying to shake it.  So how did he do it?  How did he keep himself from offing himself and being a footnote in the Madison Family Tree?  What can we learn from this eensy weensy little guy who didn’t even have a trace of pluck?  How did he go from scrawny nobody to fourth president of the US(f’n)A?  He got MAD.

Indeed, James Madison noticed a cause and got involved!  It is apparently true that if you are frightfully depressed, you should pick up a new hobby, I guess.  Although, sometimes when you are very depressed, the hobby has to pick you.  In James Madison’s case, some people were getting treated unfairly and he got all indignant and decided to dedicate his life to the betterment of his fellow man!  And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how the first mouse was elected our president, and please god don’t let it be our last!

James Madison astride his mighty steed, on his way to market to fetch some Kleenex.

John Quincy Adams: the Grinch Who Stole the Presidency

Irascible, bitter, angry, judgmental, bald, a little bit hateful, John Quincy Adams was also depressed.  It was a certain sort of depression though.  It wasn’t so much that he was depressed by the state of the world, or with the nature of life.  Rather, he felt unfulfilled.  He felt like a miserable failure of a man.  You see, he was already apparently predisposed to crushing mental illness, as exhibited by his family medical history – many Adamses had alcoholism, dark moods, and even suicide ran in the family.  Two of his three sons died young because of mental problems, actually.  And his father was John Adams, second president – a cantankerous sad man himself.  JQA didn’t stand much of a chance.

Snide, scornful, full of tears.

JQ was a child groomed to be a success from a young age.  And not just any success – his parents told him that he was a future president.  I’m guessing it isn’t like our parents, or maybe some of you are parents now God forbid – but like it is a common thing to be like, “Oh little Bobby could be President some day!”  No.  They told him he would be and pretty much made it plain that if he didn’t become the President some day, then he would be a FAILURE.

 

”If you do not rise to the head not only of your profession, but of your country, it will be owing to your own Laziness, Slovenliness and Obstinacy” — John Adams to JQA

It seemed he did not have a carefree childhood.  He had Responsibilities thrust upon him that I sure couldn’t cope with today at my age!  Instead of playing outside, he was studying the Classics, learning mathematics and languages.  Rather than attending American schools and making friendships with kids his own age, he was in Europe studying and being the assistant to Diplomats and other old statesmen.  You know how child stars usually wind up all fucked up because of the expectations from their stage parents?  That’s what old John Quincy had to face.  And to make matters worse, although also very typical, he didn’t even WANT to be a statesman.  He wanted to be a Writer.  Also, judging by the research I’ve done, he even wanted to be a humor writer!  !!!  Imagine that.  A President wishing he was a Humor Writer.  He MUST have been mentally unhealthy!

So how did he combat the feelings of worthlessness that his parents threatened him with?  Well, really he didn’t.  He actually worked really hard to make them happy at the expense of his own happiness.  I wonder if when he became the President, if his parents found something else to complain about?  Did they tell him that he should have been less bald?  He wasn’t President the RIGHT WAY?  Probably.   And did he ever become the writer he wanted to be?  Not really.  He actually was so afraid of failing to do the thing that he actually wanted to do that he would busy himself with things he felt were less fun, noble, or worthwhile.  Such as, you know, becoming the President.

Actually the Grinch looks friendlier here.

Dwight D Eisenhower: Surprisingly Well-Balanced Fellow

This is my third and final Depressed President to tell you about because I am running out of time.  There were a few others I had wanted to tell you about.  Rutherford B Hayes and James A Garfield immediately spring to mind, but it is damnedably hard researching these things.  It seems that some presidents just haven’t been emotionally and psychologically researched on the Internet!  What you get is a thousand sites that say, “Oh yeah and he had this horrid bout of depression at around this time.  After it was over, he [laundry list of boring tariffs passed and treaties signed].”  How do they expect me to wildly speculate about the nature of a guy when that’s all I get?  So many shades of depression, there is no way I could comfortably guess what they were thinking or how they dealt with it.

Believe it or not, this man was sad inside.

That being said, I did finally find some scraps about how Eisenhower thought and felt.  This is incredible, in a way, because he was a private man who felt very strongly that your Public Face should be chirpy, no matter how you were feeling on the inside.  No matter how bleak your inner thoughts, you should smile and appear confident and relaxed.  It seems that this president frequently was stricken with those dread Blues.  Oh yeah, HE HAD THE BLUES!  That was him.  As a young man, he grappled with feelings of inadequacy and failure, he felt in his twenties that he had missed the boat on being a successful man.  In fact, he missed being a part of World War I, so he felt emasculated and very sad.  In the military, he kept being reprimanded for various little things.  He felt like he could not do anything right and was therefore drowning in a salty sea of Depression.

“Pessimism never won any battle. ” — Hey wait, that doesn’t sound very depressive at all!

It can be assumed that this twenty-something Eisenhower was a sadsack and a moper.  I like to suddenly imagine him as being a Gomer Pyle who actually KNEW he was a blundering pain in the patoot.  But luckily for him, and I suppose luckily for us all, he was sent off to Panama or somewhere and met a man named Fox Connor who encouraged him to read and to study and to think.  For three years, Ol’ Ike got a major attitude adjustment and came out of it all with the knowledge that he didn’t have to be a loser and that it was all relative anyway.  He matured mentally and somehow gained a bunch of wisdom and great character qualities.  Maybe he was born with this temperament and it had just been dormant until this time?  Maybe it is really something you can learn.  But from that time on, Eisenhower saw no need to bring anyone down with his own worries or dark moods.

Is it healthy to bottle up depression that way?  Is it good to keep it all to yourself and not rely on other people to keep you happy?  Well, I’m no medical doctor, but if we use Dwight D as the only example, then I have to say yes.  Yes it is a great idea.  I mean, he was a complicated man of moods, of thoughts, of action.  He had self-discipline galore.  He was a strong leader of men and everything he did seemed to be calmly calculated and sagely.  Honestly, I never thought of President Eisenhower much before this little burst of research I did here, and I don’t really know anything about his policies, but as far as character goes, he was for sure a Grade A, Top Notch, Very Swell guy.  And on top of all of that, even though he was continually enduring episodes of despair, he would soldier on like nothing was wrong.  I don’t know if he thought no one else would give a shit that would help or if he wanted to keep everyone elses spirits lifted because he thought they couldn’t endure things as well as him – either way he’d probably be right.  Whatta guy!

Eisenhower said, "Only Americans can hurt America. " He was our 34th President, you know. Here he is with a young Nixon HAPPY PRESIDENTS DAY!!

In conclusion, I have now done more research for an article on here than I have ever done before.  I probably should write a book.  I researched like five other presidentmen and had to abandon them due to lack of material, or it turned out they experienced depression for obvious reasons such as untimely deaths and so on.  I demand for the psychiatrists of the world to write long, long research papers about the psychological biographies of each president, well-written, easy to read, and uploaded to the Internet for my reading pleasure.  You don’t even need illustrations to accompany it.  And for the rest of you, I demand that you have a happy President’s Day today.  Next year, I intend to once again edutain you until you scream for mercy.  Good luck, all!  And good presidenting to you!