Great Presidential Wit...
I Wish I Was in the Book:
A Collection of Humorous Anecdotes and Quotations
The new companion volume to Senator Dole's earlier book, Great Political Wit, Great Presidential Wit has gotten rave reviews.
You can order a copy online via our bookstore (Amazon.com affiliate). Great Christmas present!

Who were the wittiest US Presidents? The book begins with Senator Dole's ranking each president on a humor scale. The ability to laugh, and to laugh at oneself seems to be directly related to Presidential effectiveness, according to Senator Dole:

Funny AND effective

"At the top of the heap ... I place Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, and the two Roosevelts. By most accounts they are also among the most effective chief executives. Coincidence? I don't think so."

At the bottom of the heap is Millard Fillmore:

"Don't get me wrong. Fillmore's been good for many a chuckle over the years. It's just that most of the laughter has come at his expense."

Millard Fillmore: Not your basic barrel of laughs.

Here's Senator Dole's "take" on some other Presidents:

"Now comes the part sure to keep this book out of several presidential birthplace gift shops...."

On John Adams: "Often cranky and full of insults--an eighteenth century Don Rickles."

On George Washington: "First in peace, first in war, but middle of the pack when it came to humor."

On Richard Nixon: "Those weren't jokes that were deleted from the Watergate tapes."

Click here to read the Presidential Humor Rankings

Some Classics:

Ronald Reagan:
Reagan was perpetually suspicious of Washington’s tendency to tax and spend. He defined a taxpayer as “someone who works for the federal government but doesn’t have to take a civil service examination.”

According to Reagan, “An economist is someone who sees something happen in practice and wonders if it’d work in theory.”

Abraham Lincoln:
When perennial opponent Stephen Douglas accused him of being two faced, Lincoln turned to the audience and said, "If I had two faces, do you think I'd be wearing this one?"

In the autumn of 1863, beset as always by office seekers, Lincoln’s physician told him that he was suffering from varioloid, a mild form of smallpox. “Is it contagious?” asked the president. “Very contagious,” the doctor assured him.Lincoln seemed oddly pleased. The doctor asked why. “There is one good thing about this,” the president told him.“Now I have something I can give everybody.

FDR:
Leaving the White House one morning to visit a penitentiary in Baltimore, Eleanor Roosevelt was careful not to disturb FDR. When he subsequently asked Mrs. Roosevelt’s secretary about his wife’s absence, he was told, “She’s in prison, Mr. President.”

“I’m not surprised,” responded FDR, “but what for?”

JFK:
Soon after his confrontation with the steel industry in 1961, Kennedy said he was visited by a well-known businessman who seemed decidedly pessimistic about the economy. He tried to reassure his visitor by saying, “Why, if I weren’t president, I’d be buying stock myself.”

“If you weren’t president,” the businessman replied, “so would I.”

Reviews:

Amazon.com
"Friends and foes alike recognize that Bob Dole is one of the funniest men in American politics, and Great Presidential Wit is an excellent collection of wit and wisdom drawn from public life....Great Presidential Wit is a joy to read or browse, and highly recommended for anyone who likes politics served with a dash of humor."

Publishers Weekly
The best jokes, anecdotes, and bon mots are all here: from Lincoln, Reagan, FDR and Theodore Roosevelt (“A class by themselves”) through Calvin Coolidge and JFK (“Yankee wits”) all the way to the likes of Grant, John Quincy Adams, and Grover Cleveland (“Sticks-in-the-mud”) and Warren G. Harding and Millard Fillmore (“the joke’s on them”).

With the humor and dry wit that distinguished him as a Senator and Presidential candidate, Dole offers his own ranking of the Chief Executives’ senses of humor — and makes a few witty observations of his own about the humor quotient in the White House over the years. News from Washington getting you down? Get a lift from Great Presidential Wit!

Click here to visit our online bookstore and buy this book.