America’s Drunkest Presidents: James Buchanan

“Hangover?  I hardly even KNOW her!  Ha ha ha, oh, I’m an awful president.”

~James Buchanan  

The founding entry of our new segment entitled “America’s Drunkest Presidents” was about George Washington, our founding father.   We basically took one of our greatest presidents in history, and talked about how was also one of the greatest drinking president in history, because we are legally obligated to talk up George Washington and ignore some of that not-so-cool–oh-shit-don’t-click-these-links stuff.  That said, he was an impressive drinker, which we’re super thankful for since the idea of a teetotaler as our badass founding General is too much for us to take.  However, even though it worked out that way the first time, this segment is not called “America’s Best Drunk Presidents.”  It is just “America’s Drunkest Presidents.”

We want to make that clarification before we go ahead and tell you about arguably the best drinking president we’ve ever had.  But as good as he was at drinking (and, you’ll see, he was super good at it) he was pretty much the polar opposite at presidenting (just, so bad, you guys.)

So let’s talk about James Buchanan, the very drunk, but no good, 17^th president of the United States.

America’s Drunkest Presidents:  James Buchanan

He literally looks like every drunk uncle who’s thiiiis close to saying something racist in every single picture of him that exists

Any trivia about James Buchanan is either, “Oh, that’s inconsequential, and neat” or, “Oh, wow, this guy was a fucking raging asshole.”  He was the only president who remained a lifelong bachelor!  Neat!  He lobbied the Supreme Court to make, and fully endorsed when they did, the super racist ruling in the Dredd Scott v. Sandford case!  What an asshole!  He’s the only president from Pennsylvania!  Neat!  He supported Kansas being added to the United States as a slave state and very probably helped set the foundation for the Civil War!  What an impossible raging asshole!

But we’re not here to talk about James Buchanan, because you probably don’t want to read an article that starts “James Buchanan was born in Cove Gap, Pennsylvania, and grew to become a prominent lawyer before a career in…” but then just devolves into us making a series of fart noises using our hands.  But as far as his drinking goes?  Well that we can praise!  Because goddamn, could he toss them back.

Pictured above: either Buchanan or, possibly, a human-sized bottle of whiskey

He got started early, as evident by the fact that as a Junior in Dickinson College (where he once drank 16 toasts one Fourth of July [we’re going to view that as the equivalent of 16 shots]), he basically partied so hard they were like, “This isn’t a National Lampoon movie, James, we can’t have this John Belushi shit here,” and kicked him the fuck out.  Yes, we are too lazy to do the full research into this but we’re pretty confident that we can also add “Buchanan was the only president who got expelled from school at some point” to the “neat!” column of our little trivia factoids.

He continued drinking, building an impressive tolerance, until he ascended to the presidency, where politicians and dignitaries could see his drinking feats for themselves while thinking to themselves, “My God, he’s more liver than man!”  He’d casually knock back several bottles of wine at dinner, which he probably called “an aperitif” because motherfucker also would get a ten-gallon jug of whiskey once a week, which was basically his personal stash.

If we ignore history, we are doomed to repeat it

Like a true champ, he would often complain about his booze not coming in big enough packages.  Champagne bottles, which you might consider “actually a fair amount of alcohol for one person” were too small for Buchanan, and pints of whiskey sent his way were bullshit because, and we’re quoting him here, “Pints are very inconvenient in this house, as the article is not used in such small quantities.”  Despite the Herculean amounts of liquor he would drink, he rarely got visibly drunk, and he claimed to not really know what a hangover was because he never got them.

So of all the presidents, Buchanan is likely the one who touched a radioactive meteor that gave him drinking super powers.  But he also was a shitty, shitty president.  Oh, and the one time he was engaged he ended up driving her to suicide, so yeah.  Shitty dude.  Great drinker, though!  Just, shitty, shitty dude.

But, uh.  Woo, party at Buchanan’s place, who’s in?  Chug chug chug!