![]() "President Johnson was one of the greatest animal lovers of all times, especially dog lovers," she says. In letters and phone calls to the White House, in newspaper editorials, on TV and radio talk shows, LBJ was denounced for animal cruelty," according to the American Kennel Club.īut Pickens argues that it was overblown. When the photo appeared in Life magazine, "the public reaction was swift and vehement. ![]() Kennedy's successor, President Lyndon Johnson, infamously caught flak for a photograph that showed him picking up one of his beagles by the ears, apparently to encourage him to bark for guests. went on to fall in love with President Kennedy's beloved terrier, Charlie, and had puppies that were coined pupniks," she says. "After a whole bunch of tests for bombs and germs and other listening devices. "People thought it was a spy," says Jennifer Pickens, a White House historian and first lady expert who also has written a book on presidential pets. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum/NARA Pushinka ("fluffy" in Russian) was a gift from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to President John F. The dog, he said, had been named by his 6-year-old daughter, Tricia. Taking a page from FDR, Nixon invoked his family - and the family pet - for political points. ![]() In a televised speech, Nixon countered critics, acknowledging that what he had done "was wrong, just not illegal." One gift he'd received from a supporter, he said, was a dog, Checkers. The story dates not to his time in the White House, but to the 1952 campaign, when he was then-presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower's running mate.Ī potential scandal involving an alleged Nixon secret political war chest was brewing and threatened to force Eisenhower to ax him from the ticket. Richard Nixon may owe his political career to a black-and-white cocker spaniel named Checkers. Nixon's dog and the speech that may have saved his political career The appearance was nicknamed his "Checkers speech" because of his reference to the family dog. Richard Nixon, Republican candidate for the vice presidency, explains an $18,000 expense fund on national television in September 1952. "It really sort of put the issue to rest," says Hager, who is also the author of All-American Dogs: A History of Presidential Pets from Every Era. "They now include my little dog Fala," the president said to laughter. There is no evidence that it ever happened, but Roosevelt, a Democrat, used the story in a 1944 campaign speech to fire back at Republicans, who he said were no longer content with mere attacks "on me, or on my wife or on my sons." To retrieve the dog, "they had to turn the destroyer around and go back at a cost of several million dollars and at a risk to everybody," Hager says, relating the tale. In 1944, Roosevelt's opponents floated a story that Fala had been inadvertently left behind after the president visited Alaska aboard a U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his car with his Scottish terrier, Fala, in 1941.įDR's "Fala" speech turned fake news into humorīut it is FDR's Scottish terrier, Fala, who has earned an enduring place in history. Roosevelt's German shepherd, also named Major, met a fate similar to Biden's dog.Īndrew Hager, historian-in-residence at the Presidential Pet Museum, says FDR's Major had to be rehomed after " the pants of the British prime minister at the first state dinner Roosevelt gave in 1933." In an odd historical parallel, President Franklin D. ![]() In the first months of the administration, another of the first family's dogs, Major, was sent to Delaware to live after biting security personnel. Pete was "sent packing" after he "bit the French Ambassador Jean Jules Jusserand, who was a good personal friend of the president's," according to the Theodore Roosevelt Center.įor the Bidens, the kerfuffle over Commander is familiar ground. ![]() But it was a bulldog named Pete who proved to be trouble at the White House. Roosevelt, an avid outdoorsman, had the largest and most eclectic and exotic mix of pets, ranging from a badger to a hyena, as well as myriad farm animals. Coolidge was gifted a pygmy hippo named Billy but sent it to the National Zoo. Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Teddy Roosevelt each kept a strange collection of animals. "In the end, the President lost his argument with Congress and gave the tiger cubs to a zoo," the park service says. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |