How to Fight Presidents: Defending Yourself Against the Badasses Who Ran This Country (5 page)

Unless, that is, we’re talking about
word
-fighting. Years after he’d graduated college, when Madison was called to debate political heavyweights like Patrick Henry (considered America’s greatest orator) and James Monroe (another guy), he stepped up to the plate and debated the
shit
out of them. He debated Monroe, a much more experienced debater, outside in the middle of a snowstorm, got frostbite, and still won. It was quite an exciting moment in the history of the annual “We Should Have Just Postponed or Relocated” Debate Club.

Madison defied expectations. There was no reason this Chihuahua of a man should be able to best Patrick Henry in a debate, but he did it anyway, because hey, take a hike, logic, there’s no place for you here in Madison’s life. As long as poetry wasn’t involved, Madison could convince anyone of anything. He was the one who shaped our Constitution, he was the one who wrote the Bill of Rights, and he was the one who wrote the majority of the
Federalist Papers
, successfully convincing the rest of America that the Constitution was worth ratifying. The tiny, whispery, least-cool member of the Nerd & Poetry Club was so bright and
so
persuasive that he eventually talked his way into the presidency.

You might know that Madison was a pacifist, and you might think that this fact will work to your advantage (or perhaps you only know that Madison was a pacifist because you just now read about it). Madison always believed that arguments should be settled with diplomacy instead of guns (though, sure, at 5′4″ it’s easy to be antiwar when you know that the average fourteen-year-old is bigger and stronger than you). But in 1812, as president, he felt that war was necessary. America’s rights at sea were technically neutral, meaning the country was free to trade with whomever it wanted. Great Britain refused to respect this and tried to reduce the amount of trade between America and France, because Great Britain saw America as a threat to its maritime supremacy and because Great Britain is just such a baby sometimes. Madison tried reasoning with them, he tried to resolve things peacefully, and tried to politely ask the British to please just stop blowing up all of our ships, but they wouldn’t
budge. Even
Napoleon
thought it was a reasonable request (great tiny minds think alike), but Britain held out. So, having exhausted all of the peaceful options, President Madison declared war.

Two years later, that war came right to the White House. Even though he’d never fired a gun before, he picked up two borrowed pistols, hopped onto a horse, and rode out to the front lines. He had no previous military experience and was probably the most antiwar
president we’ve ever had, but that didn’t stop him from being the only man in history to take up arms and stand on the battlefield while being the president of the United States. Grant didn’t do that. Teddy didn’t do that. But President Mickey Mouse did, because Madison knew how to rise to a challenge (insomuch as standing on your tippy toes can be considered rising), even when all of the odds were against him.

This war, disparagingly called “Mr. Madison’s War” by Madison’s critics and the “Second War for Independence” by the people who actually fought it, was the end of America’s economic dependence on Great Britain. (The first war, Madison maintained, was the “War of Revolution,” while the War of 1812 was the “War for Independence.”) Sure, this was the war that saw the burning of the White House, but it was also the war that gave us true independence
and
“The Star-Spangled Banner,” and it was won on James Madison’s watch. Tiny, fun-sized, peace-loving James Madison. He has overcome absolutely every single one of his many physical limitations and defied everyone’s expectations time and time again, and his fight with you is just one more opportunity to surprise his doubters.

Still, just do that thing that bullies do when they put a stiff hand on a smaller nerd’s forehead, taking advantage of their size and strength to keep the nerd outside of punching distance. Or, like, pick him up and throw him. This isn’t a Bill of Rights-writing contest, it’s a cage match. Grab that sucker, lift him up in the air, say “By the way, I’m a big fan of the Constitution, I’m really glad you put that thing together,” and then shake him until his teeth fall out.

It’s unfortunate that James Monroe doesn’t often get the kind of badass street cred that guys like Washington and Jackson get, because he kicked so much ass in the Revolutionary War that his foot has technically spent more time in an ass than it has in a shoe. Monroe was still in college at the start of the war, but that didn’t stop him from rounding up twenty-four similarly angry patriots and breaking into the Governor’s Palace (a place where the royal governors of Virginia lived and held parties). Weapons and ammunition supplies were short in Virginia, so Monroe took his men and raided the palace, stealing all of the decorative guns and swords and distributing them to the Williamsburg militia. Liberating two hundred guns and three hundred swords and driving the royal governor away for good wasn’t enough for Monroe, so he dropped out of school and joined the fight. He never went back to school, which would have been a huge disappointment to his parents had he not chosen “the goddamn president” as his fallback career.

Monroe was an officer in the Battle of Trenton under Captain William Washington. Both men led their charge on the British camp and both men were shot. Washington went down (like most people) but Monroe just said, “Take as much time as you need, guy, I’ll be captain now,” and commanded his troops with a bullet in his shoulder. It was in this battle that Monroe managed to capture two
cannons
, because he’d gotten a taste of stealing guns from people back in college and took a real liking to it. In that famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware, Monroe is the one waving the flag with the noble ferocity of a man who is clearly wondering if he can fit that whole flagpole up the ass of a British soldier.

Monroe took a few months off to recover from his bullet wound (the doctor at the time treated it by just sticking his finger in the hole for a while because
what the fuck
, right?), and went back to fighting as quickly as he could, getting promotion after promotion every step of the way. Monroe did so well in the military that he was eventually promoted to what would have amounted to a high-profile desk job position that saw very little action. Most soldiers
love
the part of the war where they’re not getting shot at, but Monroe got restless, quit, and went back to Virginia to try to
start his own militia
. That’s like if the star quarterback left the winning team in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl, started a new team, and used it to
conquer the fucking British
. But Thomas Jefferson took Monroe on as a legal apprentice before his militia could really get going, so he left military service, beloved by his men and respected by George “The Only Washington That Really Counts” Washington.

Even though he never got a degree, Monroe served his country as ambadassador to France and governor of Virginia—and, bizarrely, as secretary of state and secretary of war at the exact same time. He was secretary of state under President Madison, who made him secretary of war when the War of 1812 broke out. Monroe resigned his old job, but no one took over so he just said, “Fuck it, I’ll do both.” He continued doing the duties of secretary of state while formulating offensive battle strategies as secretary of war until a peace treaty was signed, after which he resigned his war position and went back to having just one incredibly difficult job.

Monroe continued his streak of awesomeness into the presidency. For starters, he delivered a speech that was written by John Q. Adams that Monroe called the “Monroe Doctrine,” because that’s one of the things you get to do when you’re president. The Monroe Doctrine basically said, “Dear Europe, stay the hell away from me and stop touching my stuff. If I see your faces around North or South America, I will come at you with everything I’ve got, God Bless America, these colors don’t run, land of the free home of the brave go fuck yourself USA USA USA!” Monroe explained that any European presence on his soil would be viewed as an act of war, and at that point America had a pretty good track record for going to war with Great Britain, so Britain took Monroe’s “Get off my lawn” speech to heart and stayed away.

Even though Adams wrote the speech, it was a perfect fit for Monroe, who refused to be pushed around or intimidated his entire life. At one point during his presidency, he had a dinner for visiting foreign diplomats. One of them somehow offended another, so they rushed off to another room to lift their swords and duel. Monroe—as president—grabbed his own sword and joined them. He took up arms and yelled at them until they worked out their differences and went home, because goddammit can’t we have just
one dinner
where everyone isn’t trying to kill everyone else?

A few months later, Monroe’s secretary of the treasury, William Crawford, barged into Monroe’s office and demanded high-ranking jobs for his buddies. President Monroe asked for time to think it over and Crawford got mad and said he refused to leave the office until Monroe agreed. Monroe decided instead to flip out, grab a set of fireplace tongs, and shout, “You will
now
leave the room or you will be thrust out.” It’s not clear what he would have
done
with those tongs, but the fact that he grabbed them must mean that he had
some
kind of plan, and this author is too terrified to even speculate.

Something with the guy’s balls, maybe? That would’ve been the worst.

Great Britain’s decision to get off America’s back also gave Monroe an opportunity to help America grow. It can be said that lots of presidents gave America her metaphorical balls (Washington with
his confidence, Teddy with his toughness, Lyndon Johnson with his enormous set of genitalia), but only Monroe can boast giving America her
actual
dick, when he purchased Florida from Spain. Monroe thought, “Truly, America is a majestic and inspiring thing of beauty, and yet I cannot help but feel that a mighty, swinging dong would really bring the whole place together,” and America’s been proudly waving that thing at passersby ever since.