On Tuesday, President Barack Obama said in an interview with Matt Lauer that, when it comes to the Gulf oil spill, he’s looking for “whose ass to kick.” The blogosphere predictably lit up with debate over what’s OK or not OK for a president to say. But we had a more pressing question: What are the other great moments in POTUS profanity?
After scouring the Internet, presidential histories and archives, POLITICO found that Obama’s Tuesday comment certainly falls on the less-offensive end of the presidential swearing spectrum. Yet, thanks to a, ahem, vocal staff, he can’t quite claim a place in the brotherhood of nearly squeaky-clean presidents that includes Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. Rather, Obama seems to be gunning for a spot in the fraternity of potty mouths that includes Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson and Harry Truman.
For proof, check out POLITICO’s guide to some of the top presidential cusses in history, below:
Obama
Last September, TMZ published audio of the president calling rapper Kanye West “a jackass” for interrupting Taylor Swift during a music awards show. The off-the-record exchange came with a CNBC reporter before an interview, but was obtained by the tabloid site.
Others in the administration tend to work more blue than Obama. Take Joe Biden and his infamous “BFD” moment: Just before Obama signed the health care bill into law this March, Biden whispered to the president that their accomplishment was “a big f—-ing deal.” After a brief media storm, the White House embraced Biden’s gaffe, as press secretary Robert Gibbs tweeted, “And yes Mr. Vice President, you're right.” Liberals ordered up “BFD” shirts. Obama joked about it at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Almost exactly a year before, the veep was caught telling an old Senate colleague to "Gimme a f—-ing break" after he was addressed as “Mr. Vice President.”
And then there’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, whose seemingly favorite word has four letters and starts with F. It’s a key part of his public image, one that he often embraces.
Bush 43
Before he even got into office, Bush’s profane tendencies were on display. In 1999, during an interview with Tucker Carlson for Talk Magazine, George W. Bush dropped the F-bomb several times.
Over Labor Day weekend in 2000, as the then-Texas governor appeared at an Illinois rally, he pointed out Adam Clymer to Dick Cheney and whispered that The New York Times reporter was a “major league asshole.” The running mate agreed. They didn’t realize the mike was hot.
(Speaking of Cheney, in 2004, as Bush sought reelection, the then-vice president visited the Senate floor to pose for a group portrait. He ran into Sen. Patrick Leahy and the two men began arguing about judicial nominees and contracts awarded by Halliburton. Go “f—k yourself,” Cheney told Leahy.)
At the 2006 G8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, Bush chatted with British Prime Minister Tony Blair during the closing lunch. A microphone picked up their candid discussion about Hezbollah’s attacks against Israel.
“See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over,” Bush mused, as he chewed on a roll.
Clinton
Like Mark Twain, who had a room in his Hartford, Conn., mansion devoted to cursing, Bill Clinton often swore privately. "This is a f---ing coup d'etat!" he told Vice President Al Gore as Republicans circled his presidency, according to John Harris’s account in "The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House."
He became irritable as Obama overtook Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Democratic primaries. Thinking no one could hear him, after an interview with a Philadelphia radio station that put him on the defensive over racial equality issues, Clinton said: "I don't think I should take any shit from anybody on that, do you?"
Bush 41
During the 1984 campaign, coming out of a strong debate performance against Democrat Geraldine Ferraro, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush bragged to a longshoreman after a rally in New Jersey: “We tried to kick a little ass last night,” Bush said, quickly realizing a boom mike picked it up.
"Whoops! Oh, God, he heard me! Turn that thing off," Bush hurriedly insisted.
He later called his cuss "an old Texas football expression.”
Reagan
Ronald Reagan — with his background in radio, television and film — carefully avoided swearing in public.
Still, the Gipper sometimes lost his cool, as he did when he got into a shouting match with Canadian Prime Minister Pierre-Elliott Trudeau at a London economic summit in 1983. Assailed for not more aggressively promoting détente with the Soviet Union, Reagan pounded the table and shouted, “Damn it, Pierre.”
In a 1985 phone call, which made it into The New York Times, an Arkansas House Democrat’s spokesman publicly alleged that Reagan had cussed out his boss after learning he wouldn’t support the MX missile. He refused to elaborate on which words were used, and the White House said it was a private discussion.
Carter
In June 1979, as Sen. Ted Kennedy pondered a primary challenge, Jimmy Carter convened a group of congressmen at a White House dinner.
"If Kennedy runs, I'll whip his ass,” the president told the men.
It leaked immediately.
But the born-again evangelical is best remembered for the modest vulgarity he displayed in an interview he gave Playboy during the 1976 campaign.
"I've looked on a lot of women with lust,” he said. “I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do — and I have done it — and God forgives me for it."
“Christ says, ‘Don't consider yourself better than someone else because one guy screws a whole bunch of women while the other guy is loyal to his wife.’ The guy who's loyal to his wife ought not to be condescending or proud because of the relative degree of sinfulness,” Carter said.
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon carefully avoided cursing in public, and instead revealed his darker side during private meetings with staff in the Oval Office. The publication of edited transcripts from the first Nixon tapes in April 1974 shocked outsiders — including many supporters — because they showed a man so different from the image he cultivated during five national campaigns.
The number of times “[Expletive deleted]” appeared in transcripts — not to mention the actual content on the tapes — helped turn Congress and the country against Nixon, which led to his resignation.
A few highlights: “I really need a son-of-a-bitch like [Tom Charles] Huston who will work his butt off and do it dishonorably,” Nixon said to Bob Haldeman. “Do you see what I mean? Who will know what he’s doing and will — I want to know, too. And I’ll direct him myself. I’ll pitch it. I know how to play this game.”
“I want those funds cut off, for that MIT,” Nixon tells Haldeman in another confab. “You get a hold of [Caspar] Weinberger and say, ‘I want the Goddamn funds, and I want them to know it now.’ Get it done.”
Outrageous doozies come with the release of each new batch of tapes from the National Archives.
“It's a balls thing,” Nixon said in another Watergate-related tape.
Johnson
“People said my language was bad, but Jesus, you should have heard LBJ,” Nixon said of his predecessor.
Lyndon Johnson also used the surreptitious taping system, and as transcripts of the recordings were made available, a surprisingly profane side of the president was revealed. He told dirty stories, used the N-word and mused about his “bunghole.”
And, of course, there’s more.
“He wouldn't know how to pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel,” Johnson said of a Kennedy aide.
“He can't fart and chew gum at the same time,” he said of Gerald Ford.
Kennedy
John F. Kennedy grew up as a wealthy child of privilege, but his time in the Navy taught him how to swear like a sailor — at least, a little bit.
“My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it ‘til now,” Kennedy fumed privately in April 1962 after U.S. Steel announced price increases.
Truman
Give-‘em-hell Harry Truman loved to cuss. It was part of his tell-it-like-it-is, man-of-the-people appeal.
"I never did give them hell,” he said. “I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell."
During a 1960 presidential debate, Kennedy demurred when asked about whether Truman should apologize for nasty things he said about Nixon and Eisenhower.
“They are not my style, but I really don't think there's anything that I could say to President Truman that's going to cause him, at the age of 76, to change his particular speaking manner,” Kennedy said. “Perhaps Mrs. Truman can, but I don't think I can.”
Truman’s language became increasingly unvarnished after he left the White House in 1953.
"Nixon is a shifty-eyed goddamn liar, and the people know it,” Truman said in a 1961 interview that came out in “Plain Speaking,” a 1974 book about the ex-president.
“I fired [Douglas MacArthur] because he wouldn't respect the authority of the president. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals,” Truman said, reflecting on his decision to relieve the U.S. commander in Korea.
His ire could be bipartisan.
"Old Joe Kennedy is as big a crook as we've got anywhere in this country, and I don't like it that he bought his son the nomination for the presidency,” Truman said in 1960. “He bought West Virginia. I don't know how much it cost him; he's a tightfisted old son of a bitch; so he didn't pay any more than he had to. But he bought West Virginia, and that's how his boy won the primary over Humphrey."
Washington
After the Biden brouhaha in March, Slate’s John Dickerson pointed to “General Orders on Profanity,” issued by George Washington in August 1776. The man who would become the first president fretted that the increase in swearing [“a vice so mean and low”] might thwart God’s blessings in battle.
“The General is sorry to be informed that the foolish, and wicked practice, of profane cursing and swearing (a Vice heretofore little known in an American Army) is growing into fashion,” a dispatch issued on Washington’s orders said. “He hopes the officers will, by example, as well as influence, endeavor to check it.”