President Harry Truman. Photograph courtesy of Library of Congress.
What’s it like to get romantic with the President? Most of us will never have the pleasure, but a new book offers a revealing look at some lusty commanders in chief. In Are You Prepared for the Storm of Lovemaking? Letters of Love and Lust From the White House, authors (and married couple) Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler dig up a trove of eyebrow-raising correspondence. Here are some standouts.
Most Endearing Sad Sack
Harry Truman
While serving in France during World War I, Truman penned a letter to future First Lady Elizabeth Virginia Wallace that’s both romantic and pretty pathetic. “Please get ready to march down the aisle with me just as soon as you decently can when I get back,” he wrote. “I haven’t any place to go but home and I’m busted financially but I love you as madly as a man can and I’ll find all the other things.” The couple tied the knot four months later.
Smuttiest Sweet-Talker
Warren Harding
Some of the book’s bluntest language comes courtesy of the 29th President, who pumped out lascivious letters to his mistress. (She later tried to blackmail him with them.) In one missive, Harding introduces a third name into their relationship: Jerry, his moniker for, uh, little Warren. “And Jerry came and will not go, says he loves you, that you are the only, only love worthwhile in all this world,” he wrote, “and I must tell you so and a score or more of other fond things he suggests, but I spare you. You must not be annoyed. He is so utterly devoted that he only exists to give you all. I fear you would find a fierce enthusiast today.”
Goofiest Cooer
George H.W. Bush
When Bush was running for President in 1988, advisers told him he should make his love for his wife more obvious in public, as his opponent, Michael Dukakis, was doing. Bush then wrote a letter to Barbara Bush: “Please look at how Mike and Kitty do it. Try to be closer in, more—well er romantic—on camera. I am practicing the loving look, and the creeping hand. Yours for better TV and more demonstrable affection. Your sweetie-pie coo-coo.”
Biggest Marital-Sex Skeptic
James Buchanan
The only bachelor Prez didn’t seem keen on romance with a potential First Lady. As he wrote to a friend, “I . . . should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, & not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.”
This article appears in the February 2024 issue of Washingtonian.
Lifestyle Editor
Daniella Byck joined Washingtonian in 2022. She was previously with Outside Magazine and lives in Northeast DC.
