Howard Dean's middle name is Brush!
That fulfills the one overwhelming Presidential requirement of at least the last eighty years. Presidents must have weird personal names. Most often, you see it as a misplaced surname (William Jefferson Clinton, Ronald Wilson Reagan), but it can also be regional (James Earl Carter) or ethnic (John Fitzgerald Kennedy), or even typographic (Harry S Truman). Usually the weird one is a middle name (George Herbert Walker Bush has two, both weird), but sometimes it's the first name (Dwight David Eisenhower, Woodrow Wilson). The champion may be Richard Milhous Nixon, but don't count out Lyndon Baines Johnson or even Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Frankly, on the basis of his name alone, Howard Brush Dean would make an excellent addition to our panoply of Presidents. Certainly, he'd be better than George Walker Bush, who's only half the weird name of his father.
(FTR, my name is Gregory Peter Morrow; among the many reasons I won't be successful in my Presidential campaign is that my name is too normal.)
Posted by Greg at June 11, 2003 1:20 PM
In a US history class in high school, the teacher once asked why one of my classmates would have a much better chance of being elected president than I would, aside from him being male. Aside from him actually wanting to be a politician? Yes, aside from that, too.
Apparently the answer she was looking for was that I had a weird last name that all substitutes I've ever had have balked at attempting to promounce ("Ferwerda." It's Dutch! Like "Roosevelt"!), while my classmate's last name was "Bridges".
Anyway, I think you've got a great name for politics. Not quite as great as "Spiro T. Agnew", but still plenty good enough.
I think I can safely echo Dave Barry here in noting that you can rearrange the letters in "Spiro Agnew" to read "grow a penis".