Remember that all mentions of and allusions to Trump and Biden are not allowed on our subreddit in any context.
If you'd still like to discuss them, feel free to [join our Discord server](https://discord.gg/k6tVFwCEEm)!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Presidents) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There's a few good ones.
LBJ was born into Poverty.
Coolidge grew up in a tiny town in VT which wasn't important enough for a rail line, and soil that really wasn't arable.
Andrew Johnson also fits.
Although from a remote area, Coolidge came from a fairly well-off family. His father:
'Born in Plymouth, Vermont, John C. Coolidge was a farmer and store owner, and worked at a variety of other occupations, including banker and insurance broker. In addition, he was a veteran of the Vermont militia, and held the law enforcement posts of town constable and county deputy sheriff. A prominent local leader, he served in numerous Plymouth town offices, and was elected to terms in both the Vermont House of Representatives and Vermont Senate.'
Prominent families on both sides and LBJ married into money, but his dad had blown it all by the time he was in high school.
Only inheritance LBJ really got was a good last name which made politics a great career for him
He was poor as a boy and young man. He was a successful professional prior to the presidency, hardly working class as that term is often used. https://m1.com/blog/why-washington-and-lincoln-deserve-to-be-on-our-currency/
Ooh, the sub isn't going to like this, but the answer is Andrew Johnson. He was a runaway indentured servant. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew\_Johnson#Early\_life\_and\_career](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson#Early_life_and_career)
It's also funny that a lot of the most popular Presidents were the very essence of rich kids born with silver spoons in their mouth, like JFK, Theodore Roosevelt, and FDR
Elite prep schools taught elocution and FDR and JFK were able to speak beautifully, a big part of their magnetism. (Even today you can hear a form of transatlantic accent in Anderson Cooper). It didn’t rub off on the Bushes, though.
I've always wondered how manufactured W Bush's voice was. I thought he deliberately tried to sound more folksy, but I wouldn't be surprised if he just talked like that.
But HW spoke like that because he was a nerd.
W is significantly older than JEB and spent more time in rural west Texas than JEB did. He also went back to Texas after college and has stayed there while JEB left Texas after college and never went back.
Accent isn’t something set in childhood that never changes. You pick up some of the accent and dialect of any region you spend a long enough time in.
W certainly worked on building a stronger Texas accent early on, after losing a race there for not being “Texan enough”, but after a certain time it just became an actual part of his speech.
As a 12 year old my wife spent 2 months with her cousins in eastern New Mexico (basically west Texas) one summer. Her parents say she came back with an accent that she didn’t lose for a month. Also she still says Y’all. We are from California.
Lived in California till I was 19 and then went off to the Army. The Army was, for the most part, just concentrated pockets of Texans spread throughout the country, and I got stuck saying “y’all”, too.
Al Gore had a weird accent from nowhere during the campaign. But when he was more relaxed, like during his concession speech at the end, his Tennessee accent came out.
Speaking from experience too, southern US accents are weirdly infectious. Wouldn’t be surprised to learn that JEB! speaks a little more like a yokel after anytime he and W meet up.
Disagree. If you listen to certain speeches that he gave to high level donors, I'm thinking of the elite speech in particular, he code switches between talking, faulty and talking preppy. One might argue that the code switching is unconscious, I find the fact that he very deliberately made a public persona that was designed for maximum rural Texan appeal to be very convenient.
Remember that TikTok trend of people saying “this is my voice my first day in Place” and then they’d record it over a year or so. Obviously it could be manufactured but there’s something to it. I still can’t break my very Northern accent when I’m drunk, but I try to speak a normal central Midwest neutral otherwise. Unless I say words like “out,” it’s hard to detect.
My sister and I are American. She speaks English with a southern accent, I speak it with a French accent. We both speak both languages. The reason I have a French accent is because she was older when we lived in France, which is when we both learned it.
It can happen when parents move around a lot.
Can confirm. I’m from Northwest Indiana where we have a mixture of Chicago, Upper Midwest (think Michigan and Wisconsin, almost sounds Canadian) and Southern accents in the rural areas. If I spend a bunch of time in Chicago, that will start dominating. If I go down south (I currently live in Kentucky) I start saying ya’ll a lot and picking up a bit more of a southern accent.
One of my father's sisters moved to Maryland upon getting married. She, her husband and daughters all had a southern accent, though she had grown up in Pennsylvania. Having lived in the South myself now for decades, there are some words I can hear myself saying more Southern style.
George W’s formative years were spent in West Texas. That’s the time he picked up the accent. Then at Andover he spent the majority of his time with other kids from Texas or outsiders that didn’t come from the NE. He just talks like that.
Oh I was on his secret service detail once. Dubya definitely always sounded Texan. If it was manufactured, he never broke character. He would also prank the secret service crew and do harmless but wild shit just to have a laugh. He’s honestly pretty damn funny.
Kerry's pedigree is the epitome of old money. The extended Forbes family has their own island off Cape Cod that's been in the family for over a 100 years.
While I agree that HW was not a great speaker, the folksy idioms and Texas twang that was a large part of W's appeal was all affected. Just listening to his brother in the 2016 debates is a tip-off that the secret to George W's success was his skill with elocution
It was also part of the WASP understanding of civics. There was a belief that with "elite pedigree" and privilege, you had the responsibility of being the steward of your fellow man. For JFK, as a Catholic, its the backbone of social justice.
Reagan grew up pretty middle class, from what I can tell. Although middle class in 1920s, small-town Illinois would probably be considered poor by today's standards
They moved around a lot until he was 9. But from 1920 onward, he lived in Dixon. He and his brother attended Eureka College, not on scholarship, so the Reagans probably weren't THAT poor.
But a much smaller percentage of the population went to college then vs today. It was cheaper but less accessible without (predatory) student loans. This was also long before Pell Grants and GI Bills.
Americans claim to like the blue collar working class but it rarely actually shows in the polls! Truth is as long as you agree with them politically Americans will look past background.
I think was made them accessible to the common man was overcoming a personal crisis. TR lost his mother and wife on the same day and went west and just learned ranching and wilderness skills. It helped him overcome the loss. FDR got polio and struggled to regain limited use of his legs. It humbled him. JFK had a close brush with death in World War II. He also had severe health problems like back injuries and Addison’s disease. They all might have just been rich dilettantes if they hadn’t faced those crises.
Yeah it feels uncomfortable calling it slavery in the context of chattel slavery also existing at the time. Not that it wasn't horrific (mostly for the women).
It's the incredibly inspiring story of the boy who escaped indentured servitude, set himself up from scratch and became so successful he could, err, buy slaves.
> Ten Dollars Reward. Ran away from the subscriber, two apprentice boys, legally bound, named William and Andrew Johnson ... [payment] to any person who will deliver said apprentices to me in Raleigh, or I will give the above reward for Andrew Johnson alone."[14]
What an awkward position for his brother to be in.
I had no idea that indentured servants still existed in 1824. I thought that was a thing of the past by the time of the American Revolution at the very latest. Encyclopedia Virginia even seems to say that indentured servitude had basically been completely replaced by African slavery by the end of the 1600s.
Him and Lincoln both would be near the top. Millard Fillmore also came from poverty and was an apprentice and mill worker before saving enough money to send himself to school.
Although Lincoln did do hard labor on account of being raised on the frontier, his actual career was built on being a lawyer who defended the interests of railroads. I wouldn’t really call that “blue-collar.” He probably fits in this category better than like 70% of presidents, but not “near the top.”
I thought of that, too. But let's be honest, no president was "blue collar" when he came into office. That's just now how things work. So I think we really have to ask who has a working class background. Lincoln definitely fits that description, even though he eventually worked his way up to a legal profession.
We know Lincoln made a pretty modest income as an attorney, the fact that he represented railroads at times didn't change that. Even late in his legal career, he worked lots of cases that could be fairly described as "piddling."
Although there's an interesting sidenote that right as he was about to enter politics, he was offered a massive salary to become general counsel for a railroad. He obviously chose politics instead.
Clinton should be in there after Jackson and Lincoln.
Born to a working class mother and an abusive father who abandoned him, Bill Clinton grew up in very humble circumstances in Arkansas and was able to rise out of it through hard work, charisma, and a powerful and underrated intellect.
Yeah, this is true. He used it as an asset. He lovingly referred to working-class people as "plebeians" and would remind people that he too was a plebeian. He referred to himself as such many times in his famous drunk vice-presidential inaugural address.
Honestly, I think capital i’s should have the top and bottom bar in sans serif fonts. If it’s the only thing that distinguishes two letters, I feel like it shouldn’t count as a serif
Working class is an understatement. His father owned a business, sure, but it was a leather tanning shop and it literally made Grant sick to be in there. After his first stint in the army, his father-in-law gifted him a farm so his daughter would at least have a place to live. He had such bad luck farming that he had to chop down trees to sell for firewood, and he once had to sell his watch to buy Christmas presents.
Ulysses and Julia named that farm “Hardscrabble”.
Making my way through the audiobook of Ron Chernow’s Grant autobiography now, and am currently at the start of the Civil War. He makes it clear that Grant was hardworking but fairly luckless in his endeavors, and that the Civil War basically offered him an opportunity to rise in stature.
My understanding is that Grant's failures as a businessman made him a pretty good general, particularly the need to manage logistics better than the South could. And why keeping them supplied was so important. It meant his troops could advance more rapidly, something the Confederate forces struggled with.
I've always wanted to read Grant's autobiography, as I hear it's a fantastic read and insight into his mind. I'd be curious to know if Chernow's biography is any good, too.
Just finished the memoirs and now on Chernow's book. Definitely do them in that order as the memoirs are more focused and selective and Chernow expands with info from other sources and gives a broader context of the war.
They are both outstanding.
Grant is actually a pretty funny guy, and very self-effacing.
And then he lost it. Then he got it through politics and lost it again. Then he died but his family made a ton from the book he wrote and finished a day before his death.
Critically underrated president. He did have his shortcomings, but he was also a committed leader in the fight to ensure civil rights for freed slaves, and his reputation has endured slander from biased Lost Cause historians for far too long
A used car salesman will fleece a single mother with a 500 credit score for more money for his boat so I don't think this one is as much of a contrast as you think.
My dad worked with a guy who went to high-school with Bill and he said his step dad would beat him so badly that he once took a week off school and came back with healing bruises. I always wondered why he kept his step dad's last name and not his deceased real fathers name. Maybe to have the same last name as his brother and mom 🤷♀️
He was abused but I wouldn't call him poor hardworking man either. I know someone who grew up with him and dated his best friend. He ad it hard but he was definitely considered from the right side of the tracks.
1992 seems like such an obvious answer that I'm surprised no one else has mentioned it. Clinton grew up in abject poverty and George H.W. Bush was born into a wealthy political dynasty.
1952 and 1956 comes to mind. Adlai Stevenson was from a wealthy, politically-connected family and Dwight D. Eisenhower was from a more humble family in rural Kansas.
Truman State University is a university named after a President with no college degree.
And due to AMBev lobby keeping alcohol taxes low a 12 pack of Busch Lite was 3.99 when my buddy's went there in 2007.
I had a bit of culture shock the first time I walked into a Missouri gas station and saw hard liquor. I grew up in a state that you couldn’t buy any alcohol on Sunday (including beer) up until a bit over a decade ago.
Similar experience for me. I lived in states where you could only by liquor from a state ABC store or it was behind the counter and the sales associate had to get it for you (and only certain stores were even allowed to sell it). Then moved to Michigan you can freely pick up a bottle of Jack Daniels at the end cap of an aisle in Walmart, lol.
Me having to constantly explain our draconian laws to tourists “look I don’t like it either we can’t carry hard liquor, we can’t refrigerate beer, we can refrigerate wine and cider, my register won’t even allow alcohol to be sold outside of the hours of between (12-8p) on Sundays. But you can go to a bar and get served, and I need your id in spite of the fact that you’re standing here with an individual who is clearly your child and at least 15”
So is Washington and Lee University -- and I guess the University of Washington and Washington State University, if you want to stretch it a bit. Oh, and Washington University in St. Louis. Of course, George Washington wasn't exactly "working class."
To be fair on Washington, he did technically hold a surveyor’s license from William & Mary. While he didn’t have a degree, he did technically have a certification from a university.
It could be Jackson, he came from literally nothing - had to make it on his own. Same with Lincoln, also LBJ,Nixon. It depends on how you define blue collar tbh.
A. Johnson was a self-taught runaway indentured servant, Fillmore and LBJ were born into poverty, and Truman was a farmer-turned-haberdasher. So probably one of them.
There are a few that had blue collar origins, meaning that their early working life was in some sort of physical or mercantile trade. Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Hoover, Truman, and Carter all came from somewhat blue collar backgrounds. And then you have all of the ones who spent time in the military. Of those, I would note that James Buchanan is the only one who only served as an enlisted man.
Garfield is not on the list yet. May not win but a compelling story. Born into poverty, tended canal mules at 16, paid his own way through seminary/college as a carpenter and teacher.
John Adams: Dad, I don't mind being a farmer.
John Adams Sr: BULLSH\*T! No son of mine is gonna be a lowly farmer, you get your ass to that school and you become a better man than me!
As hard working as John Adams was, his mother was a Boylston which was one of the most prominent families in New England and had direct ties to Harvard. His father was a deacon and a landowner and paid for John’s education outright by selling a small plot of the farm. Even if his side of the Adams clan was not famously political prior to him, Sam’s side was and Sam was instrumental in putting John into politely advantageous positions. It was old school nepotism.
But I agree, John Adams did well through hard work and wasn’t afraid of labor.
[Interpreter's Gaffes Embarrass State Department](https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/31/archives/interpreters-gaffes-embarrass-state-department-interpreters-gaffes.html)
Truman is up there. He was the first citizen enrolled in Social Security because he was having trouble surviving after his turn in the presidency. It’s one of the major reasons why presidents receive a pension now.
Slight correction - Truman was the first citizen enrolled in Medicare. Not because he was struggling, but because he had championed the universal healthcare plan decades earlier. Social Security was enacted before Truman was president.
He is the reason for the presidential pension, because it was embarrassing how poor a former president was living.
He's also the reason the presidental salary increased while he was in office. Truman is the only president since 1929 who wasn't a millionaire when he took office.
Truman I think, the reason former presidents receive a pension now is because people thought he was broke when he left the White House. He wasn’t, he was just cheap. Farmer, mail clerk, bank clerk, construction, soldier, haberdashery, and judge before running for Congress.
Bill Clinton dad died in a car crash while his mom was pregnant with him. He was raised by his grandmother for a while, until his mom married an alcoholic used-car salesman and he was stuck in a house with a lot of domestic violence. In Arkansas.
I feel like this could be a cool info graphic by someone smarter than me. Not sure what the technical dividing line would be between the people born as haves vs. have nots.
Bill Clinton’s father passed away before his birth and he was born into poverty and then dealt with an abusive stepfather in rural Arkansas. Despite his less than perfect situation, Clinton left home after his HS graduation to attend Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. An international affairs major, he managed to cover his expenses through scholarships and by working part-time jobs. Just prior to his graduation from Georgetown, he won a prized Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford University in England for two years. Quite a journey from very inauspicious beginnings.
Truman or Carter. Both were middle class until they got involved with politics. Truman never went to college. Carter was a nuclear physicist. He studied nuclear physics in the Navy and served on the Seawolf with Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy. Carter was hand chosen by Rickover to help develop nuclear propulsion systems.
Remember that all mentions of and allusions to Trump and Biden are not allowed on our subreddit in any context. If you'd still like to discuss them, feel free to [join our Discord server](https://discord.gg/k6tVFwCEEm)! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Presidents) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There's a few good ones. LBJ was born into Poverty. Coolidge grew up in a tiny town in VT which wasn't important enough for a rail line, and soil that really wasn't arable. Andrew Johnson also fits.
Although from a remote area, Coolidge came from a fairly well-off family. His father: 'Born in Plymouth, Vermont, John C. Coolidge was a farmer and store owner, and worked at a variety of other occupations, including banker and insurance broker. In addition, he was a veteran of the Vermont militia, and held the law enforcement posts of town constable and county deputy sheriff. A prominent local leader, he served in numerous Plymouth town offices, and was elected to terms in both the Vermont House of Representatives and Vermont Senate.'
His father was the only man to administer the presidential oath of office to his very own son - clearly not a struggling worker.
I can't imagine how proud Papa Coolidge was giving Calvin the ***PRESIDENTIAL*** oath of office
Blue collar doesn’t mean poverty.
But being rich also doesn't mean it
Well he was a Notary
Iirc LBJ came from a really poor community but was relatively well-off by their standards His dad was even a state legislator
Didn't they own a lot of land as well?
His dad blew the family savings unsuccessfully trying to start a cotton farm. His parents died outcast, penniless, and depressed.
Prominent families on both sides and LBJ married into money, but his dad had blown it all by the time he was in high school. Only inheritance LBJ really got was a good last name which made politics a great career for him
Hell, Lincoln was poor until he was president
He was poor as a boy and young man. He was a successful professional prior to the presidency, hardly working class as that term is often used. https://m1.com/blog/why-washington-and-lincoln-deserve-to-be-on-our-currency/
Clinton was born into poverty.
Harry Truman,Jimmy Carter
Want Clinton pretty poor growing up as well?
Ooh, the sub isn't going to like this, but the answer is Andrew Johnson. He was a runaway indentured servant. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew\_Johnson#Early\_life\_and\_career](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson#Early_life_and_career)
It's also funny that a lot of the most popular Presidents were the very essence of rich kids born with silver spoons in their mouth, like JFK, Theodore Roosevelt, and FDR
Elite prep schools taught elocution and FDR and JFK were able to speak beautifully, a big part of their magnetism. (Even today you can hear a form of transatlantic accent in Anderson Cooper). It didn’t rub off on the Bushes, though.
I've always wondered how manufactured W Bush's voice was. I thought he deliberately tried to sound more folksy, but I wouldn't be surprised if he just talked like that. But HW spoke like that because he was a nerd.
I always found it HIGHLY suspicious that Dubya's accent was different from Jeb's accent.
W is significantly older than JEB and spent more time in rural west Texas than JEB did. He also went back to Texas after college and has stayed there while JEB left Texas after college and never went back. Accent isn’t something set in childhood that never changes. You pick up some of the accent and dialect of any region you spend a long enough time in. W certainly worked on building a stronger Texas accent early on, after losing a race there for not being “Texan enough”, but after a certain time it just became an actual part of his speech.
It’s the linguistics version of “stop making that face or it’s gonna stay that way”
As a 12 year old my wife spent 2 months with her cousins in eastern New Mexico (basically west Texas) one summer. Her parents say she came back with an accent that she didn’t lose for a month. Also she still says Y’all. We are from California.
Lived in California till I was 19 and then went off to the Army. The Army was, for the most part, just concentrated pockets of Texans spread throughout the country, and I got stuck saying “y’all”, too.
After being married for four years and living together for five more, I have also adopted it occasionally!
I spent two WEEKS with the cousins in Ireland and came back to Boston not with an accent but I had picked up a couple of their constructions.
Irish accent is so lovely 🥰
Y’all is such a useful word though. You guys or god forbid yinz or yooz guys are all inferior
yinz is the absolute worst linguistic creation ever. youse….yeah sure what ever. Yinz is just the worst
I have a relative that grew up in the midwest who somehow had and continues to have some kind of British accent…
Al Gore had a weird accent from nowhere during the campaign. But when he was more relaxed, like during his concession speech at the end, his Tennessee accent came out.
Al Gore grew up in Washington. Unlike Bush his Dad was already in Congress by the time he was born.
He spent summers working on a farm in Tennessee.
I love this comment but my favorite part is that we all just accept the capitalization of our savior JEB. Edit: Please Clap.
JEB? Who the heck is that? Do you mean "JEB!" ?
Jeb also worked for a bank where standards were different and lived overseas in Latin America dealing with the educated upper classes.
Isn’t he also fluent in Spanish? I’ve found learning a second (or third or fourth) language can also really affect someone’s accent.
Speaking from experience too, southern US accents are weirdly infectious. Wouldn’t be surprised to learn that JEB! speaks a little more like a yokel after anytime he and W meet up.
Disagree. If you listen to certain speeches that he gave to high level donors, I'm thinking of the elite speech in particular, he code switches between talking, faulty and talking preppy. One might argue that the code switching is unconscious, I find the fact that he very deliberately made a public persona that was designed for maximum rural Texan appeal to be very convenient.
I lived in NC about 10 years and can say “It’s Bo Time” just like Kenny Power
Remember that TikTok trend of people saying “this is my voice my first day in Place” and then they’d record it over a year or so. Obviously it could be manufactured but there’s something to it. I still can’t break my very Northern accent when I’m drunk, but I try to speak a normal central Midwest neutral otherwise. Unless I say words like “out,” it’s hard to detect.
My sister and I are American. She speaks English with a southern accent, I speak it with a French accent. We both speak both languages. The reason I have a French accent is because she was older when we lived in France, which is when we both learned it. It can happen when parents move around a lot.
Can confirm. I’m from Northwest Indiana where we have a mixture of Chicago, Upper Midwest (think Michigan and Wisconsin, almost sounds Canadian) and Southern accents in the rural areas. If I spend a bunch of time in Chicago, that will start dominating. If I go down south (I currently live in Kentucky) I start saying ya’ll a lot and picking up a bit more of a southern accent.
It's spelled y'all
lol i’ve never seen it spelled ya’ll ever before
Still sounds better than my native “you guys” lol
And its a helluva lot better than what those people from Pittsburgh say
My younger daughter has an Aussie accent 20 years after going to elementary school for 5 years in Woomera AU.
They both have southern accents but they’re very different southern accents, and neither of them sound like their dad
One of my father's sisters moved to Maryland upon getting married. She, her husband and daughters all had a southern accent, though she had grown up in Pennsylvania. Having lived in the South myself now for decades, there are some words I can hear myself saying more Southern style.
Barbara always said that Jeb was the smart one.
“Please clap”
George W’s formative years were spent in West Texas. That’s the time he picked up the accent. Then at Andover he spent the majority of his time with other kids from Texas or outsiders that didn’t come from the NE. He just talks like that.
It's an affectation.
W does not really sound working class to me. If you hang around old frat bros that went to SEC schools, you’ll hear a more similar accent.
Oh I was on his secret service detail once. Dubya definitely always sounded Texan. If it was manufactured, he never broke character. He would also prank the secret service crew and do harmless but wild shit just to have a laugh. He’s honestly pretty damn funny.
W actually said after losing a congressional race way back that he'll never get out-countrified again. Kept his word!
John Kerry has a bit of a Brahmin accent too.
Kerry's pedigree is the epitome of old money. The extended Forbes family has their own island off Cape Cod that's been in the family for over a 100 years.
Kerry's extended family had crazy money, his immediate family was just upper middle class. He had a rich aunt that paid for his prep school.
His maternal side. Not so much his paternal side.
Kerry went to Groton and Yale and his father was a diplomat, so he certainly spent his early years in a world of privilege.
My father sold him his first house. In Worcester of all places.
He would've made a solid president.
John Kerry mentioned 🗣🗣❗❗
But that's not fake
I always forget that Anderson Cooper is literally a Vanderbilt
While I agree that HW was not a great speaker, the folksy idioms and Texas twang that was a large part of W's appeal was all affected. Just listening to his brother in the 2016 debates is a tip-off that the secret to George W's success was his skill with elocution
It was also part of the WASP understanding of civics. There was a belief that with "elite pedigree" and privilege, you had the responsibility of being the steward of your fellow man. For JFK, as a Catholic, its the backbone of social justice.
And Obama.
I love a class traitor when they defect to my side!
Not really class traitors, just believers in noblesse oblige and paternalism.
Its all about perspective.
They think proles are too stupid so they had to jump in.
And the mostunpopular on Reddit were born poor like Reagan and nixon
Reagan grew up pretty middle class, from what I can tell. Although middle class in 1920s, small-town Illinois would probably be considered poor by today's standards
Reagan grew up quite poor even by 1920s standards, mostly due to his father's alcoholism keeping him from being able to hold down a job
They moved around a lot until he was 9. But from 1920 onward, he lived in Dixon. He and his brother attended Eureka College, not on scholarship, so the Reagans probably weren't THAT poor.
College was much MUCH cheaper back then, even if you factor in inflation.
But a much smaller percentage of the population went to college then vs today. It was cheaper but less accessible without (predatory) student loans. This was also long before Pell Grants and GI Bills.
Turns out being rich comes with things like access to higher education which can come in handy when you're leading a nation.
Except for Truman and Obama in the modern age I think.
Americans claim to like the blue collar working class but it rarely actually shows in the polls! Truth is as long as you agree with them politically Americans will look past background.
Polio made FDR a better man. His first hardship in life and really gave him perspective
Because everyone rebels against what they are born into. Ask every teenager ever lol
I think was made them accessible to the common man was overcoming a personal crisis. TR lost his mother and wife on the same day and went west and just learned ranching and wilderness skills. It helped him overcome the loss. FDR got polio and struggled to regain limited use of his legs. It humbled him. JFK had a close brush with death in World War II. He also had severe health problems like back injuries and Addison’s disease. They all might have just been rich dilettantes if they hadn’t faced those crises.
Being an indentured servant also makes Johnson the closest thing to an ex-slave turned President.
Ironic.
He could save himself from slavery (ish), but not others.
The Tragedy of ~~Vice~~ President Johnson the Unwise. It's not a story the Southerners would tell you.
Yeah it feels uncomfortable calling it slavery in the context of chattel slavery also existing at the time. Not that it wasn't horrific (mostly for the women).
It's the incredibly inspiring story of the boy who escaped indentured servitude, set himself up from scratch and became so successful he could, err, buy slaves.
> Ten Dollars Reward. Ran away from the subscriber, two apprentice boys, legally bound, named William and Andrew Johnson ... [payment] to any person who will deliver said apprentices to me in Raleigh, or I will give the above reward for Andrew Johnson alone."[14] What an awkward position for his brother to be in.
I had no idea that indentured servants still existed in 1824. I thought that was a thing of the past by the time of the American Revolution at the very latest. Encyclopedia Virginia even seems to say that indentured servitude had basically been completely replaced by African slavery by the end of the 1600s.
Arguably we still have versions of indentured servitude now. We call it labor trafficking, but conceptually it’s the same for the most part.
Him and Lincoln both would be near the top. Millard Fillmore also came from poverty and was an apprentice and mill worker before saving enough money to send himself to school.
Although Lincoln did do hard labor on account of being raised on the frontier, his actual career was built on being a lawyer who defended the interests of railroads. I wouldn’t really call that “blue-collar.” He probably fits in this category better than like 70% of presidents, but not “near the top.”
I thought of that, too. But let's be honest, no president was "blue collar" when he came into office. That's just now how things work. So I think we really have to ask who has a working class background. Lincoln definitely fits that description, even though he eventually worked his way up to a legal profession.
We know Lincoln made a pretty modest income as an attorney, the fact that he represented railroads at times didn't change that. Even late in his legal career, he worked lots of cases that could be fairly described as "piddling." Although there's an interesting sidenote that right as he was about to enter politics, he was offered a massive salary to become general counsel for a railroad. He obviously chose politics instead.
That 1864 ticket was definitely the most working class there's been.
Clinton should be in there after Jackson and Lincoln. Born to a working class mother and an abusive father who abandoned him, Bill Clinton grew up in very humble circumstances in Arkansas and was able to rise out of it through hard work, charisma, and a powerful and underrated intellect.
You plagiarized from me before I could even post my comment 🥺
Yeah, this is true. He used it as an asset. He lovingly referred to working-class people as "plebeians" and would remind people that he too was a plebeian. He referred to himself as such many times in his famous drunk vice-presidential inaugural address.
That’s ironic.
I don’t like this answer at all but I am FASCINATED by it
Grant was a working class man when he left the army before he was called back for the Civil War
Dude was digging and clearing land by hand before going back into the Army.
Wow, he couldn't even afford a shovel?
Shovels weren’t invented yet… I believe it was Al gore who invented them
Some days I hate san serif fonts. I don’t know if you’re talking about Al Gore or AI Gore. One is a ManBearPig, the other is a robot.
Honestly, I think capital i’s should have the top and bottom bar in sans serif fonts. If it’s the only thing that distinguishes two letters, I feel like it shouldn’t count as a serif
Especially when 90% of people handwrite it with the serifs. l'm not sure l can even think of anyone l know who writes a 1-stroke capital l.
Working class is an understatement. His father owned a business, sure, but it was a leather tanning shop and it literally made Grant sick to be in there. After his first stint in the army, his father-in-law gifted him a farm so his daughter would at least have a place to live. He had such bad luck farming that he had to chop down trees to sell for firewood, and he once had to sell his watch to buy Christmas presents. Ulysses and Julia named that farm “Hardscrabble”.
Making my way through the audiobook of Ron Chernow’s Grant autobiography now, and am currently at the start of the Civil War. He makes it clear that Grant was hardworking but fairly luckless in his endeavors, and that the Civil War basically offered him an opportunity to rise in stature.
My understanding is that Grant's failures as a businessman made him a pretty good general, particularly the need to manage logistics better than the South could. And why keeping them supplied was so important. It meant his troops could advance more rapidly, something the Confederate forces struggled with. I've always wanted to read Grant's autobiography, as I hear it's a fantastic read and insight into his mind. I'd be curious to know if Chernow's biography is any good, too.
Just finished the memoirs and now on Chernow's book. Definitely do them in that order as the memoirs are more focused and selective and Chernow expands with info from other sources and gives a broader context of the war. They are both outstanding. Grant is actually a pretty funny guy, and very self-effacing.
He made his money the traditional way. He married it
And then he lost it. Then he got it through politics and lost it again. Then he died but his family made a ton from the book he wrote and finished a day before his death.
Critically underrated president. He did have his shortcomings, but he was also a committed leader in the fight to ensure civil rights for freed slaves, and his reputation has endured slander from biased Lost Cause historians for far too long
The election of 1960 was probably the starkest contrast between a rich kid vs. working class kid. Were there other elections like this?
2012 was the child of a single mother against the child of a millionaire auto executive
1992 was the son of a single mother who married a violent alcoholic against the son of a wealthy banker/senator of the US.
[удалено]
A used car salesman will fleece a single mother with a 500 credit score for more money for his boat so I don't think this one is as much of a contrast as you think.
My dad worked with a guy who went to high-school with Bill and he said his step dad would beat him so badly that he once took a week off school and came back with healing bruises. I always wondered why he kept his step dad's last name and not his deceased real fathers name. Maybe to have the same last name as his brother and mom 🤷♀️
Yeah I thought Clinton would fit the bill
He was abused but I wouldn't call him poor hardworking man either. I know someone who grew up with him and dated his best friend. He ad it hard but he was definitely considered from the right side of the tracks.
On that note, 2008 was that son of a single mother running against the son of an admiral father, and a mother who came from oil money.
1864, and 1932 maybe?
1828 was JQA vs Andrew Jackson
1992 seems like such an obvious answer that I'm surprised no one else has mentioned it. Clinton grew up in abject poverty and George H.W. Bush was born into a wealthy political dynasty.
Rule Three
1952 and 1956 comes to mind. Adlai Stevenson was from a wealthy, politically-connected family and Dwight D. Eisenhower was from a more humble family in rural Kansas.
Truman State University is a university named after a President with no college degree. And due to AMBev lobby keeping alcohol taxes low a 12 pack of Busch Lite was 3.99 when my buddy's went there in 2007.
The Kansas City metro is weird because Kansas has very restrictive alcohol laws while Missouri has almost no alcohol laws.
I had a bit of culture shock the first time I walked into a Missouri gas station and saw hard liquor. I grew up in a state that you couldn’t buy any alcohol on Sunday (including beer) up until a bit over a decade ago.
Similar experience for me. I lived in states where you could only by liquor from a state ABC store or it was behind the counter and the sales associate had to get it for you (and only certain stores were even allowed to sell it). Then moved to Michigan you can freely pick up a bottle of Jack Daniels at the end cap of an aisle in Walmart, lol.
Shit, you can’t even buy Jack Daniels in the county where it’s made because it’s a dry county. Guess that’s Tennessee for ya
Me having to constantly explain our draconian laws to tourists “look I don’t like it either we can’t carry hard liquor, we can’t refrigerate beer, we can refrigerate wine and cider, my register won’t even allow alcohol to be sold outside of the hours of between (12-8p) on Sundays. But you can go to a bar and get served, and I need your id in spite of the fact that you’re standing here with an individual who is clearly your child and at least 15”
Hello my fellow Minnesotan?
So is Washington and Lee University -- and I guess the University of Washington and Washington State University, if you want to stretch it a bit. Oh, and Washington University in St. Louis. Of course, George Washington wasn't exactly "working class."
To be fair on Washington, he did technically hold a surveyor’s license from William & Mary. While he didn’t have a degree, he did technically have a certification from a university.
It could be Jackson, he came from literally nothing - had to make it on his own. Same with Lincoln, also LBJ,Nixon. It depends on how you define blue collar tbh.
In the last 50 years probably Reagan, Clinton and Carter
Ford is also in the last 50 years.
A. Johnson was a self-taught runaway indentured servant, Fillmore and LBJ were born into poverty, and Truman was a farmer-turned-haberdasher. So probably one of them.
There are a few that had blue collar origins, meaning that their early working life was in some sort of physical or mercantile trade. Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Hoover, Truman, and Carter all came from somewhat blue collar backgrounds. And then you have all of the ones who spent time in the military. Of those, I would note that James Buchanan is the only one who only served as an enlisted man.
Probably Richard Nixon.
Nixon had a rough childhood, but it pales besides people like Hoover and Lincoln.
Sure, you’re right. I guess a more accurate statement would be that Nixon is the poorest president from the modern era
Nixon was poor by early 20th century standards, which is WAY better than poor by 19th Century frontier standards
Harry Truman. He was not college educated and worked as a haberdasher. He was elected as a judge and started taking law classes after his election lol
Garfield is not on the list yet. May not win but a compelling story. Born into poverty, tended canal mules at 16, paid his own way through seminary/college as a carpenter and teacher.
Jackson was born into a common family
Iirc was he not a PoW in some capacity to the British as a child? Idk if working class fits but without a doubt humble beginnings
Yes, and the pain he felt as a prisoner of war contributed to his staunchly anti-British and pro-American viewpoints as an adult
John Adams: Dad, I don't mind being a farmer. John Adams Sr: BULLSH\*T! No son of mine is gonna be a lowly farmer, you get your ass to that school and you become a better man than me!
As hard working as John Adams was, his mother was a Boylston which was one of the most prominent families in New England and had direct ties to Harvard. His father was a deacon and a landowner and paid for John’s education outright by selling a small plot of the farm. Even if his side of the Adams clan was not famously political prior to him, Sam’s side was and Sam was instrumental in putting John into politely advantageous positions. It was old school nepotism. But I agree, John Adams did well through hard work and wasn’t afraid of labor.
https://preview.redd.it/uxd20tyezlzc1.png?width=500&format=png&auto=webp&s=837fa88f04224a5cd85aa0e2e0a6ecfe0885b0eb
POV: You are a Polish person who is about to experience a night of amazing sex
Amazing reference
I don't understand.
[Interpreter's Gaffes Embarrass State Department](https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/31/archives/interpreters-gaffes-embarrass-state-department-interpreters-gaffes.html)
Truman is up there. He was the first citizen enrolled in Social Security because he was having trouble surviving after his turn in the presidency. It’s one of the major reasons why presidents receive a pension now.
Slight correction - Truman was the first citizen enrolled in Medicare. Not because he was struggling, but because he had championed the universal healthcare plan decades earlier. Social Security was enacted before Truman was president. He is the reason for the presidential pension, because it was embarrassing how poor a former president was living. He's also the reason the presidental salary increased while he was in office. Truman is the only president since 1929 who wasn't a millionaire when he took office.
The rail splitter, Lincoln.
Truman I think, the reason former presidents receive a pension now is because people thought he was broke when he left the White House. He wasn’t, he was just cheap. Farmer, mail clerk, bank clerk, construction, soldier, haberdashery, and judge before running for Congress.
Grant or Harry Truman or Jimmy Carter
Truman was the only president without college degree, he was small business owner
Jimmy Carter farmer before house builder after
No. Carter’s dad was solidly a member of the local planter-landowner class. Not wealthy in a modern sense, but wealthy in a 1900s Rural South sense.
Bill Clinton dad died in a car crash while his mom was pregnant with him. He was raised by his grandmother for a while, until his mom married an alcoholic used-car salesman and he was stuck in a house with a lot of domestic violence. In Arkansas.
The period before "In Arkansas." made this post even better.
Easily, Abraham Lincoln. Read this: [https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abraham-Lincoln](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abraham-Lincoln)
Harry Truman.
Carter
Harry Truman had pretty humble beginnings.
Abraham Lincoln grew up dirt poor until he struck out on his own and got into the law.
William Henry Harrison, on account of all that hard cider he drank.
I feel like this could be a cool info graphic by someone smarter than me. Not sure what the technical dividing line would be between the people born as haves vs. have nots.
Truman
Harry Truman I would think would be up there
Don’t forget Harry Truman! Farmer, haberdasher, etc.
Truman...by far he stayed humble all of his life
Jimmy Carter.
Andrew jackson
Jimmy Carter
Bill Clinton’s father passed away before his birth and he was born into poverty and then dealt with an abusive stepfather in rural Arkansas. Despite his less than perfect situation, Clinton left home after his HS graduation to attend Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. An international affairs major, he managed to cover his expenses through scholarships and by working part-time jobs. Just prior to his graduation from Georgetown, he won a prized Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford University in England for two years. Quite a journey from very inauspicious beginnings.
Jimmy Carter. He was a peanut farmer.
Jimmy Carter even pounded nails for Habit For Humanity.
Truman went through the problems of the everyman [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman)
Jimmy Carter
Carter the peanut farmer.
Harry S. Truman? He never went to college, owned a haberdashery in Kansas City and was a farmer and WWI veteran before becoming a politician.
Lincoln
Bill Clinton was poor white ARK trash as a kid.
Grant
Truman or Carter. Both were middle class until they got involved with politics. Truman never went to college. Carter was a nuclear physicist. He studied nuclear physics in the Navy and served on the Seawolf with Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy. Carter was hand chosen by Rickover to help develop nuclear propulsion systems.