00:00I think that pets humanize the president.
00:02You see these people, they're on the news,
00:05and most of the time they're in a suit and tie
00:07and they're speaking about these policy details
00:10that we don't quite comprehend
00:11or don't have the same amount of knowledge on,
00:13but then you see them on the White House lawn,
00:15you know, romping around with their dog,
00:17and you feel like, oh, okay, he's a person just like me.
00:20♪♪
00:32John Adams was the first with animals in the White House.
00:36He had a dog named Satan.
00:38Theodore Roosevelt had the most pets.
00:40He had a couple of dozen, but he had snakes.
00:42He had a one-legged rooster.
00:43He had a badger.
00:45Teddy Roosevelt had flying squirrels.
00:46Jefferson had bears for a while
00:49because, you know, at that time,
00:52we had the Louisiana Purchase,
00:53and there were animals out there
00:55that people on the East Coast had never seen.
00:57And so for a little while, he had grizzlies
00:59in a cage on the South Lawn.
01:02Martin Van Buren had tiger cubs,
01:04which he kept in the White House for a brief period of time.
01:07Calvin Coolidge had a raccoon named Rebecca,
01:09and they allowed her to roam around the White House.
01:12She was supposed to be Thanksgiving dinner.
01:15A supporter of Coolidge's in Mississippi
01:18decided, you know, like,
01:19let me send the president some raccoon for Thanksgiving.
01:23And of course, when the Coolidges opened this package
01:25and see there's a live raccoon,
01:26they couldn't imagine like,
01:27okay, let's bludgeon this thing to death and bake it.
01:29So they kept it as a pet,
01:31and they got her a little collar
01:33that said White House raccoon.
01:35♪♪
01:43You know, this tradition does go back.
01:45In fact, James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln
01:47were offered elephants by the King of Siam,
01:50but they were declined because, you know,
01:53Lincoln said that there was,
01:54our climate wasn't suitable for elephants.
01:56Some of it is probably currying diplomatic favor.
01:59One of my favorites actually, though,
02:00is Pushchenko, who was a dog given to the Kennedys
02:04by Nikita Khrushchev.
02:06And the story goes that they're at a summit in Vienna
02:10in June of 1961,
02:12and Khrushchev is sitting next to Jackie Kennedy at dinner,
02:16and he's telling her about these Russian dogs
02:18that they've sent into space,
02:20and they've returned them from orbit safely,
02:22and one of the dogs has recently had puppies.
02:24And she says, oh, well, you must send me
02:26one of these puppies.
02:27You know, just sort of the offhand kind of thing
02:29you say to somebody.
02:30But two weeks later,
02:31this dog shows up at the White House
02:33with a Russian passport,
02:34and they had to bring the FBI over
02:36to search the dog for bugs and explosive devices
02:39and all these things.
02:39But Pushchenko ended up becoming, you know,
02:42part of the Kennedy family
02:43and had puppies with one of Kennedy's dogs.
02:45The fascinating part about this to me
02:47is that I've actually read articles arguing
02:50that Pushchenko is perhaps in part responsible
02:54for Kennedy's decision not to go nuclear
02:58during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
03:00I love the idea that this connection
03:04between these people caused because of a dog
03:06is subconsciously there in the back of Kennedy's mind
03:08as he's working through all of these scenarios
03:10with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and with,
03:13you know, with his cabinet.
03:14So, you know, it's possible that presidential pets have,
03:18you know, have saved all of our lives
03:20or our ancestors' lives anyway.
03:27I do think a lot of politicians, when they get animals,
03:30it says something about them.
03:31Teddy Roosevelt having so many animals
03:33tells us a lot about who he was as a person
03:35in terms of his love of science,
03:37his love of nature,
03:38and wanting to understand how animals worked.
03:41This little girl in Kansas was like,
03:43hey, Mr. President, do you want a badger?
03:45And most of us would say no, but not Teddy.
03:48Teddy loved animals.
03:49He was a naturalist or thought of himself as a naturalist.
03:52So he took this badger back and they built a little habitat.
03:55And I think the pets kind of play
04:13into that same sort of relatability argument.
04:16Whether that's the best way to choose a president,
04:19I'm not sure,
04:20but it is definitely something that people take into account.
04:24As these folks were campaigning in the primary,
04:26they realized, hey, there's as much interest in my dogs
04:29as there is in me.
04:30I mean, people were taking selfies
04:32with Elizabeth Warren's dogs at her campaign events.
04:35Because when you look at the dogs,
04:37regardless of how you feel
04:38about a person's political ideology,
04:41we can all look at a dog or a cat
04:42and we can say, oh, that's cute.
04:44And it's a way of drawing people in.
04:46Mike Pence having, you know, the rabbit Marlon Bundo,
04:49who has an Instagram account.
04:51I think that softens Mike Pence's, you know,
04:53kind of harder edges as well.
05:03Someone tried to offer President Trump
05:05a golden doodle named Patton.
05:07He declined that because he doesn't like dogs.
05:09We get a lot of comments on our Facebook page
05:11whenever I say that Trump doesn't have any animals.
05:13We get a lot of people who are angry,
05:14like animals wouldn't like him, good for the animals.
05:17So whether or not that's actually based
05:20on any kind of factual assumption
05:21or whether it's just, you know,
05:24this sort of thing that's baked into our culture
05:27that animals only like good people,
05:30you know, people do make these extrapolations.
05:33They do make judgments based on this kind of thing.
05:36♪♪
05:51Major is the first shelter dog
05:52who's going to live at the White House.
05:54And that kind of reflects modern conceptions
05:57of ethical pet ownership and, you know,
06:01the safeguards we need to have for animals.
06:04There's been this push over the last several decades
06:07to adopt your animals rather than purchase them.
Comments