Race to the Bottom: Great Moments in the History of Leaders Talking About Asses

I looked at his ass. And then I looked at his legs. I said, “His ass—shit, it’s like a pile of muscle.”

During the long Russian winters, Joseph Stalin would gather colleagues at his dacha, in the birch forest outside Moscow. After dinner, they would sit by a fire, and, if Stalin’s mood was right, they would play a drinking game called Who Has the Best Bum in Moscow? The game consisted of each player going around and talking about who they thought had the shapeliest bottom in the Politburo. Stalin would indicate the winner by declaring, “Where did that guy go to school—the University of Perfectly Formed Buttocks?” He would then laugh, and his colleagues would laugh along and applaud. If they didn’t applaud appropriately, they were shot.

On the train from Washington to Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln made notes on his upcoming speech. Across from him sat his right-hand man and Secretary of State, William Seward. At one point, Lincoln dropped his pencil. Seward stood and then bent over to fetch it. Though Seward was sixty-one at the time, Lincoln noted, “My God, Bill. I could rest a pitcher of iced tea on that ass. What a marvellous, muscular bubble it is.” Seward thanked the President. Lincoln then looked out the train window and asked, “What’s another way to say eighty-seven years?”

On June 20, 1972, President Richard Nixon met in the Oval Office with his then chief of staff, H. R. (Bob) Haldeman. Like many conversations in Nixon’s Oval Office, this one was recorded. More than eighteen minutes were lost, but Nixon’s personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, kept notes:

NIXON: Do you ever urinate outdoors, Bob?