People interested in pursuing a career in politics are often, not always but often, extroverted, gregarious, good with people, and happiest in a crowd. That doesn’t mean, however, that they’re necessarily any good with animals, even if a family dog might endear them to voters.
The Daily Caller has pulled a section of President Obama’s memoir that reveals that as a child in Indonesia, the president ate dog meat. While this might seem like a unique problem, he’s hardly the first politician to have a scandal involving an animal. From Rick Perry’s coyote legend to Rebekah Brooks’ infamous horse photos, see other politicians’ animal problems.
Mitt Romney will never live down the story of how he transported his family dog atop the car during a road trip. It’s been used against him by everyone from animal-rights groups to President Obama’s reelection campaign. The Daily Caller is here to remind the public that the president didn’t always treat dogs as nicely as he does his pet Bo. A passage from Obama’s book Dreams From My Father, reveals that as a child growing up in Indonesia, young Barack Obama ate dog meat. “Say what you want about Romney, but at least he only put a dog on the roof of his car, not the roof of his mouth,” writes the DC.
The phone-hacking scandal surrounding Rupert Murdoch’s U. K. newspapers took on an unexpectedly equine aspect this week. The papers there have been in hot pursuit of what’s become known as “Horsegate,” a minor controversy over whether or not British Prime Minister David Cameron rode a horse lent to former top News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks by Scotland Yard. Cameron and Brooks have had a close relationship in years past, but now with the Murdoch insider up on charges, Cameron’s tried to keep an arm’s length. At first said he’d never saddled the horse, which has since passed on to greener pastures. Finally, at a press conference Friday, Cameron admitted to riding the horse one time in 2010 before he became prime minister, and said he was saddened to hear of the horse’s demise.
Corbis; Getty Images
President Jimmy Carter was enjoying a placid day of fishing in April 1979 with no idea what dangers lurked below his boat. The president was surprised to see a rabbit swimming through the water toward him, and splashed it away with one of the boat’s paddles. After the incident was relayed to staffers by his press secretary, Jody Powell, the story found its way to Associated Press reporter Brooks Jackson. Seizing on an incident that has given political cartoonists decades of fodder, the Washington Post splashed the AP report on its front page with the headline “President Attacked by Rabbit.” Thirty-five years later, Carter cleared things up.
Politics is a blood sport, but it was entirely by accident that Dick Cheney nearly bagged the most dangerous game. The vice president’s trigger finger got him in trouble in February 2006 when, out for a weekend of quail hunting on a friend’s ranch, he accidentally peppered a friend with birdshot. The man Cheney shot, a 78-year-old donor to both of President Bush’s campaigns named Harry Whittington, had to be taken to a hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas, where the longtime Texas Republican lay in intensive care. Katharine Armstrong, owner of the ranch where Cheney was hunting, said the man had come up on Cheney unexpectedly, and was about 30 yards away when the vice president opened fire.
David Bohrer, Reuters / Landov
In 2004 the vice president made himself and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia the subjects of countless late-night one-liners when the two hunkered down in a duck blind together a mere three weeks after the Supreme Court took up a case involving the vice president’s management of a White House energy task force. The two were old pals and hunting companions, and Scalia refused to consider whether he should recuse himself from the case, saying, “I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned.”
One wily coyote’s odds weren’t good when it met a road-running, pistol-packing Rick Perry one early Texas morning. Though some details of the story have been questioned, here’s how Perry tells it. He was enjoying an early jog in April 2010 with his Labrador retriever and his .380 Ruger. When a coyote came toward him and threatened the family hound, Perry, who said he was packing heat out of fear of snakes, fired a hollow-point round at the varmint, unflinchingly vanquishing it to the great beyond. “Don’t attack my dog, or you might get shot,” Perry advised would-be dog snatchers and feral creatures of all kinds.
Getty Images; Landov
Mitt Romney is many things: father, Mormon, politician, Bain Capital cofounder, former Massachusetts governor, Republican contender, dog owner, road tripper. By one of the strange twists that shapes the opinions of the American electorate, these last two have done almost as much as any of the others to shape the opinion of the American electorate as Romney pursues the Republican nomination. On a family trip to Canada, Romney strapped Seamus, the family Irish setter, to the station wagon roof in a carrier. Somewhere in the course of the 12-hour drive, one of the Romney boys noticed something brown sliding down one of the car’s windows. Romney pulled over into a gas station, hosed down the car, put Seamus back in the crate, and continued on down the road. The scatological tale has refused to die. According to the Boston Globe, New York Times’ columnist Gail Collins has made mention of Seamus in a grand total of 30 columns since the story was first reported.
Spencer Platt / Getty Images
Mark the date—Oct. 24, 1877—as perhaps the last time Congress did something sensible. When a fever for a horse race outside Baltimore swept the Capitol, senators and representatives alike decided to call it a day and go to the races. “When an old Georgian told me that ‘the boys’ were going to adjourn to go to the race I laughed at him, and he challenged me to a duel,” an old-timer recounted to The New York Times in 1905. “There was a right smart lot of sporting blood in Congress then, and a majority of the members would rather have gone to a good horse race any day than stay in Washington and jibber-jabber about tariff and all those other political things.” Ah, the days when politics made sense.
Brendan Hoffman
Socks was adopted by Chelsea Clinton while her father was governor of Arkansas, and the white-pawed cat became something of a mascot for the first family when they resided in the White House. The cat began to show symptoms of first-child syndrome, though, when Bill and Hillary introduced a dog, Buddy, to the mix. When the Clintons left the White House in 2001, they gave Socks to Betty Currie, who had served as the president’s secretary. Though some said the Clintons had tossed Socks aside, they expressed their affection for the animal in a press release after it died in 2009, saying, “Socks brought much happiness to Chelsea and us over the years, and enjoyment to kids and cat lovers everywhere.”
AP Photo
In 1951 Ronald Reagan starred alongside Diana Lynn and a chimpanzee in Bedtime for Bonzo. Reagan, who was cast in the lead role after Cary Grant turned it down, plays Prof. Peter Boyd, a psychologist who attempts to use the science of the mind to show that nurture can prevail over nature. These days, the film is mostly remembered for the material it provided political opponents and comedians when Reagan began to pursue a political career.
Everett Collection
The majestic creature, cousin to the deer and kingly resident of northern deciduous forests, became part of a political punch line during the 2008 election cycle when Sarah Palin revealed her taste for moose meat. She was doing nothing her fellow Alaskans wouldn’t, however, by confessing to a love of moose stew and moose burgers. Palin, who reportedly also butchered moose as child, was defended by residents of the state who said that moose was a local delicacy.
Newscom
The former Alaska governor didn’t improve her profile with environmentalists in 2008 when, on a phone call with someone who she thought was Nicolas Sarkozy, Palin went along when two Canadian prank callers extolled the virtues of hunting, saying, “I just love killing those animals. Take away a life, that is so fun.” It’s one of many instances pointed to that supposedly illustrate that Palin routinely violates animal life. In 2010 a hullabaloo resulted when a video surfaced that showed Palin clubbing a halibut on a fishing expedition, even though that’s how halibut are routinely killed by Alaskan fishermen.
AP Photo; Getty Images
If only it were this easy to brush aside pesky Obamacare critics. President Obama got attention for the way he dealt with a fly that was buzzing around during a 2009 interview. When the fly proved a persistent distraction, Obama stopped the interview, tracked the fly, and, when it landed on his hand, slapped it dead. But animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was not pleased, and termed the swatting an “execution.”
