How much of your salary do you spend on beer? Or maybe whiskey or wine? Apparently a lot, if you were the nation's first president. George Washington's annual salary was $25,000 when he took office in 1789. Controlling for inflation, as calculated by MeasuringWorth.com's online conversion tool, that would be worth $630,278 today. (As a comparison, Barack Obama's salary is only $400,000, though he also has an expense account of $50,000, a nontaxable travel allocation of $100,000, and $19,000 for entertainment.) According to Cormac O'Brien's
Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents, Washington spent seven percent of his salary on alcohol, and "he even splurged on such luxuries as leopard-skin robes for his stable of matched horses." Let's see...in today's dollars, that means Washington spent $44,119 a year on alcohol. This shouldn't be a huge surprise, because Washington was one of colonial America's top whiskey producers. (Pictured is George Washington's life mask, cast by French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon in 1785.)
With David Souter retiring, President Obama has his first opportunity to make a mark on the U.S. Supreme Court. But the nomination process can be a minefield of potential stumbles and mistakes. If history is an indicator, Obama shouldn't have too much of a problem, especially because of the large Democratic majority in the Senate. Most nominees are confirmed. But some presidents have had more difficulty than others. The all-time loser is John Tyler, with a whopping eight failures: four of his nominations were withdrawn, one rejected, and three others died in the U.S. Senate due to lack of formal action. (Several of Tyler's nominations were of the same candidates.) Behind Tyler are Grant and Fillmore with three failures, then Washington, Madison, Polk, Cleveland, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, and Reagan with two each. The most recent Senate rejection was Reagan's choice of Robert Bork (pictured) in 1987. The latest nominee withdrawal was George W. Bush's selection of Harriet Miers.
