Who weighed more, Abraham Lincoln or George Washington?  Or guess this:  Barak Obama or George Bush.  

The if 1960 election were decided on weight rather than votes, would it have been John Kennedy or Richard Nixon?  

John Adams was known as “His Rotundity,” but did he outweigh Bill Clinton, known for his jogging, but also for ordering up a Big Mac while out running?  

Who was the heaviest president?  The lightest?  If Jimmy Carter sat on a teetertotter across from Andrew Jackson, who would be looking down on whom?  

Where would Donald Trump line up if we put all 45 men who have held the office in a row, starting with the heaviest?  

The cumulative weight of all our presidents is a little over four tons, 8,045 pounds, to be exact. That would make our average president 178 pounds.  Based on that figure, Joe Biden is the only average president we have ever had.  

Many consider Lincoln our top president, even over Washington.  If you want to settle the question by weight, Lincoln takes the Father of our Country by 5 pounds, 180-175.  

As for Kennedy vs. Nixon, it would have been another squeaker, but Nixon would have won that one, 175-173.  

John Adams was ridiculed for being portly, but he checked in at only 150 pounds; only four presidents weighed less:  Calvin Coolidge (148), Franklin Pierce (144), Andrew Jackson (140), and James Madison, our lightest president, (100).  Jackson had such a fierce and onery personality that I figured him for at least another 50 pounds.  But by all accounts he was tall and sickly thin.  James Madison was also our shortest president at 5’4”.  

Bill Clinton would have been a better choice than John Adams for the title “His Rotundity” as his 223 pounds puts him fifth in line for presidential weight.   With just one more Big Mac, Clinton might have passed up number four, Chester Arthur, who topped the scales at 224. And by now you’ve been able to deduce that Jimmy Carter (160) would be looking up at Andrew Jackson if they shared a seesaw.

This brings us to Donald Trump, who’s official White House weight was 236, which would have put him third in line, still a hundred pounds or so shy of number one, William Howard Taft.  Nobody really believes that Trump was only 236, but I also can’t believe he would lie about something that would only leave him in third place: Given his predilection for being the best, he might have told us he was only 99 pounds (to beat James Madison) or 341 pounds (to best Taft by sixteen ounces.)  

In other non-fake news, the senior Bush (H.W.) beat out his son by 5 pounds, 196-191, and Grandpa Harrison (William Henry) beat out his short grandson (Benjamin) by 162-160.  But the two extra pounds didn’t help grandpa survive a virus he caught from the White House water supply, as he only lived a month after being inaugurated.  

Barak Obama is in good company, as he and Abraham Lincoln weighed the same (180.)  But Lincoln was skinnier and he had to stretch his pounds over a 6’4” frame, while Obama packed it all into 6’1”.  

Speaking of height, while Lincoln was our tallest president, Lyndon Johnson (who was said to weigh 200, another iffy statistic) was our second tallest at 6’3 1/2”.  Trump claims to be 6’3”, but photos of him standing next to others who are known to be 6-3 show Trump to be shorter. Maybe he had his shoes off.  More likely, however, he is past the age where we all start to shrink.  (I went to the doctor a couple years ago for a checkup, and when the nurse asked me for my height, I told her 5-9.  She looked at me askance and said, “Let’s check that.”  To my dismay, I’ve shrunk to 5-7.)   I don’t think Trump intentionally lied about his height, after all if he was going to stretch the truth, he'd only need to give himself another inch and a half and he would have proudly been our tallest president ever.  I just think the White House doctor never bothered to measure him.  (That would be Dr. Ronny Jackson, who said that Trump was so fit he would live to be 200, if only he’d lose a few pounds.) 

Nearly everyone knows that our heaviest president was William Howard Taft, who hauled 340 pounds around on his frame while in the White House.  His first Thanksgiving Day in the White House (1909) featured a 52-pound turkey. Taft was so concerned about his weight that he linked up with a doctor to give him advice.  The plan?  Portion control.  But still Taft reported feeling hungry all the time.  

As for exercise, he was the first president to take up golf.  And this was back in the days before you could ride around the course in a motorized cart.  Taft walked the whole 18 holes.  You can see a video of him golfing if you click here.  

Taft was stronger and more fit than he looked. He was known to take long hikes, one time trekking a four-mile, 3442-foot descent in Yosemite National Park with John Muir.  (The rest of the presidential party went on horseback, but Taft decided to hike because he was advised that it might be too hard on the horse.)  Although he was the first president to ride in an automobile, he normally rode horseback (just not up and down mountain trails.)  A famous telegraph exchange between Taft and Elihu Root (Secretary of War) started with Taft telling the Secretary that he just finished a 25-mile ride on horseback, and he felt fine.  Root cabled back, “How is the horse?”  

Taft was the first president to throw out the ceremonial first pitch of the 1910 baseball season, a tradition that has continued since.  The story that Taft once got stuck in the White House bathtub is a lie. To the contrary, he always arranged to have extra-large bathtubs installed wherever he went, including the White House.  The rumor, however, flourishes in a culture that delights in ridiculing the obese. 

If Taft was a healthy-hefty, our second heaviest president-- not so much.  Grover Cleveland weighed 260 pounds, was a workaholic, and looked unhealthy and flabby to those who spent time with him.  He worked so much, in fact, and was such a stickler about everything, that he was still a bachelor when entering the White House.  But evidently there was more to Grover than the public noticed, for during his first term he married the stunningly lovely Francis Folsom, 22 years old.  Cleveland was 24 years her senior.

He was not the only president to marry someone much younger.  John Tyler (160 pounds) lost his first wife shortly after he became president and married Julia Gardiner, 30 years his junior, before his term was up.  

The third longest age differential between a sitting president and his wife belongs to Donald and Melania.  Yes, Mr. Trump is once again in third place:  third in weight, third in height, and third in having a young wife.  This is not a man who settles for the bronze medal. I suspect the subconscious reason he may be running for president once again is because he hates being third.  He said so himself, "I hate losing." In his quest for the gold, over the living and dead, I say we give him one more chance. Any takers?