Over the years, much has been made of the fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton, if elected, would be the first woman president in U.S. history. But Ms. Clinton would not be the only presidential precedent-setter. Each of the candidates now running for our highest office would be the first of his or her kind, in one way or another. What follows is all true:
Ted Cruz would be the first U.S. president born in Canada named Rafael. He would also be the first person to have hundreds of ships named for him before he was president.
Donald Trump would be the first U.S. president to have married three times. However, he would only be the second president whose last name, upon crossing out the T, becomes a euphemism for buttocks. (The first? William Taft.)
Jeb Bush would be the first U.S. president to break the Curse of Howdy, which deems that anyone born during the television reign of the marionette Howdy Doody (December 27, 1947 to September 24, 1960) cannot be taken seriously enough to be elected president. (Mr. Bush was born on February 11, 1953.) Hillary Clinton, born two months before Howdy’s TV debut, would not break the Curse if she were elected. Barack Obama was born the year after Howdy retired, avoiding the Curse.
Ben Carson would be the first U.S. president to have served as a Fox News contributor, which many view as a stronger credential than his neurosurgery career. Mr. Carson would also be the most ironically-elected U.S. president ever, given his party’s efforts to suppress African-American voting.
Rand Paul, as befits his small-government credo, would be the first U.S. president with fewer than nine letters in his first and last name, edging out John Adams, John Tyler and James Polk by one letter. However, if Mr. Paul were to go by his given name Randal, his election would be unremarkable. Recent polls for Mr. Paul (2.4%) seem to confirm this.
Christopher (Chris) Christie would be the first U.S. president to have not one but two references to Christ in his name, whereas Mike Huckabee would have to settle for being the first U.S. president whose name contains a reference to Samantha Bee. Sorry, Mike.
Cara Carleton (Carly) Fiorina would be the first U.S. president to have not one but two references to cars in her name, breaking the previous record of one (Gerald Ford). She would also be the first to have put 30,000 people out of work and then successfully market it as one of her political credentials.
Rick Santorum would be the first U.S. president to have sponsored a bill (signed into law in 2006) making it unlawful to possess tissue or cells from a human fetus “gestated in the uterus of a nonhuman animal.” If this law had existed in the 1990s, most episodes of The X-Files would have been illegal.
Martin O’Malley would be the first U.S. president born in Washington, D.C., perhaps within an umbilical-cord-length of the White House. What’s more, Mr. O’Malley would be the first to have any kind of punctuation in his name.
Bernie Sanders would be the first U.S. president to take office at the age of 75 or older. (Ronald Reagan was nearly 78 at the end of his run.) Mr. Sanders would also be the first self-identified socialist president but not — at least according to Ted Cruz — the first socialist to occupy the office.
John Kasich would not be the first U.S. president named John (there have been four), nor the first president whose last name starts with K (Kennedy) or ends in H (Bush). Mr. Kasich would not be the first president born in Pennsylvania (Buchanan). He would not be the first to have been a Roman Catholic altar boy (Kennedy again!) or to have twin daughters (Bush again!) or to have served as Governor of Ohio (Hayes and McKinley). And Mr. Kasich would be not be the first millionaire president, but he would be the first (hurrah!) to have been an executive for a Wall Street investment bank (Lehman Brothers). I knew I would come up with something.
Marco Antonio Rubio would be the first Cuban-American U.S. president and the only one whose name can be anagramatically rearranged to Our Ironic Not-Obama.
Your next Supreme Court Justice
Mr. President, I just heard there is an opening on the U.S. Supreme Court. I have a great idea. Why not save yourself a lot of trouble and just nominate me? I would be an excellent pick, for a variety of reasons:
• First, I look good in black.
• I have a lot of opinions. That’s important.
• I have no record of legal decisions that can be used against me in a confirmation fight.
• That speeding ticket I got on the Washington, D.C. beltway? Come on, that was almost twenty years ago. But it gave me a personal, lasting sensitivity to injustice in America.
• I would give the court some much-needed diversity: the atheist viewpoint.
• I don’t like large groups. Dealing with eight other people would be about right for me.
• I learned from watching Judge Judy that if it doesn’t make sense, it probably isn’t true.
• I once read a book on the Federalist Papers, and another one about the Constitution, and I thought they were interesting. So I don’t think I would fall asleep at the bench, much.
• I could be friends with Ruth Bader Ginsburg too, if she doesn’t ask me to go to the opera.
• Making $240,000 a year for the rest of my life, with July, August and September off, sounds good to me.
• Most importantly, I know how the Court works. My clerks will do the grunt work. I will just say to them, this is what I think, now go find me some legal rationale for it.
Mr. President, I await your — and our nation’s — call. But please, call before happy hour.