One imagines that the mind of the president is constantly occupied by the fate of the free world. This probably explains, for instance, why George W. Bush could barely read. Lyndon B. Johnson, though, was not your average president, for various reasons, but quite prominently that he was very concerned about the state of his penis.

Vanity Fair today points out an excerpt from a forthcoming history of the White House called The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House by Kate Anderson Brower. The section of the book about Johnson includes an anecdote about the presidential shower. According to Brower, it was very important that a newly installed jet stream be blasting water directly at Johnson's dick.

When told that it would be inconvenient to have a jet installed into the shower simply so that water could constantly shoot directly onto his cock, Johnson reportedly invoked the Vietnam War:

The 36th president of the United States reportedly refused to accept staff arguments that outfitting the shower with the demanded features—including one nozzle aimed "directly at the president's penis"—would require a great deal of plumbing work. "If I can move 10,000 troops in a day, you can certainly fix the bathroom any way I want it," Johnson told the staff, according to the book.

On the one hand, Johnson wasn't technically moving 10,000 troops per day, physically speaking. He was basically just making a bunch of phone calls and playing with toy soldiers on a huge desk or whatever goes on during war. On the other hand, it would be unbecoming of the president to not have a clean dick. Sometimes you must put your country first.

Of course, this is far from the first we've heard about LBJ's dick. Years ago, audio surfaced of Johnson demanding that a tailor alter his pants so that they could accommodate his balls, which droop down near, in Johnson's words, his "bunghole."

Johnson was also notorious for involving his dick in the daily lives of his colleagues, whether they liked it or not (and they might have, who's to say):

From an excerpt of Robert Caro's biography, via the New York Review of Books:

He early became fabled for a Rabelaisian earthiness, urinating in the parking lot of the House Office Building as the urge took him; if a colleague came into a Capitol bathroom as he was finishing at the urinal there, he would sometimes swing around still holding his member, which he liked to call "Jumbo," hooting once, "Have you ever seen anything as big as this?," and shaking it in almost a brandishing manner as he began discoursing about some pending legislation.

[...]

Even on the floors of the House and Senate, he would extravagantly rummage away at his groin, sometimes reaching his hand through a pocket and leaning with half-lifted leg for more thorough access.

R.I.P. to a great man and an even better dick.

[image via Getty]