Which U.S. President Would I Get Along With The Most?

Somewhere in the last two and a half centuries, there was a president who would have absolutely split a pitcher with you. The trick is figuring out which one before you accidentally spend an evening trying to make small talk with a man who considered "brooding on horseback" a personality.

This is a question worth taking seriously, or at least seriously enough to answer ten questions about your Friday nights. Because the founding fathers and their many descendants were not a monolith. Some of them wanted to reform the entire banking system. Some of them wanted to go home and pet a large dog. One of them got stuck in a bathtub, allegedly, and honestly that man probably knew how to relax.

The quiz asks about the important things. How the group project situation is going. Whether rules are guidelines, suggestions, or a personal insult. What you'd do with a free hour, which is a more revealing question than it has any right to be. There's a question about your worst flaw, and it requests honesty, which nobody has ever once provided on a quiz. Answer it anyway. The presidents have seen worse.

Maybe you're a Teddy Roosevelt type, all boundless energy and questionable animal encounters. Maybe you're a quiet Coolidge, saying three words a day and meaning all of them. Maybe, and there's no shame in this, you're a Nixon and you just haven't come to terms with it yet.

The point is that leadership styles range from "wrote the Declaration of Independence" to "named a president's horse after a whiskey," and each one attracts a specific kind of drinking buddy. The beer is metaphorical. The compatibility is not.

Ten questions. One historical figure who would genuinely enjoy your company at a bar. It's the closest thing to time travel that doesn't require federal funding. Go find your guy.