"FDR basically had the coolest dog of any president"

[via NationMaster, yeah] On September 23, 1944, Roosevelt gave his famous "Fala speech" while campaigning in the 1944 presidential election. The 39.5 minute speech was delivered at a campaign dinner in Washington, D.C., before the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America. In the speech, Roosevelt attacks Republican opponents in Congress and details their attacks on him. Late in the speech, Roosevelt addressed false Republican charges that he had accidentally left Fala behind on the Aleutian Islands while on tour there and had sent a U.S. Navy destroyer to retrieve him at an exorbitant cost:

"These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. [laughter] Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family doesn't resent attacks — but Fala does resent them. [laughter] You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him — at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or 20 million dollars — his Scotch soul was furious. [laughter] He has not been the same dog since! [laughter] I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself — such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable. But I think I have a right to resent, to object to libelous statements about my dog [laughter]."