Imperfect Presidents: Tales of Presidential Misadventure and Triumph

IMPERFECT PRESIDENTS

OTHER BOOKS BY JIM CULLEN

The Civil War in Popular Culture: A Reusable Past

The Art of Democracy:

A Concise History of Popular Culture in the United States

Born in the U.S.A.:

Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition

Popular Culture in American History (editor)

Restless in the Promised Land:

Catholics and the American Dream

The American Dream:

A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation

The Civil War Era (editor, with Lyde Cullen Sizer)

The Fieldston Guide to American History for Cynical Beginners

IMPERFECT PRESIDENTS

Tales of

Misadventure and Triumph

JIM CULLEN

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

This one is for Lyde.

The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

—Henry David Thoreau,

Slavery in Massachusetts, 1854

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Foreword: The President We Want

Prologue: General Washington Fumbles His Glasses

In which we see a winter soldier demonstrate the

limits of power, the power of limits, and a new

kind of leadership for a new kind of nation

Chapter One: Vice President-Elect Jefferson Stabs a Friend in the Back

In which we see a hypocritical ideologue

apprehend the value of pragmatism

Chapter Two: Former President Adams Can't Stop Gagging

In which we see that a privileged upbringing

need not handicap a (very) senior citizen

Chapter Three: Representative Lincoln Smears a Preacher

In which we see an ambitious politico achieve the

moral—and spiritual—clarity of a great emancipator

Chapter Four: Gentleman Boss Arthur Bites the Hand that Feeds Him

In which we see a political hack discover

the virtues of good governance

Chapter Five: Dude T.R. Enters the Arena

In which we see an imperial democrat

reveal that impatience can be a virtue

Chapter Six: F.D.R. Courts Disaster

In which we see a handicapped man learn he must not

be a bully if he wants to save the world from despotism

Chapter Seven: Landslide Lyndon Takes a Position

In which we see an amoral opportunist

commit an act of courage

Chapter Eight: Vice President Ford Stumbles at the Gate

In which we see a naïve man pardon a crook—

and heal a nation

Chapter Nine: The Gipper Loses One

In which we see a saber-rattler break some rules,

get caught, and go on to win an important contest—

in good faith

Chapter Ten: Slick Willie Slips and Falls

In which we see an offensive player

master a defensive strategy

Epilogue: President Bush Fumbles an Invasion

In which we see why this book was written

Afterword: The President We Need

Notes

Source Notes

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Alice Martell: My first words of thanks. Every writer has the fantasy of the unexpected benefactor, a highly credible figure who emerges from the mists and tells you you're good (as good as you sometimes believe you are, better than the fraud you know yourself to be). More than that: This person actually makes things happen, things you could never do for yourself. Alice swept into my life in the spring of 2005, made me presentable, shopped me around, sold my work, checked up on me periodically to see how I was doing, forgave my missteps, and—given some of my previous experience with agents, I still can't quite get over this—returned my phone calls. The word that describes my dazed gratitude is marvel. I don't really deserve such treatment. The Puritans called it irresistible grace. The Lord works in mysterious ways, and I'm here to tell you that one of those ways is Alice.

She didn't do it alone. Another agent of my good fortune is my editor, Alessandra Bastagli. This was not supposed to be a book on the presidency. Actually, it began as a website on flawed but admirable Americans called American History for Cynical Beginners.* But Alessandra had the vision and the skill to help me focus it into a more svelte narrative form, and much of any merit this project has is attributable to her. I'd also like to thank other members of the Palgrave team: copyeditor Rick Delaney, who read the manuscript with skill and care; associate production editor Yasmin Mathew, who shepherded me through the production process,

* You can see it for yourself: www.ecfs.org/projects/jcullen

and Letra Libre, who designed the book. Special thanks as well to marketing manager Amy Tiedemann, Lauren Dwyer, and the editorial director of Palgrave, Airié Stuart.

Since coming to the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in 2001, I have benefited from the company and counsel of a cherished array of students and colleagues, some of whom allowed me to run road tests of this material by them. I am also thankful to the librarians of the Tate Library at Fieldston—Nelie Locher, Mandy Colgan, and Carol Oreskovic—who chased down leads, ordered books, and provided the kind of cheerful competence that is the special province of their breed. The Venture Grant board at ECFS provided crucial seeding in funding the website, and Associate Head of School Beth Beckmann channeled some institutional largesse in my direction as well. I am grateful to these people as well as to the head of the school, Joe Healey, for their administrative support and goodwill.

This book was wedged into an everyday life that I think could be legitimately regarded as busy. My four children accepted their father's distraction without entirely understanding it. My wife, to whom this book is dedicated, tolerated her husband's distraction despite understanding it all too well. It is a strange conceit to think that anything one might say to a stranger could be as valuable as that which one does with a loved one. I have indulged what sometimes seemed like a literal itch to write by scratching a metaphorical pen. I hope none of us—and that includes you, dear reader—are worse for it.

—Jim Cullen

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York

November, 2006

IMPERFECT PRESIDENTS

FOREWORD

THE PRESIDENT WE WANT

For most of us, for most of the time, it doesn't really matter who the President of the United States is. We get up in the morning, go to school or work, see our friends and families, balance our checkbooks (or try to, anyway), eat our meals, sleep in our beds. We have our passions, our struggles, our aspirations. And every once in a while, we may stop to realize that the very fact of it not mattering is part of what makes us lucky to be Americans. It's one of the forms our freedom takes: the freedom not to care.

Even for most of the people who work for the federal government, it doesn't matter who the President of the United States is. Members of the U.S. Congress and Supreme Court have responsibilities and concerns completely separate from those of the executive branch, as do state and local government officers. Moreover, a vast army of appointed officials watch politicians come and go, their own work largely invisible—and stubbornly resistant to change—no matter who happens to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Yet however irrelevant he may be—and we have been invariably talking about a he so far—the President of the United States is also an inescapable presence in our daily lives. Whether we want to or not, we see him in the morning when we watch TV, surf the web, or open a newspaper, and we hear about him over dinner or in the employee lounge. We're told endless details about his friends, his family, his foibles, and we hear jokes about him. Every four years we have a presidential election, and long before most of us would care to think about it, we're bombarded with ads, and with armchair speculating and strategizing over scenarios that never come to pass.

Presidents also sometimes become a kind of social shorthand for measuring and characterizing a time. The Age of Eisenhower, for example, conjures up a series of time-specific images: new suburban homes and highways; television shows like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and I Love Lucy; highballs and martinis; men in gray flannel suits and women in poodle skirts; and so on. Of course that very moment was also one of anxieties over juvenile delinquency, the emergence of the Civil Rights movement, and a problem with no name that launched the modern feminist movement—all of which were largely tangential to the Eisenhower administration. And yet the very significance, even intensity, of these latter phenomena were defined against a mainstream that Eisenhower—the twice-elected, highly popular, and reassuringly conventional president—represented.

Indeed, the perceived personality of a president is almost always more important than specific policies he advocates. True, most chief executives are representatives of political parties that seek to advance a general political philosophy (one usually related, in one form or another, to a belief in the proper scope of the federal government). But the reception of specific decisions a president makes are usually filtered through a more durable, and usually decisive, lens of personality. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's popularity was not directly correlated with his policies—it could not have been, because his actions in office directly contradicted promises he made (like balancing the federal budget during the 1932 presidential campaign, or keeping the United States out of World War II in 1940) without any negative impact on his political effectiveness. Instead, it is generally agreed, it was Roosevelt's indomitable spirit of optimism that voters responded to, a mood he projected that proved far more important than logically curious assertions (like we have nothing to fear but fear itself) or policies that were in fact deeply unpopular (like trying to pack the Supreme Court with pliable appointees). Insofar as specific actions matter—like those of Richard Nixon between the Watergate break-in of June 1972 and his resignation a little over two years later—it's because such actions lead Americans to revise their overall perception of a president's character. Nixon felt compelled to say I am not a crook in 1973 precisely because that's what most Americans concluded he was, even before all the corroborating evidence was in.

The correlation between a president's character and the situations in which he finds himself can be complicated to untangle. Andrew Jackson seemed to place his imprint on his era by sheer force of personality; Jimmy Carter seemed buffeted by events beyond his control—and was viewed as ineffectual for precisely this reason. Though presidents are in office for a tiny fraction of their lives, it's that fraction that permanently defines their public personae, even when they had substantial lives before entering and after leaving office.

The two parts of that equation—the numerator of holding office and denominator that marks the rest of a president's life—form the key quotient of a presidential character. Typically those two pieces point toward a whole; voters pretty much knew what they were getting when they elected Calvin Coolidge president in 1924 (a terse, minimalist leadership style, epitomized by the way he broke a police strike as the governor of Massachusetts), and he pretty much fulfilled those expectations in the Oval Office. Occasionally, there was a big divergence. Ulysses S. Grant saved the Union as a decisive military leader during the Civil War, but in his eight years as president between 1869 and 1877 he passively condoned widespread corruption and marred his stellar reputation. The element of unpredictability is what makes presidential politics both intriguing and frustrating.

All presidents make mistakes. They're human. We all know that, and yet many of us have trouble fully accepting this truth. In part, that's a function of the presidency itself, which fuses the head of the government and the head of the state into a single person. The British feel free to jeer at the prime minister right to his face in the House of Commons; jeering at the Queen is another matter. From the moment he is elected, the president is endowed with an otherworldly aura, even by friends on a first-name basis who now refer to him as Mr. President. And from the moment he is elected he becomes fodder for late-night comedians, and begins the inevitable process of disappointing at least some of the people all of the time. Meanwhile, there are those who think of politics as a four-letter word; election to the presidency is in itself proof that a candidate has cut a deal with the devil. No president has been immune from such carping and suspicion.

There is much to be gained from an attempt to see presidents whole, to appreciate their strengths as well as their weaknesses—and, perhaps more importantly, to appreciate those strengths in light of their weaknesses. Given the sheer scope of the challenges involved in becoming president, it is safe to say that anyone who has ever held the job exhibits traits that would be worth emulating. And given the fallibility of human beings generally, and the kinds of vices to which a president is particularly susceptible, it also seems reasonable that every president offers a cautionary tale. The lessons these people afford are illuminating in the context of American politics, to be sure. But in embodying tendencies of Americans in a particular time and place, they open a window on the American character generally—who we are, who we're not, and who we may yet be.

The stories that comprise this book all begin the same way: A man in a moment of weakness or confusion, acting in ways few of us would regard as appropriate. John Quincy Adams refusing to attend his successor's inauguration. Theodore Roosevelt making an absurdly pretentious entrance into the New York State Assembly. Gerald Ford attending a meeting of questionable propriety about Richard Nixon. Far from random miscalculation, however, the actions of these people reflect important aspects of their characters—they represent a kind of honesty. Moreover, the same character traits that get them into trouble are also manifestations of an inner strength that ultimately serves the country well. So, for example, Chester Alan Arthur violated a cardinal rule of politics by forsaking loyalty to his cronies, but when he unexpectedly landed in the White House he realized he had a higher loyalty to the American people. It is also true, however, that the presidential triumph in each of these cases has sometimes come from a decision (typically temporary) to consciously act against type. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, was able to consummate the most successful act of his presidency only by actively resisting powerful philosophical inclinations. At other times, success is simultaneously an affirmation and a refutation of a particular trait. Ronald Reagan's behavior toward the Soviet Union in his second term was both a reversal of his career-long hostility to that nation as well as the fulfillment of an overriding desire—one that had gotten him into some serious trouble—to bring the Cold War to a decisive close.

Some of the figures examined here are widely considered great, like Lincoln and the two Roosevelts. Others, like Arthur and Adams, are obscure to most Americans today. Still others, like Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton, remain deeply controversial. Five of the subjects here are Republicans, three are Democrats, and two were president before the advent of the modern party system. Many of the misadventures described here take place before the man in question became president, followed by a particular success in office. But sometimes both halves of the story occur in the White House, and in one case (Adams) both occur afterward. Even old men make foolish mistakes—and transcend them.

The core conviction animating this book is a belief that, like choosing a spouse, choosing the president we want is an affair of the heart no less than one of the head. To understand your president, however imperfectly, is, however imperfectly, to understand yourself.

(previous page) TIME OF TRIAL: The Prayer at Valley Forge, painted by H. Brueckner; engraved by John C. McRae, 1866. Most portraits of Washington depict him with Olympian detachment. But there were crucial moments in the Revolution—Valley Forge was one; the Newburgh Conspiracy was another—where the cause was in doubt and Washington's leadership in question. (Presidential Portraits, Library of Congress)

CHAPTER ONE

VICE PRESIDENT–ELECT JEFFERSON STABS A FRIEND IN THE BACK

In which we see a hypocritical ideologue apprehend the value of pragmatism

Sometime during the month of January 1797, Thomas Jefferson made a fateful decision that would betray a friendship and destabilize a nation. Elected Vice President of the United States the previous November, he secretly resolved to decline an invitation to collaborate closely in the new government of President John Adams. Instead, he would keep his distance and quietly aid the opposition. The Adams administration would in effect be doomed before it got underway. Even worse, Jefferson's decision would mean that the nation's first foreign policy crisis would spill over into domestic politics, rocking the country to its foundations.

The chief reason for Jefferson's decision to betray his friend was ideological. Adams, part of the so-called Federalist faction in the new political regime, favored a stronger central government and a foreign policy aligned with England. Jefferson, who belonged to the so-called Democratic-Republican faction, favored stronger state governments and a foreign policy aligned with France. Amid the tumult of the French Revolution, which careened between anarchy and authoritarianism, U.S.-French relations, so crucial to the success of the American Revolution, had deteriorated to the point where the two nations were at virtual war. President-elect Adams thought he could heal the breach, at home and abroad, by sending Jefferson—who had once been U.S. ambassador to France—to negotiate with the Revolutionary government. Even if Jefferson himself could not go, perhaps one of his allies, like Congressman James Madison, could. Adams would no doubt be excoriated by his Anglophile allies for such a move, but it was a risk he was willing to take—a bold act of solidarity in a fragile country that could ill afford internal squabbling.

Jefferson's first instinct was to accept the offer, discreetly extended through mutual friends.¹ Jefferson had known Adams for almost a quarter century; they had met in Philadelphia during the Second Continental Congress in 1775, collaborated on the Declaration of Independence the following year, and served together as diplomats in Europe during and after the American Revolution. In the years that followed they had drifted apart politically,² yet remained friendly amid increasingly obvious philosophical differences and their respective unhappiness with their roles in the Washington administration—Adams as vice president and Jefferson as secretary of state. (Jefferson, disgusted with Washington's bias toward Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, left the nation's capitol in Philadelphia for his Virginia estate, Monticello, after the first term.) When Washington stepped down after his second term, Adams and Jefferson were widely considered the leading candidates from their respective factions to run for president. Adams won and became president, and as per the recently ratified Constitution, Jefferson, who came in second, became vice president.³

Not that Jefferson himself minded the outcome. In December 1796, Madison wrote Jefferson that since Adams was the likely winner, you must prepare yourself therefore to be summoned to the place Mr. Adams now fills. Jefferson wrote back on New Year's Day of 1797 to say that was just fine with him: I am his junior in life [Jefferson was nine years younger than Adams], was his junior in Congress, his junior in the diplomatic line, his junior lately in our civil government. Besides, as he had noted in a December 27 letter to his South Carolinian friend Edward Rutledge, this is certainly not the time to covet the helm. Given the difficulty any man would face in filling Washington's shoes, and the severity of the nation's foreign policy challenges, Jefferson was shrewd as well as gracious.⁴

The very next day, Jefferson went a step further, writing a warm letter to Adams himself, expressing satisfaction with the pending outcome. No one then will congratulate you with purer disinterestedness than myself, he told his longtime collaborator. Indeed, he expressed relief. The share indeed which I may have had in the late vote, I shall still value highly, as an evidence of the share I have in the esteem of my fellow citizens. . . . [But] I have no desire to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office. Jefferson went on to express the hope that Adams would be able to steer the nation away from a looming war with France. "If you are, the glory will be all your own; and that your administration may be filled with glory and happiness to yourself and advantage to