History Buff's Guide to the Presidents (54 page)

Because of his own transgressions, Joe Sr. knew he could never win the White House, but he assumed he could make his dashing and charismatic eldest son the first-ever Catholic president. Rather than surrender his vicarious dream when Joseph Jr. died, Joe Sr. simply turned to the next in line, who until then had no inclination to enter public service.

Ascendancy through the House of Representatives and the Senate brought Jack marginal notoriety, mostly for his relative youth and powerful surname. Despite a lackluster record (in fourteen years, his name never appeared in a major piece of legislation that passed), he still managed to appear on the cover of a 1957 issue of
Time
. Other favorable articles appeared in major papers, television reports,
Look
, and elsewhere, in no small part because of Joe’s many connections and generous gifts to the media. Candidate Jack entered only seven presidential primaries, but he won them all.
⁴⁸

The 1960 Democratic Convention was almost anticlimactic, “pre-arranged” said a disappointed Harry Truman. Eleanor Roosevelt, an Adlai Stevenson supporter, alluded that the front-runner Kennedy was “second best.” Senator Lyndon Johnson fumed that he had no chance for the nomination. In turn, he verbally attacked the Kennedy wealth and made references to Joe Sr.’s sordid past, especially concerning appeasement and McCarthyism.
⁴⁹

For once, tragedy actually helped the Kennedy family. During Jack’s first year in office, a week before Christmas, Joe Kennedy went from a political lightning rod to a beacon of sympathy when he suffered a massive stroke. Mute and confined to a wheelchair, he would never again be a target for his many detractors. The president would last see his dad in October 1963, at the sprawling Kennedy estate at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Before leaving, Jack turned to look at his father, and he said to an aide, “He’s the one who made all this possible.”
⁵⁰

Joseph P. Kennedy outlived four of his nine children.

8
. BILLY CARTER (1937–88)

BROTHER OF JIMMY CARTER

Any family tree can bear strange fruit. Jimmy Carter’s lineage contained a great-great-grandfather who had been acquitted of murder, a great-grandfather and grandfather who were killed in violent altercations, and a nephew arrested and sentenced for armed robbery while on drugs.
⁵¹

Jimmy’s younger brother was among the less conventional members of the family. A former marine who had attended college, Billy was far more intelligent and hardworking than his inane persona and well-documented drinking problem led people to believe, but he was not particularly close to his brother. Most of the Carters were relatively distant to each other. But this lack of contact led Billy to engage in behavior that was, in a word, peculiar.

In 1978, Billy began traveling to Libya. He also hosted Libyan dignitaries in the States. In July 1980, one month before the Democratic National Convention, the Justice Department discovered why. The younger Carter was working as a lobbyist for the Libyan government, and he failed to notify Washington—a violation of the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act. In addition, he had received a number of payments from Tripoli, totaling a hefty $220,000.
⁵²

A Senate subcommittee investigated whether the White House was connected with Billy’s activities and whether he was influencing U.S. foreign policy. After nine weeks of gathering testimonies, documents, and depositions, the subcommittee found no evidence of legal wrongdoing, but it did criticize the Carters for their general lack of discretion.

The episode was one more nail in the administration’s coffin, and it all but ensured a landslide defeat in the November election. Reduced to a pitiable figure in politics and pop culture, William Alton Carter would live just eight more years, succumbing to cancer in 1988.

Often bragging about his ability to consume large quantities of draft, Billy Carter agreed to endorse Billy Beer in 1977. Though millions of cans were produced, sales were very poor, and the seventy-year-old company that made the brew was forced into bankruptcy.

9
. PATRICIA “PATTI DAVIS” REAGAN (1952–)

DAUGHTER OF RONALD REAGAN

Patti Davis did not invent teen angst, nor did her parents invent posturing, but both parties were extremely adept at their chosen craft. The resulting battles were particularly intense and well publicized, ending only when a crippling disease began to claim her father.

Ronald Reagan had been married to Nancy Davis only seven months when their daughter Patricia was born. His third child and her first, little Patti developed into an intelligent but strong-willed youth. She fought with her mother often, and on occasion the confrontations became physical. Her father rarely intervened, due to his innate aversion to confrontation.
⁵³

During the sixties, as Reagan’s star rose among West Coast conservatives, Patti dropped out of school, experimented with drugs, protested the Vietnam War, and followed her parents’ footsteps into the entertainment industry. She also dropped her father’s surname in favor of her mother’s.

When Reagan won the 1980 E
LECTION
in a landslide, Patti became a highly visible critic of his pro-life stance and nuclear weapons program. She also remained distant and removed from the entire family, with the exception of her younger brother Ron Jr., a Democrat, AIDS research advocate, and, at the time, contributing editor to
Playboy
. The two of them certainly loved their parents, but they were paramount examples that the Reagan-era mantra of “family values” was more rhetoric than substance.

The feud lasted until her aging father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1994. Davis gradually reconciled with the Reagans, especially her father, and in his last years she transformed from adversary to confidant. As a final paradox to their troubled relationship, she became closest to him when the disease robbed him of all memory of her.

In 1994, Patti Davis published an adult thriller entitled
Bondage
. The following year, after her father’s diagnosis, she wrote
Angels Don’t Die: My Father’s Gift of Faith.

10
. ROGER CLINTON JR. (1956–)

HALF BROTHER OF BILL CLINTON

In a classic case study of nature versus nurture, his half-brother led the free world while he pursued a career in the entertainment business, heading a rock band appropriately called
Politics
and acting in such cinematic gems as
National Lampoon’s Scuba School
and
Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings
(as Mayor Bubba).

Roger Clinton Jr. did not enjoy a pleasant childhood, enduring mental and physical abuse from an alcoholic father. The older and much taller Bill tried to protect him as much as possible, but they were only four and fourteen years old when the worst of the beatings transpired.
⁵⁴

Their mother finally left Roger Sr. in 1962, but it was clear that only one of the boys would be able to psychologically distance himself from the past. In 1984, while Bill served as governor of Arkansas, Roger served time in the federal penal system, convicted on a charge of cocaine possession and sentenced to a year in prison. Oddly, his arrest came from a sting operation initiated by Bill’s administration.

After the 1992 election, Roger Jr. provided the public with a marginally bemusing sidebar to his more charismatic relative. Undereducated, uncouth, and eager for attention, he diluted the credibility of the already precarious Clinton image. But aside from the occasional appearance in a television sitcom, musical gig, or comedy club, he generally succeeded in avoiding trouble.

Strangely enough, Roger became the topic of scandal on the last day of the presidency when his half-brother decided to create a problem where one did not exist. Among the 140 names in Bill Clinton’s controversial list of eleventh-hour pardons, including convicted tax evaders, perjurers, and drug dealers, Clinton added his half-brother Roger, who had already paid his debt to society fifteen years before.

One month after Bill Clinton left office, Roger Clinton was arrested for driving while under the influence of alcohol. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.

The mansion resembles the presidency—initially grand, then overrun with obligations, and now heavily insulated from the general public. Creating the building was very much George Washington’s brainchild, though he would be the only president never to reside in it. While he served out his second term, residing on High Street in Philadelphia, work began on the Federal City 150 miles to the southwest.

Chosen primarily for its central location along the eastern seaboard, the District of Columbia did not rest on ideal land. Carved from the marshlands of Maryland’s soft underbelly, its hundred square miles were susceptible to oppressively humid summers, wet windswept winters, and annual visitations from bloodsucking mosquitoes.

The Executive Mansion was the first government structure built in the city. Up to the Civil War, it was the largest family home in the country, and over time, it continued to grow. Today it is a sprawling estate of several buildings on eighteen acres. The main residence alone consists of 132 rooms with 35 bathrooms and possesses over 55,000 square feet of floor space (an area larger than a football field). Despite its many changes, two facets remain the same. Most of the outer wall is original, and despite its ever-increasing security network, the house provides only a marginal amount of privacy for its inhabitants. Ronald Reagan equated it with “living over the store.”
⁵⁵

Following, in chronological order, are the greatest changes to the complex that now houses the first family. Known by many names over the years—the President’s House, the President’s Palace, the President’s Mansion—it is better known by a less exclusive title, popularized by the first Roosevelt and made official by the second: the White House.

1
. CONSTRUCTION (1791–1800)

Democratically inclined figures such as Thomas Jefferson were hoping for a more modest capital city, along the lines of Williamsburg. Washington refused. A greater statement was in order, something like Rome with open spaces. To accomplish his vision, he hired his military engineer from the Revolution, Pierre L’Enfant.

Aiming for a palace on par with the great monarchies of Europe, L’Enfant initially planned to build a White House nearly five times larger than its eventual size. Washington reminded him that the young government did not have the means for such an enthusiastic enterprise. When the engineering artiste persisted, Washington fired him.
⁵⁶

Taking the reins was Irish-born James Hoban, who submitted and won a design competition for a scaled-down model. Hoban’s vision was just taking shape when Washington retired in 1797. By late 1800, President John Adams and wife Abigail were able to move in, with four months left in his presidency. The experience was, at best, unpleasant. The plaster walls were still wet and would not cure for weeks, requiring the few functioning fireplaces to burn warm all day, every day. Few rooms were complete. The first lady had to dry laundry in the barren East Room.

Comparatively, the building was further along than most of the city of three thousand residents. One wing of the Capitol was partially done. Roads were little more than cart paths, meandering over hills and traversing bogs. The great mall (which would not be created until the twentieth century) was a patchwork of common fields, policed by grazing cows. The ragged, muddy, frontier vista inspired Mrs. Adams to call it “the very dirtiest hole I ever saw.” Still, the city and the house were very much like the rest of the nation, sitting restlessly along the Atlantic, ready to grow up and outward.
⁵⁷