The Private Lives Of The American Presidents

It is not the careful restraint of the language of the American Constitution of 1787 but the constant drumbeat of occurring and recurring daily crises that has made the office of the President so important and why once again men are racing from state to state in quest of the office. It was not planned so, two centuries ago, nor intended. Power, it was assumed, would stay where it then belonged: with local squires, plantation owners, men of vast domains or men who wielded money, who might on occasion visit the federal capital, wherever it was, to confer, and to fix things when they were required. All men, they held, or at least proclaimed, are 'created equal' -- though their history has gone to prove how untrue that adage is. And that history has, willingly or not, been that of the men who, in leading the nation, have reached a greatness peculiarly their own. The founding fathers did not want there to be a king, or even a primus inter pares, even if it was to be one of themselves. Recurrent crises altered that , and then the press and now obtrusive and intrusive television cameras, with world-wide audiences, altered it even more so.

The office, and whoever occupies it, has grown by what it fed on, and keeps on growing. Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of mountain tops, chose four who were immortal to crown his monument on Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. But those who named the mountain range in the White Mountains of New Hampshire were simple men -- and more accurate: they chose their heroes in straightforward chronological fashion: Mount Washington, 6288 feet, Mount Adams, 5798 feet, Mount Jefferson, 5715 feet and so on. For each occupant of the White House, whatever his varied talents, has been in his lifetime the most important man in the country, who often holds for all his contemporaries the power of life and death, of prosperity or depression, of joy or tragedy. And he has always been a subject for gossip, rumour and speculation -- even in the beginning.

Of the Presidents, the Scotch-Irish (Jackson, Polk, Arthur, McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, and Nixon) have almost outnumbered those of English stock, not to mention the Scots (Monroe, Buchanan and Hayes) and the Irish (Kennedy, Reagan and Clinton). This English, Scottish and Irish control continues as can be seen in the names of the present contenders: Bush, Gore, McCain, Forbes and Bradley. Yet it remains true that, though the office of President was modelled on the personality, dignity and restraint of George Washington himself, the holder of the office was intended to be only a chairman or chief magistrate, which at the beginning was to be his title.

It was the zest and skill of Washington's lieutenant and Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, that provided 'the executive energy' -- as he called it -- to the first administration. Ever since, if the President himself does not provide that executive energy, he must find it elsewhere, or find it in one of his lieutenants. Moreover, and particularly after Andrew Jackson's popularising of the office, and the activities of his newspaper-owning brains trust, the President is the man for whom all the people can, if they wish, vote (and in today's world watch and listen to), who symbolizes and speaks for what is, essentially, a new form of government: a despot elected by acclamation. The President is the first citizen of the republic, and he is chosen -- via primaries, radio and television challenges, debates, caucuses and conventions -- by the most unique, complex and long-drawn-out process of selection and election ever devised by man. It was not so planned in 1787, but again it grew as the years passe d and grew by what it fed on. It is an office of opportunity, of risk and of tragedy. Only four (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy) of the 41 have been assassinated, but attempts were made to kill Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. Before the recent investigation into Clinton's life-style, only one had been impeached, Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's successor, but the Senate acquitted him on 16 May 1868 by a vote of 35 to 19, one vote less than the necessary two-thirds. He was in any case the victim of a political vendetta in the years of turmoil at the end of the Civil War. One other (Richard Nixon) resigned because he feared impeachment, and he was the victim of a vendetta too: the press and the media had never liked him.

The man in the White House today speaks not only for the US but for the free world. And the peace of many trouble spots is kept by discussions under his leadership, not only in the White House but in pow-wows in Camp David, Dayton, Ohio, Bosnia, Serbia, Belfast and Londonderry.

Yet, however unforeseen, the growth of what Arthur Schlesinger Jr. has called 'the Imperial Presidency' has been the striking feature of this century. It has been as much a result of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal agencies, concentrating on Washington decision-making, job creation and 'boon doggling', as of the US's role as a world power. Whatever the restraints Congress has sought to impose on the freedom of manoeuvre of 'That Man in the White House' -- most obviously in the 'War Powers Resolution of 1973 passed over President Nixon's veto, and the Intelligence Oversight Act of 1980-- even the Constitution cites as one of the president's functions that of 'Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the US and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the US.' This enabled President Eisenhower in 1957 to despatch Federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, when Governor Faubus delayed school integration, and President Kennedy to federalise the National Guard in Alabama on the s ame issue. And it could be added that the Louisiana Purchase, and the acquisition both of Texas and of Alaska, were executive not legislative acts.