Richard Shenkman - Presidential Ambition: Gaining Power At Any Cost

T he thing that the presidents have needed most to succeed was luckplain, ordinary, dumb luck.

The luck of birth to have been born white, male, and Protestant; to have been born rich or socially advantaged; to have been born or raised in a state vital to the success of their party.

And the luck of history to have simply been one of those fortunate few who happen to find themselves in the right place at the right time. Men like William Henry Harrison, a superannuated veteran of the War of 1812, who won the Whig nomination in 1840 simply because the Whigs were in need of a war hero and war heroes were in short supply

But luck doesnt explain all. While one had to be lucky, lucky in so many many ways, sometimes ghoulishly lucky as both Fillmore and Arthur were, one also had to be something besides lucky: ambitious, ferociously ambitious.

Because of what journalism has become in the last generation as a result of Vietnam and Watergate and the kinds of questions journalists now askpenetrating questions about power and the abuse of powerwe are well informed about the ambitions of the presidents in our time and the steps they took in the pursuit of their ambitions. But we remain on the whole ignorant of the ambitions of previous presidents. This has led to the widely held inference that they must have lacked ambition, that they were fundamentally different from our presidents. It is as if they stand on one side of an imaginary line in the past and our presidents on the other. On their side, from the time of Dwight Eisenhower back, are all the presidents who were normal human beings, some great, some not, but basically normal: men who were driven but not too driven, men who worked hard to succeed, but not too hard, and not at any cost. On the other side, our side, from John Kennedy forward, are all the abnormal human beings who became president, none great, who seem to have been insanely driven. So driven they were willing to do almost anything to succeed.

There is in actuality no clear line dividing the presidents into the ambitious and the unambitious, no clear line dividing our times from previous times. The line is in our minds, dividing us from our own history. And it is the result of inadvertent ignorance. Because our knowledge of past presidents is thinthin in comparison with our knowledge of presidents todaywe have fallen for the myth that presidents today are somehow morally inferior to presidents in the past, which in turn has bred a discouraging disillusionment. The little secret of American history is that they were all ambitious, all powerfully driven to advance themselves, their parties, and their social agendas. It isnt the moral

Ambitious as they all were, however, they were not simply men of ambition and nothing but. They were more than that. They could not help but be more. Among their immediate forebears and mentors were people of extraordinary idealism.

Between the time of Washington and Lincoln there were sixteen presidents. Each of them had either a mother or a father (or both) who was deeply religious, deeply moral. Both John Adams and John Quincy Adams had grandparents who were ministers. Jacksons mother hoped he would become a minister. Polks mother was the great-grandniece of John Knox, the founder of Scottish Presbyterianism. Most of the presidents either selflessly volunteered to serve in the Revolution or had a parent or grandparent who had.

Between the Civil War and World War II fifteen men served as president of the United States. Each of them also had at least one extremely religious parent or mentor. Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, and Woodrow Wilson were the children of ministers. Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, William McKinley, and Wilson were raised to be ministers. Teddy Roosevelts father devoted most of his adult life to philanthropy. Franklin Roosevelts favorite teacher in prep school preached the gospel of service.

Since World War II nearly every president has been deeply influenced by an idealist. Truman and Eisenhower had deeply religious mothers. Johnsons father was a wild-eyed, impractical populist. Nixons father was a socialist, his mother a devout Quaker. Carters mother devoted herself to selfless causes; as an old woman she joined the Peace Corps. Reagans father was a relentless foe of bigotry; when an innkeeper bragged about never letting in Jews, Jack Reagan stormed off and slept the night in his car.

But as they grew older, the presidents came to the conclusion that idealism alone was insufficient. Some, indeed, came to hold it almost in contempt. For idealism by itself couldnt get a single building built or save a single life. To make things happen one had to have power. To be able to control things one had to have power. To be somebody one had to have power. So they devoted themselves to the obtaining of power.

Preparing to marry, they made every effort to marry into power.

George Washington, out searching for a wife, married the richest woman in Virginia. James Buchanan went after the daughter of one of the richest men in the United States. Abraham Lincoln married one of Springfields few aristocrats. James Garfield married the daughter of the founder of the college where he was a teacher. William McKinley married the daughter of the local newspaper publisher. William Howard Taft married the daughter of the richest banker in town. Franklin Roosevelt married Teddy Roosevelts niece. John Kennedy married a beautiful aristocrat. Lyndon Johnson courted the daughters of three of the richest men in his part of Texas.

In fact most presidents married upor married someone who could do their career some good. Not one president married beneath him. If, like Warren Harding and Franklin Roosevelt, a president happened to fall in love with someone who was beneath him, the woman was kept on the side as a mistress.

Coming of age, nearly all tried to obtain power fast. In a nation of young men in a hurry, they often seemed to have been the young men in the greatest hurry of all.

George Washington became a major in the Virginia militia at age twenty-one. And he and Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe became colonial legislators by the time they were twenty-five. Monroe was a U.S. senator at thirty-two and an international diplomat at thirty-six. John Quincy Adams was a diplomat at twenty-seven. Andrew Jackson was a lawyer at twenty, a congressman at twenty-seven, and a U.S. senator at thirty. Martin Van Buren was a lawyer at twenty-one and a state legislator at thirty. William Henry Harrison was a delegate to Congress at twenty-six and a territorial governor at twenty-seven. John Tyler ran for the state legislature at twenty-one, Franklin Pierce at twenty-five, James Buchanan and Abe Lincoln at twenty-three, and Andrew Johnson at twenty-seven.

James Garfield was the president of a college at twenty-six. Teddy Roosevelt ran for the state legislature at twenty-four and for mayor of New York City at twenty-eight. William Howard Taft was a judge at thirty. Warren Harding was the editor and publisher of his own newspaper at nineteen. Herbert Hoover was a self-made millionaire by age thirty. Franklin Roosevelt was a state senator at twenty-eight, an assistant secretary of the navy at thirty-one, and the vice presidential candidate of the Democratic Party at thirty-eight. John Kennedys first book was published just after he graduated from college, and he was a congressman by thirty and a senator by thirty-six. Lyndon Johnson was the director of the National Youth Administration in Texas at twenty-seven and a congressman at twenty-nine. Richard Nixon was a senator at thirty-seven and vice president of the United States at thirty-nine. Bill Clinton ran for Congress at twenty-eight and was elected state attorney general at thirty-one and governor at thirty-two.