History Buff's Guide to the Presidents (10 page)

When given the choice, Americans do not care for gentle souls atop the executive branch. Possibly the nicest presidents were Chester Arthur, William Howard Taft, and Gerald Ford. Of these three, only Taft was elected in his own right, and none of them won a second term.

Consistently, the country has preferred “strong leaders,” individuals who are much like the Prince. Although their personalities vary widely, the most authoritarian presidents shared a few basic traits. Nearly all possessed a temper and were acutely sensitive to criticism. Close friends were almost nonexistent. Oddly, nearly all of them were also bona fide mama’s boys. And all but one were voted into office for a second term. They are ranked here by the intensity of their Machiavellian traits: sense of superiority, preference of force over mercy, level of secrecy, and fixation with their own legacy. They are paired with the act that best illustrates how far they were willing to go to retain power.

1
. FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT

THE JAPANESE INTERNMENTS (1942–45)

He was neither introspective nor terribly sentimental, and he felt no desire or ability to pour his soul out to anyone. Even those who were near him on a daily basis were amazed by his ability to be simultaneously warm and detached. Roosevelt liked to call people by their first name, which put them at ease as well as in their place. He could also be devious. A favorite axiom of his was “Never let your left know what your right hand is doing.”

Soon after Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor (and Hong Kong, Malay, the Philippines, Wake Island, the coast of China, and Guam on the same day), Roosevelt’s left hand of the U.S. Army was telling him to detain everyone of Japanese descent on the West Coast. His right hand of the cabinet, especially Attorney General Francis Biddle, strongly opposed this move, finding no viable threat of espionage or sabotage among the Japanese community, 64 percent of whom were American citizens. Initially the president agreed with Biddle as well as the first lady and J. Edgar Hoover. Regardless of the legal and moral implications, the idea was a logistical nightmare. The country could not spare the money and manpower required to gather, process, and incarcerate possibly two hundred thousand people.
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But growing pressure from the War Department, West Coast newspapers, and much of the white population in California began to weigh upon the pragmatic president. To win the war, he needed the political and industrial support of the West, and he was not about to let the Constitution interfere with wartime needs. On February 19, 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which empowered the War Department “to prescribe military areas…from which any and all persons may be excluded,” namely ethnic Japanese. More than 111,000 would be detained, the majority of whom would remain in rudimentary camps for the duration of the war and lose most of their jobs, homes, and possessions in the process. Curiously, no such detentions were performed in the Hawaiian Islands, where nearly a third of the local population was of Japanese descent.
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In 1942, Japanese and Japanese Americans await shipment of their belongings and transport for themselves to internment camps.
National Archives

Once the order was drawn, FDR did not pay much attention to the plight of the interned. The draconian act, after all, was intended to maintain the obedience of the majority
outside
the camp rather than the minority inside. Still, his overall detachment, bordering on indifference, seemed to prove the caustic remark that writer H. L. Mencken made of him years before: “If [FDR] becomes convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he so sorely needs, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House backyard come Wednesday.”
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The Roosevelt administration briefly considered interning citizens of German descent, until they realized there were sixty million of them.

2
. ANDREW JACKSON

THE NULLIFICATION CRISIS (1832)

While presiding over the Senate, Vice President Thomas Jefferson could not help but notice the agitated senator from Tennessee. The man was six feet tall, weighed only 145 pounds, and had the appearance and personality of a vengeful cadaver. Adding to the effect was his thatch of tombstone-gray hair and a pair of blue-flame eyes leering from their sockets. “His passions are terrible,” Jefferson observed, “he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as often choke with rage.” Jefferson might have been unnerved to learn that Andrew Jackson was at the height of his maturity.
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Tennessee’s first congressman, the first president from west of the Appalachians, the first to use the pocket veto, and the first from the Democratic Party, Old Hickory viewed the world in black and white. To him, people were either dear friends (of which there were a handful) or scheming enemies. He was marvelously charismatic, incurably passionate, and blindly loyal to the lower classes. Women found him alluring.

Yet as president, he treated the nation as he did his many slaves, with paternal kindness, unless they disobeyed. Adversaries came to call him “King Andrew” for his despotic unwillingness to compromise. The trademark inflexibility sometimes backfired, as in the case of the P
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and in his many skirmishes with Congress. When the charter of the Bank of the United States came up for renewal, Jackson adamantly vetoed it, claiming the federal depository helped the rich become richer. It did. The private holding firm also stabilized currency and brought discipline to lending. When the charter died, so did the bank, and the ripple effect devastated the economy for years.

The greatest anger he reserved for the Nullification Crisis of 1832. In the face of exorbitant tariffs (more than 60 percent on some products), cash-poor South Carolina and its fiery native son—Vice President John C. Calhoun—declared the tariff law null and void. Jackson diplomatically dismissed the nullification, arguing that if such a power existed for the states to veto federal laws, no law would ever go into effect. In response, Calhoun resigned from the executive branch and joined the Senate, while his state threatened secession. Jackson volleyed back by promising to raise a massive army, up to two hundred thousand troops if need be, and arrest every leader involved for treason. If Calhoun were found guilty, Jackson vowed he would be hanged. In a letter to political cohort Martin Van Buren, the president admitted, “I expect soon to hear that a civil war has commenced.”
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Such was the rage of Jackson. The president was within hours of ordering a nationwide call for volunteers when South Carolina capitulated. A compromise bill followed, and Speaker of the House James K. Polk announced a much-needed adjournment. While contemplating what might have been, Jackson was satisfied that the clouds had passed, but only temporarily. “The nullifiers in the south intend to blow up a storm…to destroy this union and form a southern confederacy bounded, north, by the Potomac river.” He was right, of course, but fortunately for South Carolina, he would also be dead for fifteen years when it happened.
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As a dig against Jackson’s ruthless stubbornness, political opponents nicknamed him “Andrew Jackass.” The tag stuck, and over time, the image of the kicking donkey became the unofficial symbol of the Democratic Party.

3
. ABRAHAM LINCOLN

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION (1863)

The impression that Lincoln was caring and sensitive is plausible because it is partially true. From an early age he displayed a gentleness blatantly out of place in the unforgiving wilderness of frontier Kentucky and Indiana. Kind to animals, he viewed hunting as barbaric. He wrote poetry. Neighbors recalled that, as a young man, he would brood for hours, and he occasionally became preoccupied with thoughts of death.

Throughout the Civil War, which consumed all but the first five weeks of his presidency, he was no less repulsed by the misery around him. He became prone to nightmares and severe headaches. He lost weight. But during the entirety of the conflict, Lincoln displayed a behavior that can be classified as obsession. Nothing under his presidency, including constitutional law, the federal treasury, and the general welfare of millions, was deemed more important that the maintenance of an ethereal “union.”

Within a week of South Carolina’s firing upon Fort Sumter, Lincoln ordered the assembly and arming of seventy thousand troops, suspended the writ of habeas corpus in Maryland, and issued a naval blockade against the entire southern half of his own country. All of this was done without the consent of Congress, which he did not call into session until July 4, 1861, nearly three months after the shooting had started.

Today, his most acclaimed act is the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1862, it was widely unpopular, manipulative, and opportunistic, but it was a work of Machiavellian brilliance. In his famous public letter to abolitionist Horace Greeley in August 1862, Lincoln confessed his loathing for human slavery, yet he acknowledged it was only a chess piece in his quest for military victory: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps save the Union.”
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He chose to free some—in the areas of rebellion. For others, he continued to suggest colonization elsewhere and contemplated promoting a bill that would free slaves in loyal states by the year 1900.
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The opportunity to unveil his executive decree came after the battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, a marginal Federal victory. On September 22, Lincoln issued a public statement proclaiming that all slaves residing in areas that were still in rebellion as of the New Year “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Though moral, it was not necessarily legal, even as a war powers act.

Yet as an effective weapon, it was unparalleled. With the power of the pen, Lincoln did not immediately free a single person. But he did strike fear and anguish in the South, allowed the federal government to eventually recruit nearly 180,000 free and slave African Americans into the Union armed forces, and eliminated any chance of seeing Britain or France enter the war on the side of the Confederacy. No battle, no general, and no other act of government had cemented his power so far so fast.

In the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln gave each Confederate state the option of keeping slavery within its borders if it surrendered by January 1, 1863.

4
. LYNDON JOHNSON

THE GULF OF TONKIN RESOLUTION (1964)

His constituents called it the “Johnson Treatment,” also known as bullying. From hearty backslaps to little kicks to the shins, paternal advice, and constant invasions of personal space, LBJ knew how to maneuver people into a corner—his corner. Biographer and longtime confidant Doris Kearns Goodwin noted that conversations with him were like unending tests of submissiveness. P
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George Reedy said of him, “He may have been a son of a bitch, but he was a colossal son of a bitch.”
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In August 1964, he was a popular SOB, and he was ready to use his political capital on two targets. The first concern was the approaching November elections. The second was, in his words, “the woman I really loved,” his Great Society, a social-assistance program that was to dwarf the New Deal. Not part of the relationship was Vietnam.
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Then on August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese gunboats fired on two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. The
Maddox
took a single bullet to the topside. Days later, another alleged assault occurred (it was more like a panic attack). An event of no real consequence or relevance, it was still an opportunity for Johnson to make an audacious request to Congress: “to approve and support the determination of the President as Commander in Chief to take all the necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States to prevent further aggression…The United States regards Vietnam as vital to its national interest and to world peace and security in Southeast Asia.” Johnson was asking Congress to violate the Constitution and give him total authority on whether to enter into a war. The House voted unanimously in favor of Johnson. Only two senators voted against the measure, and both of them were Democrats.
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