History Buff's Guide to the Presidents (63 page)

In their annual messages to Congress, the first presidents frequently used the word
legislature
when addressing the audience. With the invention of the radio and the establishment of universal suffrage, the word became
people
.

The relationship has never been perfect. During his administration, George Washington labored to visit every state in the Union, a slow and arduous endeavor. His aged and aching body cringed against the rutted roads of eighteenth-century America, but he felt compelled to see and be seen by his people. And for his troubles, he was accused of behaving like a monarch checking on his fiefdoms. When he signed the Jay Treaty, averting war with Britain, he was chastised for courting the former enemy. When he dispersed the unlawful Whiskey Rebellion by calling out the militia, he was deemed a tyrant.

The worst came from a fellow revolutionary. In a publicly printed letter, the great agitator Thomas Paine bade Washington a mean farewell in his last year in office, writing, “The world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an imposter, whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any?”

And so it went for the presidents to follow—Adams “the monarchist,” Jefferson “the atheist,” Madison “the puppet of Jefferson,” Monroe “the mediocrity.” In addition to his four years as president, John Quincy Adams served another seventeen in the House of Representatives, for which he was condemned for opposing the annexation of Texas, criticizing slavery, and defending the captives of the
Amistad
.

Andrew Jackson’s ancient body was so wracked with headaches, intestinal disorders, and war wounds that people assumed he would die in office, and quite a few wished he would. His successor, Martin Van Buren, a.k.a. “Van Ruin,” wrestled hopelessly with an economic depression caused by Jackson. He never lost his cheery demeanor, but he was never elected again, despite running in 1840, 1844, and 1848. Comparatively, Van Buren’s successor, William Henry Harrison, suffered far less abuse because he died very early in his first term.

Regrettably, death in office is the only sure path to appreciation. The fate has befallen eight chief executives thus far, four by murder. For those who had the audacity to stay alive during their administration, they were commonly expected to be all things to all people. In addition, they were held responsible, said William Howard Taft, “for all the sins of omission and of commission of society at large.” The paradox was not lost on Lyndon Johnson: “They geld us first, and then expect us to win the Kentucky Derby.”

Alas, after the sedative of time takes effect, a critical public can treat even the least popular presidents with a measure of gratitude and respect. Past mistakes and party animosities are taken in context, and the character of the individual becomes the overriding measure.

If the presidents of the distant past appear so grand in comparison to the more recent versions, it is because so much of the negative has faded, and all that is left to the general observer is the noble aura. These once living, breathing, imperfect beings take on the stoic perfection and marble strength of the very monuments that bear their likeness.

One must take into consideration just how long it took for those stone and metal memorials to emerge. The George Washington Monument, that mighty obelisk of ancient design, which appears as the regal axis upon which the whole national capital turns, was actually started in 1848, nearly fifty years after the death of its namesake. Because of funding problems and construction delays, it was not completed until 1884. A president’s portrait did not appear on a U.S. coin until 1909, when Abraham Lincoln’s profile was affixed to the humble penny. Work on Mount Rushmore did not begin until 1927, nearly 140 years after the creation of the executive branch. People were finally willing to construct these tributes in large part because many of them never knew the presidents as real people, never voted against them, and never had to pay their taxes or fight their wars or weather the constant feuds that invariably danced around their administrations.

The only accurate monuments have been built by the presidents themselves—the laws they signed, the programs they championed, the treaties they forged, the precedents they established, with all their flaws and strengths.

Has the presidency usurped rights and authorities far beyond what the Founding Fathers ever intended? That would depend on which Father was asked. Perhaps none would be more pleased than Alexander Hamilton to see the United States of 2012, with a strong executive leading a commercial giant—a country industrialized, incorporated, and capital rich, with an almost boundless line of credit. To know that his face was on federal currency would only add to his sense of victory. But his mood would dampen considerably to know that the elite no longer have total control over nominations and elections.

Benjamin Franklin would probably divide his wonderment equally between the creation of a space program and the rise of women in the executive branch. Female astronauts would send him into absolute euphoria. Incurably flirtatious, even in his final years, Franklin showered women with attention in part because he recognized their worth when few others could.

As for the recent ascendancy of religion in the White House, no one would be more worried than Thomas Jefferson or more pleased than Patrick Henry. Probably none of them would view a war in the Middle East as a desirable enterprise, least of all Jefferson, who knew the difficulty of fighting Islam during the Barbary Wars.

The proudest of the Fathers might be the men who emerged from the Pennsylvania State House in September 1787, men like James Madison and George Washington, who offered to the struggling country a new Constitution. How would they feel to realize that their experiment lives and nothing has yet stopped it, not assassinations, not scandals, not rebellions, not economic collapse, not global wars? What might they say when learning that the nation’s presidents have been planters, teachers, merchants, lawyers, soldiers, and statesmen, and not one of them became a Caesar, a Cromwell, or a king?

It is impossible to know, but it is fair to guess that these creative and hopeful Founding Fathers would not be entirely disappointed by what they saw. And after a toast of American beer, perhaps brewed in a city they had never heard of—like Madison—they might share a little American wine as well, bottled in a state equally mysterious to them—like Washington. Indeed, they might ask for a map and trace their fingers along the expansive borders and marvel at the immensity of it all. Inevitably, one of them would spot a familiar surname and another and another. Would they laugh and make a game of it, to find all the rivers, lakes, cities, and towns bearing their names? And as Hamilton showed his ten-dollar bill to everyone, might they inquire if more money could be found and jest when they discovered that some faces were more valuable than others? What would the reaction be to realize that these bills and coins number in the trillions and reside on almost every person and exist in every home and business and bank?

After the initial rush of excitement, perhaps one of the more serious members, someone like Washington, would pose the question of whether the presidency and its Constitution would possibly last another 220 years. Being realists, these men would know full well that every nation hoped and believed it was eternal—Sparta, Rome, Byzantium, the Holy Roman Empire, monarchial France. They might calculate that after more than two centuries, the United States was probably into its middle age. As a lone superpower, it might have not yet peaked. Yet most assuredly, it would someday fall, as every domain eventually does.

An astute observer of history, John Adams once wrote of the inevitable fate of great nations: “When they have reached the summit of grandeur, some minute and unsuspected cause commonly affects their ruin, and the empire of the world is transferred to some other place.” Fittingly, he wrote this in 1755, as the subject of the British Empire. Ten years later, an imperial tax on paper would set into motion a great rebellion. Ten years after that, Adams himself would help his friend Jefferson craft the very document that would mark the birth of a new nation.

Until that time, they would hope that their fellow citizens, the heirs of their creation, would labor as passionately and as rigorously as they did to study their history, to improve the present, and to select the best leaders for the future, so that they might continue to form a more perfect union of people and presidents.