Home : For The People :

The Presidency In Popular Imagination

Basic to the whole phantasmagoria are two roles that Washington has played in the American psyche: first as the father of our country, and second as human equivalent of the American flag. The confusion of the human Washington with the American flag has altered his image in differing ways. When the people are happy with their nation, as they were during most of the nineteenth century, Washington is deified. When, as in contemporary times, people are disillusioned, they enjoy suspecting Washington’s integrity, even to the extent of welcoming with enthusiasm the false charge that as commander in chief he anticipated modern crooked business practice by cheating on his expense account. During this down phase many have sought in Washington’s presumed misdeeds justification for their own bad behavior. Mount Vernon was for years plagued by visitors demanding to be shown the field where Washington grew his marijuana crop. Washington, we are told, was known as “the stallion of the Potomac”; no pure woman could without danger be left alone in his presence. The famous English historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee vented his spleen concerning American disobedience during the Revolution by stating that Washington died because of a chill received while on an illicit visit to an adolescent girl in the slave quarters.

More persistent are the legends that were fabricated and widely disseminated during the nineteenth century, when his prestige was so high that zealots of all political and moral persuasions forged Washington’s endorsement for whatever cause they wished to dignify. The reigning genius in this endeavor was Parson Weems, whose Life of George Washington, an expanded Sunday School tract, went through more than eighty editions. Feeling a need to spice up the fifth edition, Weems invented a morality play about a cherry tree, little George, his hatchet, and his inability to lie. For generations this goody-goody tale darkened Washington’s public image.

One account attributed to a Quaker (who, impious scholars have discovered, was not then at Valley Forge) that he had seen Washington lying on the ground there, tears flowing from his eyes as he called on God, has resulted in a church’s being built on the designated spot. The truth is that Washington, like Franklin and Jefferson, was a deist. He avoided the word God, preferring Providence, which he called sometimes “he,” sometimes “she,” and sometimes “it.” This did not mean that he was not, according to his own lights, a highly religious man.

The evidence presents a very strong presumption that Washington was, although not impotent, sterile: Martha had had four children in quick succession by a previous husband, but she had none by Washington. This has not prevented his being supplied with many descendants. The most famous is Hamilton: his idolaters, who have insisted (incorrectly) that Washington treated their hero as if he were an adopted son, have slipped over into postulating that Hamilton was in fact Washington’s son. In truth, the future President, as a young man, had gone to the West Indies, where Hamilton was born, but at an altogether wrong date to have been the father. A surprising number of individuals in whose genealogy there is a potentially embarrassing gap have by second sight determined that the missing progenitor, the name suppressed for reasons of state, was Washington.

Perhaps the ultimate myth has been confided by two Southern blue-bloods, altogether independently of each other: Martha, the story goes, had revealed to one of their forebears that George Washington was a woman. A probable source for this can be ascertained: during the Revolution the Tory press teased the rebels by printing that Washington had been seen unawares wearing petticoats. Note: The George Washington character has not been featured in a major film, although he has been represented in minor roles in many movies.

On April 7, 1831 President Andrew Jackson accepted the resignation of his Secretary of War, John Eaton. Four days later he did the same with his Secretary of State, Martin Van Buren. By the end of the month all but one of Jackson’s cabinet members had resigned. The reasons behind the purge were a stew of political intrigue and conflicting loyalties, but they all came down to one woman: the Secretary of War’s wife, Margaret O’Neale Eaton.

Peggy O’Neale was devastatingly attractive to men, and she knew it. After growing up as the pet of everyone who stopped at her father’s Washington tavern, she married a feckless Navy purser named Timberlake, whose frequent absences gave her ample opportunity to maintain her skills in coquetry. As her conquests grew in number and status, the explosive mix of disapproval and jealousy that such a woman can inspire in others of her sex mounted in equal measure.

Some analysts, then and now, have suggested that the entire imbroglio was engineered by Van Buren, the Karl Rove of his day. Intentional or not, the mass resignation had the effect of solidifying Van Buren’s position as Jackson’s right-hand man. Old Hickory rewarded Old Kinderhook’s loyalty by choosing him to replace Calhoun as his running mate in the 1832 election. Four years later Van Buren was elected President himself. Note: Andrew Jackson is the third most represented president in movies; Charlton Heston played Jackson twice.

Julia Gardiner was introduced to President John Tyler, the Virginia aristocrat and a recent widower. Although more than twice her age he fell madly in love with her. A tragedy in February, 1844, interrupted their courtship momentarily. She and her father, a New York politician, had been invited, along with numerous dignitaries such as Dolley Madison, Thomas Hart Benton, and the President, aboard the new propeller-driven warship Princeton, built by John Ericsson, the designer of the Monitor in the Civil War. Salutes were being fired from the Peacemaker gun on the forward deck. While Julia and President Tyler were enjoying a glass of champagne belowdecks there was a sudden terrible explosion above: the gun had burst asunder, killing her father and two members of Tyler’s Cabinet, four months later, however, Julia Gardiner and President John Tyler were secretly married in New York. The dour John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary: “Captain Tyler and his bride are the laughing stock of the city.” He was fifty-four, she twenty-four. But President-to-be James Buchanan was envious: “The President is the most lucky man who ever lived. Both a belle and a fortune to crown his Presidential career.”

An earlier Jacqueline Kennedy, she set a style of elegance in the White House, introducing French cooking, dancing, and the playing of “Hail to the Chief when the President entered with his bride on his arm. One historian said she held court like an empress. Involving herself politically as well, she helped Tyler bring Texas into the Union with fervent speeches to senators and their wives. After signing the order of annexation her husband handed her the pen, and she wore it as a charm around her neck the rest of her life. After Tyler’s withdrawal from the election of 1844 they retired to his Virginia estate, where Julia mothered seven children and became a passionate Southerner. Although she never returned to Gardiners Island, her father’s house in East Hampton was used as the summer White House by President Tyler and herself.

Over the decades writers with one ax or another to grind have painted him as a saloonkeeper and a prohibitionist, an unbeliever and a man of God, a racist and the patron saint of civil rights, a peacemaker and the author of total war. He was sometimes shy and awkward in a woman's presence. By the time he reached the Executive Mansion Lincoln had put behind him his youthful delight in satirizing his opponents — but offers plenty of proof that he did sometimes lose his temper as President, usually at politicians who he thought had double-crossed him, soldiers who seemed lacking in energy or courage, or office seekers who would not take no for an answer.

Lincoln’s home life was “unbearable.” But it also suffers from a far too literal reading of the evidence. Surely, when Lincoln pardoned a soldier who had deserted to go home and marry his sweetheart, saying, “I want to punish the young man—probably in less than a year he will wish I had withheld the pardon,” he was joking.

Lincoln was not a political failure before the 1850s; in fact no Whig ever fared better than Lincoln did in his overwhelmingly Democratic state. He believed deeply in the economic and political programs championed by his party: internal improvements, protective tariffs, the convention system for nominations to state offices—issues that have little appeal to modern historians but that meant enough to Lincoln to persuade him to take up politics rather than blacksmithing in 1832. Note: Abraham Lincoln has been represented in more than 150 films, making him the most frequently portrayed president.

On election night 1876 the Democratic presidential candidate, Samuel Tilden of New York, beat the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio in the popular votes — 4,288,546 to 4,034,311 to be exact. But Tilden had only 184 electoral votes for certain, and 185 were needed to win. Hayes definitely had 165. There were 19 out there in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, the final Southern Republican strongholds. In the latter two the state campaigns had been especially dirty and bloody. The Republican incumbents were dutifully proclaiming victory, while the Democrats were insisting that they had won and been cheated in the count. In the three state capitals there were two sets of self-proclaimed “lawful” governors, legislators — and presidential electors.

In addition, one electoral vote from Oregon was disputed on a technicality. If Hayes got that one, plus the other 19, he would have the 185 needed to take the inaugural oath. But which set of electoral votes would actually be counted? And by whom? The Constitution was ambiguous.

In the end a curious, cumbersome compromise was reached. It was engineered by the businessmen of both parties, quintessential conservatives, who did not want the already struggling economy hit with political paralysis or renewed warfare. The votes would be reviewed by a special fifteen-member electoral commission of five representatives (two Republicans, three Democrats), five senators (two Democrats, three Republicans), and five justices of the Supreme Court (two Republicans, two Democrats, and one, Davis, considered to be an independent). Commission decisions would be binding unless rejected by both House and Senate. Note: Rutherford B. Hayes' wife Lucy was the first president's wife to be called "first lady."

Today historians are far from reaching a consensus on President Kennedy, but few would be disposed to rank him so highly. The imagery associated with the name Kennedy, so brightly burnished in 1963, has tarnished; to bring to mind the episodes that caused dismay requires only the evocation of certain code words: Onassis, Chappaquiddick, Judith Exner. Even those who had once been well disposed toward him have had second thoughts.

A sense of disappointment in Kennedy was already a familiar theme in 1963. It had been voiced frequently while Kennedy was alive, by liberals as well as by conservatives. In the years since 1963 some writers have carried this criticism to the point of saying that Kennedy’s place in history has altogether vanished.

Commentators frequently struck this melancholy chord, for Kennedy was perceived to be a man whose career was cut short before he could prove himself. The contention that Kennedy’s Presidency was inconsequential was disputed. Relative to other Presidents, Kennedy operated in inhospitable circumstances. Kennedy’s defenders argued that the President was just beginning to come into his own in his third year in office and that his great period of accomplishment lay just ahead. Note: John F. Kennedy ranks second in film portrayals; the most well-known are PT 109 (1963), Prince Jack (1984), and JFK (1991).

top of page

back a page