American History Revised (54 page)

Being president of the United States was not one of them. His gravestone reads, “Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia.” No presidential library for this fellow; compared with today’s presidents, who save every scrap of paper for posterity, Jefferson’s modesty is alluring.

Equally modest about the presidency was John Quincy Adams. Two years after losing reelection in 1828, he returned to the House of Representatives, where he served his finest years of public service until his death in 1848. “No election or appointment conferred upon me,” he said about his return to the Hill, “ever gave me so much pleasure.” And just think, this came from a man who had been not only president, but, prior to that, a brilliant and much-acclaimed secretary of state (then the second-most-powerful position in America). Also extremely modest and down-to-earth was Harry Truman, who, when asked what was the first thing he would do upon arriving home after leaving the White House, responded, “Take the suitcases up to the attic.”

Most studies of presidential leadership focus on the issue of “power.” In a less bureaucratic era, several of our presidents were quite subtle and indirect, using a “feminine” form of control as opposed to a “masculine” one—as when Abraham Lincoln admitted, “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess that events have controlled me.” Lyndon Johnson’s sudden decision not to seek reelection in 1968 shocked the nation, but it should have come as no surprise to the student of history. Even our one president above reproach, George Washington, may have bailed out in time. “The President,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, “is fortunate to get off just as the bubble is bursting, leaving others to hold the bag.” Sure enough, when his own time came, Jefferson saw the handwriting on the wall and declined to run in 1796. Let John Adams take the heat, he figured; he would wait until 1800 and win at that time—which he did. Our most bellicose president, Mr. Bully Pulpit himself, Theodore Roosevelt, declined to run in 1908 for a second elected term: “It would be better to have some man like Taft or Root succeed me in the Presidency than to have me succeed myself … they would be free from the animosities and suspicions which I had encountered, and would be able to make a new start and would have a much greater chance of achieving useful work.”

Politicians get elected to the presidency, but once elected they must become statesmen. Suggests one historian, “A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation.” For another definition of this important distinction, consider the description of William
Lowndes, the leading candidate for the 1824 election (before his premature death): “There was a singleness in his character and a chastity in his intentions which politicians find cumbersome but which statesmen will venerate for all future time.”

Or Abraham Lincoln. In the midst of the Civil War; a delegation of Methodist ministers called on the White House to assure the beleaguered president that the Union cause would prevail because God was on their side. But Lincoln was a wise man and knew what to say. “Gentlemen, it is not a question of whether God is on our side. It is a question of whether we are on his side.”

The issue is not one of God or religion, but morality in general. Observed Harry Truman, “I wonder how far Moses would have gone if he’d taken a poll on Egypt? What would Jesus Christ have preached if he’d taken a poll in Israel? … It isn’t polls or public opinion of the moment that counts. It is right and wrong.”

Presidents need to communicate their vision to the public in a persuasive way. No one was better at this, of course, than “the great communicator,” Ronald Reagan. But a Hollywood résumé, while helpful, isn’t necessary. When the famous actor Orson Welles visited President Franklin Roosevelt in the White House, FDR told him, “There are two great actors in America, and it is a fine thing we have now met.” When the British sent one of their emissaries to George Washington in the summer of 1776, the general put on his most elegant uniform, refused to receive the hand-delivered letter from London addressed to “George Washington, Esq., etc. etc.,” and made it abundantly clear that he was the leader and would accept no letter addressed to “etc. etc.” Present in the room watching the general’s magisterial performance was John Adams, who called Washington “one of the great actors of the age.” And it wasn’t because Washington was a “natural.” He worked at it. Washington’s great passion and love in life was the theater.

To execute their vision, presidents need to manage carefully the selection and handling of subordinates. When Abraham Lincoln started his term in office, he picked “perhaps the strangest cabinet ever formed, yet one of the most able.” None of the men had specific experience for his particular position, five of them were former adversaries of Lincoln, and they all disliked one another. Warned that “they will eat you up,” Lincoln replied, “They will eat each other up.” In one particular case, rarely had a relationship started off so poorly. As the favored candidate who lost the presidential nomination on the third ballot, he was not a happy man. He arranged for a major newspaper story saying that the nominee, being unfit for the presidency, would require someone to run the government for him, and that he would be pleased to fill this role. After being appointed secretary of state by his opponent, he persisted in his fantasy and
wrote a memo titled, “Some Thoughts for a President’s Consideration.” In it he suggested that the recipient was not fit to be at the executive head of the government, and that the recipient should turn this task over to him. Who was this impudent politician?

William Seward. After seeing Seward’s memo, Lincoln was appalled and wrote an angry note, but did not send it. Instead he met privately with Seward and informed him in no uncertain terms who was the boss. “Whatever policy we adopt,” Lincoln told Seward, “I must do it.” Seward calmed down and went on to become Lincoln’s strongest ally over the next five years of his administration. “Executive force and vigor are rare qualities,” Seward later wrote his wife. “The President is the best of us.” Another of Lincoln’s adversaries was Salmon P. Chase, governor of Ohio, who ran for president five times from 1856 to 1872. Chase suffered from a particularly American disease known as “presidential disease—a troublesome ailment and sometimes fatal to the peace of mind and moral equilibrium of the persons attacked by it.” Appointed secretary of the treasury by Lincoln, he used his position to further his presidential ambitions: he had his face put on the millions of low-denomination bills printed to finance the Civil War (Lincoln got put on the scarcer high-denomination bills). Lincoln was not pleased, but he bore no grudge and later appointed Chase as chief justice of the Supreme Court.

It is no coincidence that our other “great” president—George Washington—also had this quality of being magnanimous to his adversaries. On one occasion when a close personal friend and a political enemy were under consideration for the same position, he selected the enemy. His reasoning? “My friend I receive with cordial welcome to my house and welcome to my heart, but, with all his good qualities, he is not a man of business….His opponent is, with all his politics so hostile to me, a man of business; my private feelings have nothing to do in this case. I am not George Washington, but President of the United States.”

How a president deals with his friends is a true test of his independence. “I love to deal with doctrines and events,” said James A. Garfield; “the contests of men about men I greatly dislike.” Garfield, who was assassinated before he could make any real impact, knew the danger of political friends and influence-peddlers “bent on boot and booty.” Whatever they felt was their just reward for helping him get elected, it was inappropriate now that he was a president. He must now fight them, but do so shrewdly. “They must not be knocked down with bludgeons,” he said. “They must have their throats cut with a feather.”

There is one final quality, lest we forget: decisiveness. “When he became president,” Harry Truman said of James Madison, “he was like every other man of considerable brain power and education.
He found it difficult to make decisions.” No matter how wise and good the president may be, it does him no good unless he acts on it. For the last word, we turn to Abraham Lincoln. At the end of a disagreement with his cabinet, he announced, “Seven nays, one aye; the ayes have it.”

The president is the boss.

So much for great men speaking about great men. But even presidents can be wrong. Theodore Roosevelt once called Thomas Jefferson America’s worst president because Jefferson tried to lead by ideas and was not much of a hands-on doer: “Jefferson … was perhaps the most incapable executive that ever filled the presidential chair.”
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After TR’s death, there was a widespread popular movement to build a large monument for TR in Washington DC with a specific site picked out.

Decades later, a monument was built on that site. But it was not for Theodore Roosevelt, it was for Thomas Jefferson.

H
istorians rarely show proper appreciation of statistics and mathematics. In business, when investors look at a deal, they “run the numbers.” Of course, not everything can be quantified, but whatever numbers are available, they analyze. When analyzed in excruciating detail, numbers frequently “come alive;” that is, they tell a story.

In the 2008 presidential election, many people questioned whether John McCain, at seventy-two, was too old to be a president. The answer is, of course, it all depends. Our “oldest” president would have to be Andrew Jackson: at a time when the life expectancy for white males was below forty, he was sixty-one when he began his first term.

For a deft use of perspective, consider the story of Enrico Fermi, the great atomic scientist. Fermi once asked General Leslie Groves how many generals might be called “great.” Groves said about three out of every hundred. Asked to define what made a general “great,” Groves defined it as a general who had won five major battles in a row. Fermi thought about it for a moment, did a calculation of mathematical probability, and came up with a different explanation. He reasoned as follows: the odds are one in four that a general will win two battles in a
row, one in eight for three victories, one in sixteen for four victories, and one in thirty-two for five. “So you are right, general, about three out of every hundred. Mathematical probability, not genius.”

In 1751, Benjamin Franklin observed that the colonists were twice as likely to get married as the English, they married at average age of twenty, and they had eight children. Thus, he predicted, America’s population would double every twenty years, meaning that in a hundred years America would have more people than England. So sound were Franklin’s calculations that they were cited in Adam Smith’s
The Wealth of Nations
, and used by Thomas Malthus to justify his views on overpopulation and mass hunger.