Presidents as Fathers

Review of Joshua Kendall, First Dads: Parenting and Politics from George Washington to Barack Obama (Grand Central Publishing, 2016), ISBN: 978- 1-4555-5195-8, 391 pages, $27.

I eagerly awaited Joshua Kendall’s study for its insights into the personal lives and parenting styles of our presidents, and I find much of value within his pages. This historian and journalist was influenced by Andrew Brink and other psychohistorical scholars. He divides the presidential fathers he concentrates on into six categories: The Preoccupied, Playful Pals, Double-Dealing Dads, Tiger Dads, The Grief-Stricken, and The Nurturers. This approach is not surprising coming from a biographer of Noah Webster, the great lexicographer who so enjoyed categorizing words. Although my inclinations are to be far less of a categorizer, I am struck by the breadth of Kendall’s scholarship and distressed by the parenting of so many of our presidents.

Frankly, as a presidential psychobiographer, I was somewhat disappointed that there was so little on the Bushes, Lincoln, and even less on Reagan. Of course, one cannot fit everything into 352 pages of text. What he does fit in is of great value and is a reminder that our standards of parenting have improved enormously, as we accept that our children have their own personalities and ultimately need to find their own way.

This is in contrast to the behavior of almost all of our 43 presidents. John Adams, for example, took his ten-year old son, the future President John Quincy Adams on a dangerous winter cross-Atlantic voyage during wartime when the enemy British dominated the seas. This “tiger dad” also wrote to his four-year-old son, “I believe I must make a physician of you” (211). Franklin Delano Roosevelt relied on his sons literally to hold him up, since it was important to his political success that it looked like he could really walk on his own in a public situation. The preoccupied FDR could never be elected in our era when a cellphone catches Hillary Clinton stumble as she gets into a car and she could no longer hide her pneumonia. Roosevelt, like so many of his presidential peers, was too absorbed in his own career to treat his sons as individuals rather than as his camouflaged living crutches. Like most presidential sons and the sons of so many highly successful people, they subse-

Page 212

quently did not thrive on their own. Kendall insists that the preoccupied Jimmy Carter’s success in winning the Democratic nomination was made possible by the intense labor of his sons, their spouses, and his wife. At the time, there was no question in his mind that they would do exactly what he wanted, just as he had been trained himself. Fortunately, Carter came to grips with the familial cost of his political ambition, just as he had confronted the racism of his youth. When his eldest son, Chip, complained that his father had “almost ruined my life,” (67) the former president showed an unusual capability for emotional growth as he and his wife faced the consequences of their earlier behavior.

Teddy Roosevelt couldn’t get enough of his children, and indeed was viewed by those close to him as the biggest of the Roosevelt kids because of his childish hypomanic behavior. Indeed, the best man at his second wedding declared, “you must remember that the President is about six” (75). Predictably, Roosevelt is listed as a “playful pal.” Having your father as a buddy seems preferable to being ignored, as was so often the case. In contrast to those mentioned previously, Hayes, Truman, and Obama are seen as “nurturers,” although a political career resulted in extended absences, especially for Truman.

John Tyler, as a parent, was in many ways the most despicable of our presidents, beyond his enormous betrayal in politics. Not surprisingly, he is categorized as a “double-dealer.” On Kendall’s pages, he appears to sexualize a number of his relationships as reflected in his letters. The widowed John Tyler doesn’t bother telling six of his seven children that he was marrying a woman three years younger than his eldest daughter, who had served as his presidential hostess. He would have another seven children with his second wife.

What motivates a scholar to do the enormous work of writing a book is always an important question. Consequently, I was delighted to watch an hour-long interview of Joshua Kendall on CSPAN’s Booknotes, in which he discussed his own fathering. His Romanian-born, now deceased, father enjoyed singing German songs in the shower, including the Nazi party anthem. To avoid the Holocaust, his father had not only converted to Catholicism, but also served in Hitler’s army. His father’s resolution of his Jewishness was to marry the WASPish-looking daughter of a rabbi, celebrate Christmas rather than Hanukah, and disclaim any Jewishness while working for a Jewish company. Joshua Kendall struggles

Page 213

with the part of his father that identified with Nazi aggression. I applaud his confronting and sharing this part of his life with others instead of simply suppressing and repressing it as so many people do with embarrassing parental realities.

I recommend that you buy Joshua Kendall’s book, or at least borrow it from the library, to learn more about our presidents as parents.

Page 214