Published 2018 by Prometheus Books
Partner to Power: The Secret World of Presidents and Their Most Trusted Advisers. Copyright © 2018 by K. Ward Cummings. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Cover image © Library of Congress
Cover design by Liz Mills
Cover design © Prometheus Books
Trademarked names appear throughout this book. Prometheus Books recognizes all registered trademarks, trademarks, and service marks mentioned in the text.
The Internet addresses listed in the text were accurate at the time of publication. The inclusion of a website does not indicate an endorsement by the author(s) or by Prometheus Books, and Prometheus Books does not guarantee the accuracy of the information presented at these sites.
Inquiries should be addressed to
Prometheus Books
59 John Glenn Drive
Amherst, New York 14228
VOICE: 716–691–0133 • FAX: 716–691–0137
WWW.PROMETHEUSBOOKS.COM
22 21 20 19 18 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pending
Printed in the United States of America
Author’s Note: How to Read This Book
Introduction
Prologue: William McKinley & George Cortelyou
Chapter ONE: George Washington & Alexander Hamilton
Chapter TWO: Abraham Lincoln & William Seward
Chapter THREE: Woodrow Wilson & Edward House
Chapter FOUR: Franklin Roosevelt & Louis Howe
Chapter FIVE: Harry Truman & Clark Clifford
Chapter SIX: Dwight Eisenhower & Sherman Adams
Chapter SEVEN: Ronald Reagan & “The Troika”
Chapter EIGHT: Bill Clinton & Hillary Rodham Clinton
Chapter NINE: George W. Bush & Dick Cheney
Epilogue: Reconsidering the Vice President
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
In 1956, two Stanford University professors, Alexander and Juliette George, published a groundbreaking personality study1 of President Woodrow Wilson and his right-hand man, Colonel Edward House, in which they applied psycho-dynamic theory to the biographical examination of the two men and their relationship. The work was influenced by an earlier study by American writer and critic Edmund Wilson (no relation) in which he sought the source of a counterproductive pattern of behavior in President Wilson’s professional career stretching back to his days as a professor at Princeton. He colorfully described this pattern as “a curve plotted over and over again…always dropping from some flight of achievement to a steep descent into failure.”2 Reflecting on his findings, the Professors George saw Woodrow Wilson’s childhood difficulties as motivating factors in his future success, remarking in their own work on how, as president, he was able to “harness and adapt the driving ambition and energy engendered by personal maladjustment into an effective pattern of leadership.”3 In each of these works, the authors sought to understand the biographical experiences that drove the president’s behaviors and decision-making. A similar motivation lies at the heart of Partner to Power.
This psychologically oriented biography is a non-technical, non-scientific personality study of nine presidents and their closest advisers. The objective is to understand the psychological, biographical and political motivations that drew these individuals into partnership, with the goal of understanding why they needed each other and how they worked together.
Any adequate examination of the lives of these individuals must consider the development of the total personality, up to and including adulthood. Indeed, by the time the nine men profiled here attained the presidency, they were mature enough to have understood their childhood influences and had undoubtedly made personality adjustments that they hoped would be efficacious to their political advancement. In light of this, the goal of Partner to Power is to take into account not only the childhood influences on the development of these men and women, but the early adulthood influences as well.
Partner to Power is written for a general reader who is interested in history on the whole and in the lives and accomplishments of American presidents in particular. Additionally, considerable attention has been given to satisfying the interest of readers who are looking for a deeper analysis of the role of American presidents’ right-hand men and women. Accordingly, the chapters can be accessed from a number of angles.
Partner to Power can be read as a collection of historical narratives, as a series of personality studies or as a study of the evolution of the role of right hand to the president. Each chapter profiles a key relationship that helped define and drive the development of the role since the first right hand—Alexander Hamilton. The chapters chronicle the development of the role in a cursory way, and the epilogue examines it in more detail. This is to avoid distracting the general reader from what might be best described as “biographical narratives,” crafted for entertainment as well as educational value. Those readers more interested in an analysis of the role of right hand will notice that while the chapters touch upon the strengths and weaknesses of each of the models represented here, the epilogue discusses them in depth in order to argue in favor of the vice president as the ideal person for this role.
Although the narratives were crafted with the aid of primary sources, such as diaries and interviews, they rely heavily on secondary sources (described in the bibliographical notes). Also, in an effort to weave seamless narratives or to structure a scene, some liberties have been taken. The reader will recognize these instances by the use of such qualifying words and phrases as “might have” and “may.”
Harry Hopkins understood FDR’s mind and intentions so intimately that if the president had difficulty explaining himself, even to one of his closest advisers, he would send them to Hopkins for clarification. (New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection [Library of Congress])
On January 4, 1941, Harry Hopkins, President Franklin Roosevelt’s most trusted adviser, boarded a plane on a top-secret mission to Europe. The five-day trip would take him briefly behind German lines before landing him in southern England, where he would be met by an aide to British prime minister Winston Churchill. Hopkins’s health was precarious. The previous year, he had had a large portion of his stomach removed to stave off cancer. Since the operation, he was never without a small black satchel containing the enzymes he needed to inject each day—without which he would literally starve to death. President Roosevelt was fully aware of Hopkins’s poor health and his meager foreign policy experience, but the mission was too sensitive to be entrusted to anyone other than his right-hand man. When Hopkins finally arrived, Churchill’s aide was shocked by the sight of him. He sent ahead a message to the prime minister describing a shrunken man, as “skinny as a nickname”1 and too exhausted even to rise from his seat.
Yet Roosevelt had insisted that Hopkins take the trip. As he contemplated a larger role for the US in World War II, Roosevelt needed Hopkins to do what he could not do for himself—go to England to personally size up Churchill. Roosevelt had never met him, so he needed someone to assess whether the prime minister was the sort of man who could be trusted. Only a person like Hopkins, who enjoyed the president’s complete confidence, and who knew him as well as any other person in the administration, could make such an assessment.
Hopkins spent a month with Churchill, willing himself to keep pace
with the prime minister’s punishing schedule of meetings, site visits, speeches, dinners, cocktails, and press conferences. The fact that a man in Hopkins’s state of health would undertake such a hazardous mission speaks to the quality of the special partnership he and the president shared.
Special advisers like Hopkins have existed since the earliest days of the American republic. Most Americans are aware of their existence, and although they may chafe at the idea of some unelected presence in the White House pulling strings from behind a curtain like the Wizard of Oz, they also somehow seem to appreciate its value to the president. The fingerprints of right-hand men and women can be found on many of the nation’s proudest achievements, from the Emancipation Proclamation and The Great Society to Obamacare. But the country owes many of its saddest moments to their influence as well. The Trail of Tears, for example, might never have occurred but for the terrier-like persistence of President Andrew Jackson’s closest adviser, John Eaton.2
Partner to Power is a study of the extraordinary relationships between US presidents and their right-hand men and women. It delves into their psychological underpinnings in order to understand how they function and why they are necessary. Although dozens of right-hand men and women throughout history will be discussed, nine are the main focus of this book, each of whom represents one of the five most frequent archetypes3: (1) cabinet officer, (2) senior adviser, (3) chief of staff (or chief of staff analogue), (4) family member and (5) vice president. Thinking about the different types of right hand a president can choose from may help us address the following questions: Are such relationships in the best interests of the nation? Are these powerful right-hand men and women sufficiently accountable for their actions? Who are they, and how are they chosen? How do their friendships and working styles impact the decisions presidents make?
Debates continue to swirl about the nature and impact of such advisers and their influence on the president, and Partner to Power opens a window on a compelling and contested area of American governance at its highest levels. But, at its heart, this book is about personalities and friendships—some of the most significant in history…
George Washington and Alexander Hamilton worked closely together for a decade, creating the office of the presidency as they went along. They shared a partnership so seamless it was as if they knew each other’s thoughts. Each man needed the other to achieve his best self, and Hamilton remained at Washington’s side long after most of his advisers had gone their separate ways…
Abraham Lincoln and William Seward started out as rivals, but they ended up the closest of friends and political allies, fighting to hold the Union together even as men in Lincoln’s own cabinet worked against them…
The collaboration between President Woodrow Wilson and Edward House would endure a world war and facilitate the founding of the League of Nations, but petty jealousies and misunderstandings would eventually drive them apart…
FDR’s first right-hand man, the gnome-like and unmistakably working-class Louis Howe, was so strikingly dissimilar from the young, patrician Roosevelt that many people were surprised they even knew each other. And yet their collaboration became one of the most important in American presidential history as the New Deal programs they created helped lift millions of Americans out of poverty during the Great Depression. Their relationship had been established years earlier, before Roosevelt contracted polio; Howe had moved in with the Roosevelts to help Franklin recuperate from his illness and ended up staying for twenty years…
When Clark Clifford started working for President Harry Truman, he was a lowly naval assistant, emptying ashtrays in the War Room. A year later, he was counsel to the president and one of the most powerful men in the world. As he worked behind the scenes to advance the president’s Middle East policies over the objections of the secretary of state, Clifford demonstrated how few limits existed on the power of the president’s right-hand man…
The uncommon power Sherman Adams enjoyed as President Dwight Eisenhower’s chief of staff stands unequaled to this day. Like most right-hand men and women before him, Adams preferred to work behind the scenes and rarely spoke to the press. Nevertheless, no one doubted his role. Few were surprised to learn that, during the short period in which the president recovered from his heart attack, Adams secretly ran the government in his place…
James Baker, Michael Deaver and Ed Meese were three men who acted as one for the benefit of President Ronald Reagan. Together they oversaw White House operations and policymaking. The skills and qualities each man brought to the task enhanced his individual power, but, more importantly, together they were an unstoppable force. No one would learn this better than Reagan’s embattled secretary of state…
Although she was not able to get there on her own, for a brief period Hillary Rodham Clinton could say she was “co-president of the United States” as she and her husband translated their unique partnership from the governor’s mansion in Little Rock to the White House…
And Dick Cheney, the self-professed “Prince of Darkness”4 and close partner of President George W. Bush, was the most powerful vice president in American history. During the tumult of September 11, 2001, as Bush flew safely above the nation in Air Force One, Cheney was running the government from a bunker buried deep beneath the White House. At one point, a military officer informed the vice president that an unidentified passenger plane had been spotted entering DC airspace and was presumably headed toward the White House. Without skipping a beat or taking a breath, Cheney ordered it shot down.
For the most part, right-hand men and women are chosen because their strengths and temperaments serve the purposes of the president. Though most of them choose to wield their influence out of the spotlight, even from the shadows they impact our lives in deep and lasting ways. These are their stories.
DEFINING THE RIGHT-HAND MAN
This photo, taken around the year 1900, captures the nature of the relationship between McKinley and Cortelyou. Here the president shakes hands during a stop in Alliance, Ohio. He is joined by Agriculture Secretary James Wilson and Interior Secretary Ethan Hitchcock. Cortelyou is draped in shadow, observing the scene from the doorway.
On the evening of February 15, 1898, the battleship USS Maine suddenly burst into flames in Cuba’s Havana Harbor. She sank surprisingly fast, taking three-quarters of her crew down with her. By morning, the charred skeletal remains reached out of the water like the giant claws of a dead crab. The incident might have receded quietly from the nation’s memory were it not for newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, President William McKinley and his right-hand man, George Cortelyou.
Running headlines that pointed a bloodstained finger at Spain, Hearst whipped the American public into a patriotic frenzy. His paper, the New York Journal, led the battle cry, accusing Spain of the “treacherous slaughter” of 260 men. Hearst even offered a $50,000 reward, the equivalent of $1.5 million today, to anyone who brought to justice those responsible. Suddenly, ordinary Americans who had never once given thought to Cuba or to Spain found themselves in the streets, chanting Hearst’s ubiquitous mantra, “Remember the Maine! To Hell with Spain!” By spring, the country was at war.
The growing influence of the press was changing the way Americans viewed themselves and the world. President McKinley, recognizing its power, looked for ways to tap its potential.
By the time of his death from an assassin’s bullet three years later, he had transformed the “American president” into a personality on par with the leading pop-culture figures of the day. People across social strata suddenly were desperate to know what McKinley ate for breakfast and where he purchased his ties. Such intense national interest in the common and everyday affairs of the president was unheard of. Presidents had of course been household names, but, until McKinley, none had ever been a superstar.
Central to this transformation were McKinley’s efforts to formalize and deepen the ties between the White House and the media. Working closely with his personal
secretary Cortelyou, McKinley created the first White House press office. With Cortelyou’s help, he rode the populist wave, sweeping the nation to war and, in the process, introducing a new vision of the presidency: the chief executive as “the people’s president.”
William McKinley, the seventh of nine children, was born in the small town of Niles, Ohio, in 1843. His strong Methodist upbringing, built on the expectation of self-reliance, produced a disciplined, dutiful and acutely observant child. Friends described him as smart, but more diligent than brilliant. A craving for attention inspired him to pursue a career in politics. After seven successful terms in Congress, in 1892 he was elected governor of Ohio and, in 1896, president of the United States. One of his most important staffing decisions after taking office was to accept outgoing president Grover Cleveland’s recommendation to retain Cortelyou as his private secretary. The decision would have long-term consequences for McKinley and for the office.
George Cortelyou was born in New York City during the second year of the Civil War. After graduating from Georgetown Law, he was hired as a clerk at the US Customs Service and the office of the Postmaster General before moving to the White House to work for Cleveland. His extraordinary organizational skills helped make him a central figure in the McKinley White House, but it was his role in shaping the first White House press office that would elevate him to the top of McKinley’s advisers.
As the prospect of war increased the need for reporting from the White House, photography and moving pictures were changing how the president was viewed by the public, how he communicated with them and even his policymaking. To this day, presidents still use communication strategies McKinley and Cortelyou developed in the late 1890s to speak directly to the American people through the press. FDR’s famous fireside chats in the 1940s and Trump’s Twitter spasms in the 2010s can be traced back to McKinley’s example.
Partner to Power Page 1