Pretty smooth for a president known for his honesty, eh?
23 BENJAMIN HARRISON
August 20, 1833–March 13, 1901
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Leo
TERM OF PRESIDENCY: 1889–1893
PARTY: Republican
AGE UPON TAKING OFFICE: 55
VICE PRESIDENT: Levi P. Morton
RAN AGAINST: Grover Cleveland
HEIGHT: 5′6″
NICKNAMES: “Little Ben,” “White House Iceberg”
SOUND BITE: “We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.”
Benjamin Harrison’s administration is remembered primarily for being sandwiched between Grover Cleveland’s two terms. It’s fitting, too, because this guy’s about as exciting as lunch meat.
Not that there wasn’t cause to expect great things from Harrison. After all, he was the latest in a long line of distinguished Harrisons: His great-grandfather was a signer of the Declaration of Independence; his grandfather, William Henry Harrison, had been president (for a month); and his father, John Scott Harrison, had been a congressman. Benjamin himself was a rousing public speaker with a distinguished military career; as a brigadier general in the Civil War, he had impressed everyone—especially his own men—with his fighting spirit and leadership qualities. Such a record had allowed this native of Ohio to represent his adopted state of Indiana in the Senate.
Just how frosty was Benjamin Harrison? Many referred to him as the White House Iceberg. The guy even cut his own children out of his will.
His presidential administration, however, was pretty much a dud. He’d beaten Cleveland in a very close race (he actually lost the popular vote, despite winning the electoral college) by supporting a high tariff, and he did it with the largest campaign fund in history up to that time—plenty of prominent businessmen liked what he was saying. But aside from building up the navy and establishing the nation’s first forest reserve, Harrison accomplished little by way of leadership.
The most conspicuous exception was when he turned the deaths of two U.S. sailors in a barroom brawl in Chile into an opportunity to flex American muscle: Until the Chileans apologized (their police were rumored to have used unnecessary force), the scuffle almost came to war. In the end, Harrison’s most important contribution may have been appointing a young and ambitious Theodore Roosevelt to the civil service commission, thereby safeguarding the continuing overhaul of the patronage system.
The Republican-dominated Congress didn’t make Harrison’s administration any more successful. Known as the billion-dollar Congress, they wasted exorbitant sums of money, angered voters, and basically guaranteed that plenty of Democrats would win the congressional elections of 1890. This spelled bad news for Harrison’s own reelection prospects—and his chances grew even worse when his beloved wife died in 1892. The tragedy took the wind out of his stumping.
After Cleveland’s narrow victory, Harrison was relieved to go back to his law practice in Indianapolis, where he eventually married his late wife’s niece—a move that alienated his children and drove him to cut them out of his will.
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“HE’S MISTER WHITE CHRISTMAS, HE’S MISTER SNOW . . . ”
And you thought the Snow Miser was just a character in that silly holiday TV special. Perhaps—but, aside from the tights and a squad of singing elves, he bears a striking resemblance to Benjamin Harrison.
Sure, Harrison had a gift for public speaking. But in person, the staunchly Presbyterian president was a virtual corpse. Chilly, frigid, frosty—words like these were routinely used to describe the unpleasant experience of meeting privately with the man. “It’s like talking to a hitching post” is how one stunned victim described his conversation. Senator Thomas Platt was the man who coined the moniker “White House Iceberg.” As Platt explained, “Inside the Executive Mansion, in his reception of those who solicited official appointments, [Harrison] was as glacial as a Siberian stripped of his furs. During and after an interview, if one could secure it, one felt even in torrid weather like pulling on his winter flannels, galoshes, overcoat, mitts, and earflaps.” Even Harrison’s handshake was a flop, likened to “a wilted petunia.” His supporters often kept voters at a distance after public speeches.
COME WHAT [CAPE] MAY
When Postmaster General John Wanamaker got a bunch of wealthy friends to buy Harrison a cottage in Cape May, New Jersey, the president was delighted. So was the press—after all, it looked as if Harrison were taking a very plump bribe from real estate folks interested in developing Cape May, and the whiff of scandal filled the air. Before the papers could get Harrison’s opponents in the government to act, the president flushed the whole matter down the toilet by sending Wanamaker a personal check for $10,000. See what a little publicity can do?
BY A WHISKER
Harrison may not be the most memorable chief executive in American history, but he did, in fact, embody the end of an era: He was the last president to have a beard.
25 WILLIAM MCKINLEY
January 29, 1843–September 14, 1901
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius
TERM OF PRESIDENCY: 1897–1901
PARTY: Republican
AGE UPON TAKING OFFICE: 54
VICE PRESIDENT: Garret A. Hobart (first term); Theodore Roosevelt (second term)
RAN AGAINST: William Jennings Bryan (both terms)
HEIGHT: 5′7″
NICKNAMES: “Wobbly Willie,” “Idol of Ohio,” “Napoleon of Protection”
SOUND BITE: “We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California; it is Manifest Destiny.”
“I have been through one war,” William McKinley remarked during the first year of his administration, making reference to his service in the Civil War. “I have seen the dead piled up and I do not want to see another.” For all the talk about peace, however, McKinley’s administration would see quite a lot of violence.
William McKinley was a sweetheart. With the sponsorship of fellow Ohioan Rutherford Hayes, he had served in the House of Representatives and as governor of his home state. Through it all, he had impressed people with his ability to remember names, the way he turned people down while making them feel as if he’d done them a favor, the carnations he wore in his lapel (and that he was fond of handing out to disappointed office-seekers to mollify their hurt), his jovial sincerity, and—most of all—his endearing devotion to his epileptic wife. Even his enemies hated saying bad things about him.
Whenever First Lady Ida McKinley suffered an epileptic seizure—and she suffered them often—the devoted president would simply drape his handkerchief over her face.
But beneath the smiling politeness stirred a Machiavellian, a canny Washington insider who navigated the channels of power effortlessly. The nice guy image came in handy—as Secretary of War Elihu Root once said, “He had a way of handling men so that they thought his ideas were their own.” Take the press, for example. Unlike his grouchy predecessor, Grover Cleveland, McKinley welcomed coverage of his administration—indeed, he promoted it, building the first White House pressroom. By offering a constant flow of (carefully chosen) information, he soon had journalists eating out of his hand. Who was using whom?
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, then, that this avuncular, companionable bloke was also responsible for unleashing a violent grab for empire. Cuba offered the ideal excuse: It had been revolting for years in a war against its masters in Spain, threatening the millions of dollars that Americans had invested there. McKinley dispatched the battleship Maine to Havana harbor as a show of America’s willingness to keep an eye on its interests. Not long after arriving, the ship blew sky high, taking more than two hundred Yankee sailors with it. Though the probable cause of the vessel’s spectacular demise was a coal fire, America had its casus belli, and the whole nation seemed to quake with vengeance and wrath.
Except, at first, its president. McKinley insisted on having a commission investigate the Mai
ne disaster, even after his own assistant secretary of the navy, Theodore Roosevelt, called him a “white-livered cur” for acting so cautiously. The commission finally concluded that the explosion was caused by a Spanish mine, and McKinley was swept up into the bloodsport.
The Spanish American War, such as it was, lasted some three months. Spain surprised no one by losing spectacularly—and eventually forking over Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam to an insatiable United States. Cuba, though independent, became a virtual vassal state, and the president even persuaded Congress to annex Hawaii. The bloodshed was far from over, however. McKinley grew nicely into his new suit of armor, reacting with disturbing ruthlessness to a revolt in the Philippines. He also sent thousands of troops to China to help squelch the Boxer rebellion, in which Chinese xenophobes attempted to end centuries of crude European manipulation by slaughtering every foreigner they could get their hands on. Oh, the cares of empire!
Nothing pleases a voting public more than victory in war except a recovering economy. McKinley had both—the depression that began in 1893 was over, and everyone basked in the new, muscular America. In such heady days, it seems only an anarchist could find cause for concern—and one did. His name was Leon Czolgosz, and at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, he shot McKinley just one day after the recently reelected president was welcomed by a giant sign that read, “Welcome McKinley, chief of our nation and empire.” He died eight days later.
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Banking on Victory
McKinley’s opponent in both presidential elections was William Jennings Bryan, one of the greatest populists in American history. While McKinley conducted his campaign from his front porch in 1896, Bryan went whizzing around the country giving speeches before cheering crowds. But despite all his efforts, Bryan was bound to lose. His desire to use the silver standard in American currency earned him plenty of enemies in the nation’s legions of businessmen, including Mark Hanna, a prominent Cincinnati financier. Hanna joined the McKinley team and contributed much of his own fortune toward his candidate’s fight, bringing McKinley’s campaign chest to more than $3 million. Bryan’s friends weren’t quite as rich—he had somewhere around $50,000 to spend on his campaign. When you factor in all the Republican businessmen who literally threatened their employees with dismissal if they didn’t vote for McKinley, the results of the 1896 election hardly seem surprising.
A NEW PRESIDENT FOR A NEW CENTURY
It wasn’t just the naked use of force that distinguished McKinley as the first true twentieth-century president. He was also the last president to have served in the Civil War and the first to have his inaugural captured on film.
A MODEL MARRIAGE
First Lady Ida McKinley was an epileptic, though that word was carefully avoided by journalists when describing her. Her seizures could occur at any moment and often did—at state dinners, public gatherings, speeches, etc. McKinley himself was an inspiration to all in his respectful devotion to her. When the fits were particularly bad, he would merely drape his handkerchief over Ida’s face. The darkness tended to soothe her, and when the seizures passed, the first couple would continue as if nothing had happened. McKinley was never too busy to interrupt whatever he was doing to go pay Ida a visit, and all of Washington was taken by the couple’s obvious closeness.
McKinley’s concern for Ida never left his harried mind, even when mortally wounded. Virtually the first words out of his mouth after being shot were to his secretary, George Cortelyou: “My wife—be careful, Cortelyou, how you tell her—oh, be careful!”
26 THEODORE ROOSEVELT
October 27, 1858–January 6, 1919
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Scorpio
TERM OF PRESIDENCY: 1901–1909
PARTY: Republican
AGE UPON TAKING OFFICE: 42
VICE PRESIDENT: None (after McKinley assassination); Charles W. Fairbanks (elected term)
RAN AGAINST: N/A (first term); Alton B. Parker (elected term)
HEIGHT: 5′8″
NICKNAMES: “TR,” “Hero of San Juan Hill,” “The Bull Moose”
SOUND BITE: “No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumphs of war.”
“Speak softly and carry a big stick,” said Theodore Roosevelt, “and you will go far.” TR sure did go far. But he never spoke softly about anything in his life. He boomed and shrilled, gesticulated wildly, thrilled to action of all sorts. He was a cyclone of boundless energy. Not since Thomas Jefferson did a man of such varied talents lead the nation. An insatiable reader with a photographic memory, Roosevelt published more than forty books on everything from naval history to bird watching, wore a deputy sheriff’s badge in the western Badlands, led troops in battle, and shot game in Africa. He was the last true Renaissance man to make it to the White House.
But TR was also a blatant militarist. Let’s not dance around the facts: He sought out and reveled in the nerve-testing cauldron of battle. He believed there were important moral lessons to be learned from punching a bayonet through another man’s belly. He racked up an impressive list of administrative posts, including New York City police commissioner, assistant secretary of the navy, governor of New York, and vice president and president of the United States. But his proudest moment would always be the day he charged up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War and killed a Spaniard with his bare hands.
By the time he became governor of New York, the Republican party was wary of “that damned cowboy” and his alarming reformist views. Figuring he would do less damage as vice president, they elected him to the McKinley ticket—and assumed McKinley would live another four years. Oops.
As chief executive—the youngest, at his inauguration, in American history—TR would fight most of his battles against the big business “trusts,” whose enormous wealth and power were killing competition and creating a gulf between rich and poor that most people thought had gone too far. By taking on J. P. Morgan’s titanic Northern Securities Company, he did more than stop a conglomerate from fixing prices; he set a precedent for governmental regulation and remade the presidency into the most powerful and active branch of government. His efforts at cleaning up the food and drug companies did much to stop faulty advertising and the proliferation of bad meat. Though generally opposed to unions, he sided with labor during the coal miners’ strike of 1902 and proved to be a conservationist dynamo by setting aside millions of acres of land for protection. He even won a Nobel Peace Prize for brokering an end to the Russo-Japanese War. But despite his popularity, he passed the torch in the 1908 election to his handpicked successor, William Taft, and went on safari in Africa. Then, in 1912, having fallen out with Taft, he ran against him on the Progressive, or “Bull Moose,” ticket—and succeeded only in making it easier for both of them to lose to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
While boxing in the White House with heavyweight champion John Sullivan, Roosevelt received a blow to his face that left him blind in his left eye.
With his rather odd mixture of conservative and liberal qualities, the incomparable, charismatic TR has become the darling of both the left and the right. A lover of animals who took pleasure in blowing them away, a believer in the separation of the races who broke bread with Booker T. Washington in the White House, a highly educated aristocrat who wanted nothing more than to receive approval from cowpokes and ruffians, a war worshipper renowned for making peace, a believer in rugged individualism who wanted to use the government to help those in need—this guy’s record is a little hard to follow. But you’d be hard pressed to find a more colorful character.
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BODY POLITIC
As a boy in New York City, Theodore Roosevelt was a sickly, asthmatic little weakling. Urged by his father to do something about it, he determined to remake his own body. The family’s wealth was harnessed in the effort, turning part of their brownstone into a gym, and Theodore began spending plenty of time lifting weights. He took up all
manner of strenuous physical activity, especially boxing. As a student at Harvard, he came close to winning the lightweight championship. His heart, however, remained weak—which didn’t stop him from climbing the Matterhorn in Europe after graduation.
TR’s preoccupation with “the strenuous life,” as he liked to call it, would never abate, and it came to define his rugged, no-holds-barred image. After moving into the White House, he replaced the old greenhouses with a tennis court, on which he was fond of playing as many as ninety games in a day. He continued to box with anyone crazy enough to take him on, and he even studied martial arts. Visiting friends and dignitaries were often obliged to jog with him around the White House grounds or embark upon his infamous “point-to-point” sojourns—a distant point in the wilderness would be chosen, toward which the day-trippers would hike at a breathless pace, taking on every obstacle in between. Those too frail (or sensible) to keep up were often derided as soft by the president, who couldn’t abide laggards.
GO WEST, YOUNG MAN
Next time you find yourself single on Valentine’s Day and mired in your own self-pity, remember that your sadness cannot possibly be greater than Theodore Roosevelt’s had been. For on that day in 1884, his mother and his wife, Alice, both died. Overwhelmed with grief, he entrusted his only child at the time, also named Alice, to her aunt and took off to the Badlands to become a cowboy. Impressively, the Harvard-educated Eastern aristocrat held his own among the indelicate crowd he encountered there, despite his spectacles and large vocabulary. Some of the men he befriended during those years would fill the ranks of the Rough Riders recruited by Roosevelt to fight in the Spanish-American War.
Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents Page 11