Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents

by Cormac O'Brien

  HIS RIGHT FROM HIS LEFT

  Long before Ronald Reagan got swept into the White House for being an outspoken neoconservative, he was a devoted liberal. How left-wing was he? The man who would one day devote so much of his nation’s resources toward outspending what he called the Evil Empire may have come close to joining the Communist party. According to one account, he approached the organization in the late 1930s and was turned down because he didn’t seem ardent enough in his devotion to the cause. It’s intriguing, in light of Reagan’s future efforts on behalf of the right wing, but we shall probably never know for sure whether it actually occurred.

  LIFE IMITATING ART

  When asked whether he was nervous during a televised debate with candidate Jimmy Carter in 1980, Ronald Reagan replied, “No, not at all. I’ve been on the same stage with John Wayne!” A longtime fan of Wayne’s, Reagan approached nearly every crisis with the question, “What would the Duke do?” This sort of fusion between Reagan’s politics and his Hollywood mindset pervaded his eight-year presidency and could often be a trifle unnerving to those around him. While visiting the office of House Speaker Tip O’Neill, the newly elected president made an admiring remark about the large oak desk that dominated the room. O’Neill said that it had been used by President Grover Cleveland, to which Reagan replied, “You know, I played Grover Cleveland in the movies.” As the speaker was quick to point out, Reagan had done no such thing—he had, however, played Grover Cleveland Alexander, a baseball player, in The Winning Team.

  Both Reagan and his wife, Nancy—another actor—were avid filmgoers and spent some part of almost every day watching movies either on television or in the White House screening room. Colin Powell once remarked that Reagan’s plan to exchange defense technology with the Soviets was inspired by the famous sci-fi filmThe Day the Earth Stood Still . And when Chief of Staff James Baker showed up at the White House only to discover that the president hadn’t even opened a large and important briefing Baker had given him the day before, Reagan merely shrugged. “Well, Jim,” explained the president, “ The Sound of Music was on last night.”

  Bedtime for Ron-zo

  Ronald Reagan was the oldest president in American history, and he often acted like it. His habit of dozing off in meetings became the butt of jokes, including his own. “As soon as I get home to California,” he quipped near the end of his second term, “I plan to lean back, kick up my feet, and take a long nap. Come to think of it, things won’t be that different after all.” Reagan may have been snoring his way through the White House, but his strange behavior and cluelessness led many to think that he still wasn’t getting enough sleep. How else can you explain his distressing pronouncement that trees caused 80 percent of the country’s air pollution? He once called Oklahoma Senator Don Nickles “Don Rickles” and even had difficulty remembering who his top officials were. When Samuel Pierce, Jr., Reagan’s secretary of housing and urban development (and the only African American in the cabinet), attended a conference of the nation’s mayors, Reagan strode up to him and greeted him with “How are you, Mr. Mayor? How are things in your city?” At a White House dinner honoring François Mitterand, the French president, Reagan was supposed to escort Mrs. Mitterand to her place at the table. When she refused to move, Reagan reminded her that it was time to proceed, only to be told by the interpreter that he was standing on her gown.

  STARSTRUCK

  Both Ronald and Nancy Reagan were superstitious people. But, for Nancy, the belief in the mysterious powers of the universe achieved a new urgency after her husband was shot in 1981. Shortly after the assassination attempt, she began consulting San Francisco astrologer Joan Quigley in the hopes of avoiding future calamities. With time, Quigley’s advice—based on the president’s star charts—was shaping the conduct of the administration as much as any of its cabinet members. White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan took to color-coding his boss’s schedule based on Quigley’s directives as sent through the first lady: red for potentially negative days, green for potentially good days, and so on. Even Air Force One take-offs and landings were dictated by the astrologer, often to the very second.

  41 GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH

  June 12, 1924–

  ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Gemini

  TERM OF PRESIDENCY: 1989–1993

  PARTY: Republican

  AGE UPON TAKING OFFICE: 64

  VICE PRESIDENT: Danforth Quayle

  RAN AGAINST: Michael Dukakis

  HEIGHT: 6′2″

  NICKNAME: “Poppy”

  SOUND BITE: “I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don’t always agree with them.”

  When George Bush made his run for president in 1988, no sitting vice president had been voted into the White House since Martin Van Buren in 1837. But Bush had two things going for him: Ronald Reagan’s blessing and the fact that he was running against a liberal named Michael Dukakis in an age when liberal had become a four-letter word.

  The Republicans played up Dukakis’s Eastern urban elitism, contrasting it to Bush’s beer-drinking Texas simplicity. Ironically, it was Bush who had the real privileged pedigree. Born in Massachusetts and raised in Connecticut, George grew up in the backseats of limousines. He was preppy all the way: the son of financier and Republican senator Prescott Bush and a graduate of the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. After serving as the youngest pilot in the navy during World War II, he graduated from Yale and decided to strike out on his own by making a go of the Texas oil industry. Texas may have become his adopted state, but he never lost his Yankee patrician ways, no matter how much he tried to pass himself off as a good ol’ boy.

  His identity crisis notwithstanding, Bush had an impressive résumé:

  congressman from 1966 to 1970, ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican National Committee, envoy to Beijing, CIA director, and Reagan’s vice president. But he’d always been merely an agreeable administrator with a gift for taking direction from willful superiors such as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. (Bush was pro-choice until he joined the Reagan ticket in 1980.) Such a background didn’t lend itself to taking an active role as leader of the Free World, and when Bush admitted in 1988 to having trouble with “the vision thing,” he as much as admitted his intention to become a caretaker president.

  Foremost among those policies was the dismantling of Eastern Europe’s Communist regimes. One by one, the nations of the Eastern Bloc dumped the old order, until even the Soviet Union gave in under Boris Yeltsin. Bush, a man whose every political office had been shaped by the Cold War, soon found himself baffled by its absence. He had shepherded one of the century’s most impressive accomplishments to completion but lacked the vision required to create a new world order in its place.

  After Bush vomited on the Japanese prime minister, a new word entered the Japanese language. Bushusuru—literally, “to do the Bush thing”—is slang for vomiting.

  Back home, his agenda was hampered by ugly confirmation squabbles over secretary of defense candidate John Tower and Supreme Court justice appointee Clarence Thomas. In 1988, Bush had said, “Read my lips: no new taxes,” then went back on his word in 1990. And, aside from pushing the Clean Air Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act through Congress, he failed to initiate much legislation. That “vision thing” was biting him in the ass.

  Circumstances abroad would come to the rescue. Bush invaded Panama in 1989, kidnapping Manuel Noriega to stand trial back in the States for drug charges. But real martial glory was afforded the commander in chief thousands of miles away in the Middle East. After Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, Bush showed his strength in international affairs by organizing an unprecedented coalition to throw back Iraqi aggression.

  Unfortunately, nothing is that simple. Bush went a little overboard by comparing Saddam Hussein to Hitler, and people the world over couldn’t help feeling that the whole bloody affair was really over oil—a fact driven home when the coalition smashed Iraqi fo
rces only to leave Saddam in power to wreak murderous havoc on his own people. As a result, Bush was incapable of turning Operation Desert Storm into a reelection victory. Economic issues just made things worse—the brief resurgence brought on by “Reaganomics” had fizzled, and Americans were already wondering what a Democratic candidate like Bill Clinton could do to put more money in their wallets.

  And so George Bush was denied a second term, freeing him to do the sort of things that presidents should avoid, like parachuting out of an airplane, which he did in 1997.

  BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS

  After Bush decided to go west in 1948, he took his wife, Barbara, and two-year-old George W. and relocated to the little town of Odessa, Texas. Once there, they moved into an apartment building—where they had to share a bathroom with a mother-daughter duo of prostitutes.

  ??????

  George Bush wasn’t exactly the most eloquent of chief executives. The press took to calling his bizarre pronouncements Bushspeak, and some of them were downright nonsensical. “I stand for anti-bigotry, anti-Semitism, and anti-racism,” he proclaimed in a 1988 campaign speech. His attempt at describing his “New England values” during a 1992 speech came out as “Remember Lincoln, going to his knees in times of trial and the Civil War and all that stuff. You can’t be. And we are blessed. So don’t feel sorry for—don’t cry for me, Argentina.” He explained the significance of an upcoming meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev as “Grandkids. All of that. Very important,” and he once replied to a journalist’s question with “I’m glad you asked it because then I vented a spleen here.” But perhaps his greatest inanity was the response he gave to a question about how his presidency would differ from Reagan’s: “Like the old advice from Jackman—you remember, the guy that came out—character. He says, ‘And then I had some advice. Be yourself!’ That proved to be the worst advice I could possibly have. And I’m going to be myself. Do it that way.” If you can figure out what the hell that means, you should be president.

  SKIRTING THE ISSUE

  “I’m not going to take any sleazy questions like that from CNN. I am very disappointed that you would ask such a question of me, and I will not respond to it.” So said President Bush to Mary Tillotson’s inquiry about Bush’s alleged affair with his secretary, Jennifer Fitzgerald. Tillotson was one of the first journalists ever to ask a sitting president such a question. Bush may not have bothered to answer it, but plenty of those who knew him did—and they claim that Bush did in fact cheat on his wife with Fitzgerald and plenty of other women. No solid evidence, however, has ever been found to substantiate the relationships.

  George Disgorge

  If President Bush wanted to make a splash during his visit to Japan in 1992, he succeeded—with flying colors. In the middle of a state dinner in Tokyo, the president went white as a sheet and threw up into the lap of Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, then slid out of his chair until he was nearly under the table. The Japanese haven’t forgotten the incident; to this day, the word Bushusuru—literally “to do the Bush thing”—is slang for vomiting.

  42 WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON

  August 19, 1946–

  ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Leo

  TERM OF PRESIDENCY: 1993–2001

  PARTY: Democratic

  AGE UPON TAKING OFFICE: 46

  VICE PRESIDENT: Al Gore

  RAN AGAINST: George H. W. Bush (first term); Robert Dole (second term)

  HEIGHT: 6′2″

  NICKNAMES: “Bill,” “Bubba,” “Slick Willie,” “Comeback Kid”

  SOUND BITE: “I want you to listen to me. . . . I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

  As a young man, William Jefferson Clinton was a gifted saxophone player who won contests in his home state of Arkansas, organized his own jazz bands, and received music scholarships from several colleges. Unfortunately for him and for us, he had three other passions: politics, lying, and sex.

  Bill Clinton’s father died before he was born, and his mother, Virginia, married a man who spent virtually all his time drinking and abusing his wife, son, and stepson. Bill rose from these humble beginnings to become a brilliant student who joined every club in sight and made friends through his remarkable sincerity and compassion. After graduating from Georgetown University, he was awarded a Rhodes scholarship and studied at Oxford for two years before returning to study law at Yale. He married fellow law student Hillary Rodham, returned to Arkansas, became the state attorney general, and ran for governor. Though he won and became the youngest governor in the country, his policy of raising car license fees to pay for badly needed road construction got him voted out after only one term. Rather than give in, Clinton earned his nickname “Comeback Kid” by running again and winning another four terms.

  Thanks to his relationships with Hillary, Monica, Gennifer, Paula, Juanita, two Miss Arkansas winners, and countless other women, the secret life of Bill Clinton became a public spectacle.

  Winning the White House was a little tougher. Independent candidate Ross Perot managed to grab a significant number of votes in the 1992 presidential election, meaning that Clinton, though victorious, couldn’t claim a mandate from the people—he’d received only 43.5 percent of the popular vote, just 5 percent more than George Bush. Nevertheless, Clinton seemed full of potential; the first president born after World War II, he had terrific rapport with people of all ages and conveyed the image of a youthful, keenly intelligent, and confident leader.

  He also conveyed the image of a man whose marriage was at least a little troubled. Gennifer Flowers, a TV reporter turned nightclub singer from Arkansas, had upset Clinton’s 1992 campaign by claiming she’d had a twelve-year affair with him. After she produced audiotapes suggesting Clinton had told her to deny everything, the presidential candidate went on 60 Minutes with his wife. While denying the Flowers allegations, he did admit to causing “pain” in his marriage. The ploy worked—but Clinton’s past had begun to haunt him, and questions about his sexual shenanigans were now on everyone’s radar.

  Once he was president, Clinton’s agenda ran into resistance from congressional leaders who thought his ideas were too ambitious, too complicated, or both. First Lady Hillary was made leader of an effort to overhaul the health-care system, producing a report that proved too byzantine for anyone on Capitol Hill to read, much less vote on. The issue petered out. And Clinton had to back off on one of his central campaign promises, a big tax cut for the middle class. Nevertheless, he worked with Congress to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Family and Medical Leave Act, gun-purchasing legislation under the Brady Bill, and other accomplishments. In addition, higher taxes on the wealthy helped cut the deficit, and economic recovery started accelerating.

  Then the 1994 midterm elections spoiled Clinton’s fun, and in a big way. Republicans swept into Congress in what most considered a severe indictment of the presidency. But when GOP leaders, led by the snide and rapacious Newt Gingrich, started acting like right-wing revolutionaries who’d all but forgotten about the executive branch of government, Clinton was afforded the opportunity to look like a force for moderation. He reinvented himself as a New Democrat—a centrist who stood for traditional Democratic ideas (such as education and social programs) as well as Republican priorities (crime bills, for example). The result was yet another comeback and a victory against hapless Bob Dole in 1996.

  By the time Clinton’s second term was well under way, the deficit had vanished and the economy was roaring. But the president’s foreign policy was another matter entirely. Clinton wasn’t exactly a towering commander in chief. One of the many issues on which he was forced to compromise early in his first term was persecution of gays in the military. The solution—“Don’t ask, don’t tell”—meant that gays shouldn’t admit to their sexual orientation, and nobody should pester them about it. It pleased no one, including Clinton. His actions overseas were similarly hazy: From Haiti to Bosnia, Somalia to Iraq, the administration reacted to ev
ents rather than shaping them. He did manage to stop Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing in Kosovo through NATO-sponsored bombing in 1999, but Clinton’s legacy in foreign policy has continued to be a sore spot with critics.

  But who remembers all that? Or the booming economy over which he presided? Or his eloquent and persuasive speaking ability? For all the political events of Clinton’s eight years in office, most people can recall only two words: Monica Lewinsky. As virtually everybody knows by now, she was the White House intern with whom Clinton did all sorts of lewd things except have intercourse, which he believed gave him the right to deny having “sexual relations” with her. Of course, Monica Lewinsky was asked about her relationship with the president only because investigator Kenneth Starr was interested in building a case against Clinton in the Paula Jones case. Then again, Starr’s original investigation of the Clintons was over Whitewater, a failed real estate development in Arkansas that pointed to illegal financial dealings on the part of the Clintons. And did we mention Travelgate? Or Filegate? Or . . . well, you get the idea.

  Through scandal after scandal, “Slick Willie” managed to dodge the bullets fired at him by what his wife called “a vast right-wing conspiracy.” In fact, his approval ratings remained quite high throughout his presidency, despite widespread horror at his personal conduct. But the evidence in the Monica Lewinsky affair was irrefutable, forcing us all to realize that he was not only brilliant and charming but also disgusting and deceitful. Perhaps he should’ve stuck to music after all.

  Feel a Draft?

  In May 1969, during the Vietnam War, Bill Clinton received his draft notice and joined an ROTC unit out of the University of Arkansas. But rather than report to his unit in the fall, he went back to Oxford, where he had been studying as a Rhodes scholar. It was a move he claims to have been given permission to do by the ROTC. No letter to that effect has ever been found, however. In October, he told the draft board to end his deferment—but by then, the Nixon administration had made it clear that fewer men were going to be called up, and it seemed as if Clinton’s chances of being drafted were slim to none. As if all this weren’t a little suspicious to begin with, Clinton wrote a letter to his colonel expressing his interest in getting back into the draft—according to the letter, he did it “for one reason only: to maintain my political viability within the system.”