• Doug Wead: All the President’s Children: Triumph and Tragedy in the Lives of America’s First Families; Atria Books; 2003; 464pp; $26.
The disturbing discovery in Uday Hussein’s Baghdad palace must have made President Bush sick to his stomach. Plastered to the gym wall of Saddam’s sadistic son were photos of the president’s 21-year-old twins, Barbara and Jenna. Captain Ed Ballanco told a reporter that soldiers removed the pictures “to protect the president.”
The story gave me the creeps and heightened my interest in Doug Wead’s book, All The Presidents’ Children: Triumph and Tragedy in the Lives of America’s First Families. With the Bush daughters still on my mind, I was curious about the unique burdens and opportunities afforded children like Barbara, Jenna, and even George W. himself.
Wead was a special assistant to the first President Bush and worked on the 1988 campaign that returned him to the White House as Ronald Reagan’s successor. During that time, Wead got to know George W. Bush as a presidential child. That makes his personal observations on the Bush father-son relationship and the two Bush administrations interesting and credible, but not new. Much has already been written about the two very close but very different men.
Thus, it’s the stories of presidential families and children who lived before the age of the 24-hour news cycle that are the most compelling in this 300-plus-page book. Written in themed chapters — such as Triumphant Sons, Unfulfilled Promises, and Resilient Women — Wead introduces us to children from different families and eras who shared common experiences, shortcomings, and outcomes. It’s an appealing approach and more enlightening than a predictable administration-by-administration list of life’s winners and losers. This emotional connection adds context to facts and figures gleaned from traditional White House biographies and historical reviews.
There are a variety of interesting tales, but two are especially fascinating.
In The Search for Identity, Wead writes of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s five children (a sixth died before his first birthday). He contends that FDR was consumed by the presidency for more than 12 years and had little time for his four sons and daughter. “The trauma to his children is clear,” Wead writes. Their frequent poor judgments indicate the children were incapable of living happy, normal lives separate in the public’s mind from their father.
In a sad illustration of this instability, Wead tells of the confusion he experienced researching their many marriages and divorces. Ultimately, the FDR Presidential Library confirmed that the Roosevelt relationship train wreck consisted of 19 marriages among the five children. Seven marriages and divorces occurred while FDR was in office. Even worse, one Roosevelt spouse committed suicide and another tried to do the same.
Scandals and controversy were recurring family themes over the years. But thankfully, at least one child finally established a happy, successful life. Living in retirement with wife No. 5, Elliott Roosevelt co-wrote 20 best-selling murder mysteries with his famous mom as a fictitious crime solver similar to Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple.
FDR’s kids could be considered lucky and their parents happily married when compared to the children of Franklin and Jane Pierce. The 14th president is remembered for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, but the story Wead tells of Pierce’s 11-year-old son, Benjamin, is an awful example that power sometimes comes at a tragically high price.
When Benjamin learned of his father’s nomination, he was open with his concern. “I hope he won’t be elected for I should not like to be at Washington and I know you would not either,” he wrote in a letter to his mother. It was sentiment they shared and, according to Wead, the religious Mrs. Pierce prayed for her husband’s defeat. Two Pierce children had already died, and she believed God had taken them as a rebuke for her husband’s political ambition.
Pierce won, and only weeks before taking office, the family’s train car jumped the tracks between Boston and New Hampshire. Benjamin’s skull was crushed; Franklin and Jane were unhurt. She was too distraught to attend the inauguration. When she later learned that Franklin had actively engineered his presidential nomination and was not a reluctant candidate as he claimed, “she was revolted,” Wead writes. To her horror, Jane Pierce believed her husband’s ambition caused the deaths of their children. Can you imagine being a fly on the wall in their dining room? No elected office — not even the presidency — is worth that pain.
Wead is a good storyteller who packs a lot into each chapter, making this a page-turner. Savor the impact by reading a section or two and then taking a break.
If your interest is peaked about someone specific, like mine was about the Roosevelts and Pierces, check out the extensive bibliography and source notes. You’ll find plenty of reading to keep your nightstand stacked for months.