PREVIEW: A Presidential Miscellany by Lewis H. Lapham

A Presidential Miscellany

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lew is h. l a ph a m

thor n w i ll ow pr e s s 2013

fir st edi t ion copy r ight Š 2 0 1 3 by lew is h. l a ph a m

AMERICAN IDOL

Stars don’t get to do anything.

Stars only are. They’re a state of mind.

— whoopi goldberg

T

he view of the White House as sacred shrine or sovereign throne emerges from the twentieth-century transformation of what was once a rural, democratic republic into a global, military empire. The nineteenth-century accommodation was noted for its likeness to a secondrate boarding house and livery able —the roof leaked, the plumbing could be relied upon to fail, the smell was nearly always bad. Congress was disinclined to vote money for the improvement of a premises overrun by rats. What for? The president was a temporary occupant of what was underood to be a servant’s quarters, his office defined by Ambrose Bierce as “the greased pig in the field game of American politics.”

Nor was much attention paid to the safekeeping of the president’s person. Any citizen with a grievance or the hope of government preferment was free to hang around in the corridors with the spittoons, chewing or smoking cheap tobacco, []

leaving ains on the rug. No security checkpoints; no priority arrangements for the president’s travel. A politician was not a precious obje; let him ride a horse or buy a ticket for the train.

The notes gathered in this presidential miscellany refle the upgrading of the White House furnishing and protocol coincident with the shift from republic to empire over the course of the century denominated as America’s own.

Hiorians assign the beginnings of the change of game and heart and circumance to Teddy Roosevelt’s splendid little war with Spain or to Woodrow Wilson’s po–World War I conviion that America had become “the savior of the world.”

Roosevelt added the We Wing and its saberrattling press corps; Wilson’s fear of anarchis and communis led to the poing of a praetorian guard around Chri’s representative on earth.

But what forced upon the White House and its primary occupant the iconography of an awful majey was the explosion of the atom bomb. Prior to the summer of 145, the world-redeeming rength of the democratic republic—aka the la, be hope of mankind—derived from its financial energies and political liberties. The pillars of fire rising from the ashes of Hiroshima and []

Nagasaki reconfigured the image of American power. What had been looked to as the arsenal of freedom suddenly was to be seen as the weapon likely to deroy not only the hopes but also the exience of mankind. Dwight D. Eisenhower read the handwriting on the wall in 153. Being held hoage to the conant threat of nuclear war, he said, was “not a way of life at all…it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

Having become inhuman as well as human, America's military prerogative was raised to the power of the divine. The aging of the Day of Judgment was not a public-works proje fit to be run from a second-rate boarding house by a greased pig. What was wanted was a temple and an idol. The media’s conruion crews moved onto the site in 161, equipping the newly arrived Kennedy adminiration with the regal metaphor of King Arthur’s Camelot. Over the last fifty years the perimeter of shock and awe has been further reinforced with eleronic surveillance syems like those that ensure the safety of the Gutenberg Bible.

Abraham Lincoln was granted the luxury of two secretaries, both of them young and overworked, neither of them graduated from Har[]

vard. Barack Obama employs a aff of eighteen hundred deputies and assiant deputies. The nineteenth-century presidents traveled in open carriages or public railroad cars, usually unattended by even a single bodyguard. On being shipped from Washington to Paris or Kabul, President Obama receives the special handling accorded to a treasure of the Louvre or a pregnant panda bear. He comes and goes within a following of six hundred retainers (Secret Service agents, speechwriters, valets, floris, food taers, trip coordinators, military uniforms, television cameramen, and talking heads) matched in its function to the throng of courtiers surrounding Louis XIV in the palace at Versailles. The expense and scale of the White House household (maintained at a co of $1.6 billion per year) is the worshipful deference paid to the presence of the nuclear launch codes always within reach of apocalyptic decision.

Which is why, despite the incessant commentary and interminable photo opportunities, the American president is preferably unrecognizable as human. What maybe once was a subje becomes an obje, a golden mask that beows the smile of sublime and heroic calm on a world [1]

dissolved in chaos. The news headlines bring word of war in Israel, famine in Somalia, moral and financial calamity in Washington; it dosen’t matter what the president knows or doesn’t know, says or doesn’t say. What matters is that the deified image of American power remains as securely in place as a fly in amber or a pheasant under glass. The petitioners begging favors from the Lincoln White House were free to drip mud on the floors. The pilgrims in search of reassurance from the Obama White House are free to drape the resident icon with whatever refleion in the hall of mirrors serves to hold at bay the fear of death.

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REFLECTIONS ON THE JOB

grover cleveland, offering advice to a young Franklin D. Roosevelt : “My little man, I am making a range wish for you. It is that you may never be president of the United States.” george washington : “My movements to the chair of government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to his place of execution.” woodrow wilson: “The office of president requires the conitution of an athlete, the patience of a mother, and the endurance of an early Chriian.” james polk: “The presidency is no bed of roses.” harry s. truman: “Being a president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep on riding or be swallowed.” james garfield : “My God! What is there in this place that a man should ever want to get into it? ”

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R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E J O B (Cont.)

john f. kennedy: “The pay is good, and I can walk to work.” abraham lincoln: “You have heard about the man tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail? A man in the crowd asked how he liked it, and his reply was that if it wasn’t for the honor of the thing, he would much rather walk.” james buchanan, to incoming president Abraham Lincoln : “If you are as happy, my dear sir, on entering this house as I am in leaving it and returning home, you are the happie man in this country.” william howard taft: “I’m glad to be going —this is the lonelie place in the world.” thomas jefferson: “Never did a prisoner released from his chains feel such relief as I shall on shaking off the shackles of power.” theodore roosevelt: “No president has ever enjoyed himself as much as I have enjoyed myself.”

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T H E E S TAT E S O F T H E U N IO N

george washington 1789 presidential salary: $25,000 (turned down) Salary in today’s dollars: $600,000 Jobs before presidency: Surveyor, farmer, military commander Jobs after presidency: Founder of country’s large whiskey diillery Assets: Mount Vernon, eate with 8,000 acres of land, more than 300 slaves Eimated net worth in today’s dollars: $525 million abraham lincoln 1861 presidential salary: $25,000 Salary in today’s dollars: $658,000 Jobs before presidency: Rail splitter, flatboatman, orekeeper, pomaer, surveyor, lawyer Jobs after presidency: n/a Assets: Single-family home in Springfield, IL Eimated net worth in today’s dollars: Less than $1 million herbert hoover 19 2 9 presidential salary: $75,000 (donated to charity) Salary in today’s dollars: $985,000 Jobs before presidency: Mining executive, U.S. food adminirator Jobs after presidency: Inveor, board member of New York Life Insurance Company

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T H E E S T A T E S O F T H E U N I O N (Cont.)

Assets: Houses in Washington, DC, and Stanford, CA; mine invements in the U.S. and Central America Eimated net worth in today’s dollars: $75 million john f. kennedy 1961 presidential salary: $100,000 (donated to charity) Salary in today’s dollars: $752,000 Jobs before presidency: U.S. Navy serviceman, congressman, senator Jobs after presidency: n/a Assets: Share of multimillionaire father’s eate derived from banking, ock market, film indury Eimated net worth in today’s dollars: More than $1 billion bill clinton 1993 presidential salary: $200,000 Salary in today’s dollars: $311,000 Jobs before presidency: Lawyer, professor, attorney general, governor Jobs after presidency: Founder of the William J. Clinton Foundation, author, public speaker Assets: House in Chappaqua, NY; income from speaking fees up to $750,000 per year ; presidential pension of around $200,000 a year Eimated net worth: $80 million

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