Presidential Controversies (From Swimming Nude to Getting Drunk)

By Gregory McNamee on History

When Barack Obama takes office on January 20, 2009, as the forty-fourth president of the United States, he will bear the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Apart from having the normal jitters, the new president, remembering recent events, will doubtless be uncomfortably aware that from then on his every move will be under the close eye of lawmakers, lobbyists, journalists, and citizens. One error, one gaffe, one small lapse of judgment, the new president might reasonably think, and I’m toast: just think of Bill Clinton. Just look at the last eight misbegotten years.George Washington

Small wonder that Franklin Pierce, who served as president from 1853 to 1857, remarked that all he wanted to do on leaving office was to get drunk. And small wonder that James Madison, our fourth president, was moved to reply to an admirer, “I would much rather be in bed.”

The new president might be cheered, though, to know that our presidents have from the very start been the subjects, and sometimes the authors, of controversy and scandal.

Our presidents, to put it another way, have always been in hot water—or, in the case of John Quincy Adams, in cold water. Adams was fond of swimming nude in the Potomac River. Respectable Washingtonians disapproved, but Adams kept bathing au naturel even after someone once stole his clothes as he swam, and even after a reporter cornered him in the river and refused to let him dress until Adams had given her an exclusive interview.

The first to discover how unpopular a president can be was George Washington, who, we tend to forget, was not universally well liked in his time. Ardent republicans in the first government of the United States accused Washington of wanting to establish himself as a new, homegrown king, especially after Washington took stern measures to force his fellow citizens to pay their taxes. Washington did have an imperious and sometimes impatient way, as he showed when he went to the Senate on August 22, 1789, to press for a new treaty with the Creek Indians. After Washington had made his argument for making this new treaty, a senator asked for clarification on one or two points. When Washington did not reply satisfactorily, the senator moved that the treaty be sent for further study to a committee. “This defeats every purpose of my coming here!” Washington cried. He swore that he would never again enter the Senate, and his successors have followed suit.

Washington touched off a minor scandal when he appointed a New York tavern keeper named Sam Fraunces to the new post of steward, responsible for keeping the president well fed and for arranging state dinners for visiting dignitaries. Fraunces took his duties seriously, saying, “While General Washington is president of the United States, and I have the honor to serve him as steward, his establishment shall be supplied with the very best of everything that the country can afford.” Fiscal conservatives trying to balance the new country’s books after an expensive revolutionary war were outraged by Fraunces’s free-spending ways, but Washington kept him on until, the story has it, he discovered that his steward had paid the outrageous sum of three dollars for a single fish. He fired Fraunces, and for the rest of his term budget-minded critics of the government had nothing to complain about.

Andrew Jackson of Tennessee had less refined tastes than George Washington’s. During his time in office (1829–1837) he was often criticized for hosting drunken parties in which his friends from the wild frontier showed their enthusiasm by breaking White House china and the occasional window. But Jackson came under more criticism still when he refused to recharter the Bank of the United States, a private corporation in which the federal government held a substantial block of stock. Westerners and populists detested the bank, and so did Jackson, who denounced it as an instrument of monopoly and special privilege, saying, “Our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress.” That may have been so, Jackson’s critics allowed, but even so the bank was well managed and kept the economy on course. When the bank dissolved after Jackson ordered that the federal government cease making deposits, panic ensued. Jackson eventually had to charter a new national bank under rules that, albeit with many changes, still apply today. Jackson wasn’t happy about the outcome. He threatened to hang anyone who opposed him.

Until recently, Andrew Johnson (1865–1869) was the only American president to have been impeached. Historians are now inclined to the view that Johnson did no wrong, but the politicians of his time hated the Tennessean, who served on the Union side during the Civil War. When the war ended, Johnson urged that the defeated Confederate states be readmitted to the Union without reparations. Many unforgiving congressmen felt otherwise, and they impeached Johnson for “high crimes and misdemeanors” when he fired his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, for siding with so-called radical Reconstructionists who insisted on severely punishing the southern states. Those congressmen also insisted that only they could dismiss members of the cabinet, and they passed the Tenure of Office Act—which was later ruled unconstitutional—to make sure that this would be so. Johnson escaped conviction by just one vote, but to this day he is remembered, like Richard Nixon, largely for having touched off a scandal in government.

Calvin Coolidge, a taciturn New Englander, reasoned that by keeping his mouth closed he’d keep out of trouble. The technique usually worked, but Coolidge had a habit that Ronald Reagan shared, and that brought both presidents much criticism. Coolidge, it seems, loved his afternoon nap—which often lasted for three or four hours, on top of eight or nine hours of normal nighttime sleep. Coolidge had a sense of humor about his penchant for sawing logs, even if his political opponents did not; once, when an aide awakened him from a sound midday sleep, Coolidge asked, “Is the country still here?” Coolidge also argued that the country benefited from his nap habit—after all, he said, he couldn’t initiate any potentially costly federal actions while he was asleep.

But there is no time to sleep now. Godspeed, Mr. President. Controversy awaits—but also, it is to be hoped, so do glory and greatness.