Obama owes Caroline Kennedy Big Time

Forget the $16 trillion national debt. Forget what we owe China. The greatest unpaid debt of Barack Obama, one of the greatest unpaid political debts of all time, is what the president owes Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, the daughter to John F. Kennedy.

Every day that passes with this debt unpaid, is an uncomfortable day for Barack Obama. For it is an object lesson to any future supporter. If a president can stiff Caroline Kennedy, he can stiff anybody.

It was Caroline Kennedy who made supporting Barack Obama fashionable. Her endorsement, which came on January 27, 2008 gave his candidacy the credibility and legitimacy it was lacking. It came at a time when Hillary Clinton was poised to nail down the Democrat nomination for president. As Kennedy’s father said after the Bay of Pigs disaster, “Failure is an orphan, but victory has a thousand fathers.” There are many who claim that they elected Barack Obama but no one has a greater claim than Caroline Kennedy.

For much of her life, Caroline Kennedy lived in mystery. While others sought fame she sought anonymity and privacy. In the process she became even more popular. She was a blank slate that others could write upon. And she was never lured into public to disabuse them of their notions. She sacrificed all of that in January, 2008, when she wrote her endorsement of Barack Obama.

The candidate appeared to honor that support the following December. A deal was arranged to have Mrs. Kennedy appointed to the vacated New York Senate seat. Caroline was trotted out onto television to talk about it. Her appearances were disastrous, making Sarah Palin cerebral by comparison. In only a matter of minutes, a woman whose dignity and mystery gave her a persona that transcended her White House childhood, was reduced from legendary to ordinary.

The Obama team bristled at the suggestion that they had not prepared her. She was a Kennedy, they said, the family practically invented modern politics. She had failed her audition at the New York Times. She had offended Governor Patterson, the man who would have to appoint her. It was her fault, not theirs.

A few months later Barack Obama tried again. The White House started floating Caroline Kennedy’s name as a possible ambassador to the Vatican. It was such a glaring political misjudgment that some now question the sincerity of the effort. Kennedy friend, Ray Flynn, the former Democrat mayor of Boston and the last Ambassador to the Vatican was aghast. Mrs. Kennedy ‘s pro abortion position would not fly in Rome, he warned, what were they thinking? Predictably the Church rebuffed her nomination.

This time, it was clear that the Obama White House had let her down. It is one thing to ignore a political debt. It is another to punish someone who has done you a great service.

In March, 2011, Obama finally appointed Mrs. Kennedy’s husband, Edwin Schlossberg, to the president’s commission on fine arts. It made eyes roll. It is one of thousands of honorific positions the White House passes out to lower level supporters and their friends. A third year into a presidency these positions are the scraps that have fallen to the floor and are often turned down.

Caroline Kennedy would not be the first presidential child to go unthanked for helping elect a president. Robert Tyler, son and personal assistant to his father, President John Tyler, left the White House to become prominent in Pennsylvania politics. Eventually Tyler befriended James Buchanan and encouraged him and coached him in his long career. During Buchanan’s’ run for office, Tyler was at this side, giving him a perspective that no one else could offer. But when Buchanan became president he promptly dropped Tyler. There is only one president and any other light that shines too brightly will not be tolerated. Tyler, like Mrs. Kennedy, never complained.

The perfect position for Caroline Kennedy, the obvious position, is the Court of St. James, that is ambassador to Great Britain. It is the position held by her grandfather and her uncle. It is a position that honors tradition and royalty. But Mrs. Kennedy, who wrote in her endorsement that Obama reminded her of her father, has obviously misjudged her man.

“And when it comes to judgment,” Mrs. Kennedy wrote, “Barack Obama made the right call on the most important issue of our time by opposing the war in Iraq from the beginning.”

Like much of her endorsement of Obama, it is all now only ironic. Obama has been a war president, making Republican and Democrat foreign policy virtually indistinguishable from the other. There is no New Deal, or Great Frontier. There is only old Republican style cronyism. Students must pay back their education loans at 8% interest, while members of the Federal Reserve Board can award themselves billions in interest free loans to prop up their banks.

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.

America’s Royal Weddings

As we all anticipate the coming royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton it might be fun to take a look at our own “royal weddings.”

Of course, there is no such thing as American royalty and when some make such pretensions, we quickly find a way to cut them down to size. Curiously, the same families that some might call our “royalty” others call “cursed.” The Kennedys and the Harrisons come to mind. Both were political dynasties, the Harrisons having multiple presidencies, and both were plagued by untimely deaths.
There have been 21 White House weddings, including nine presidential children and one president, Grover Cleveland. Two other presidents were married outside the White House during their time in office, John Tyler and Woodrow Wilson.

The list of weddings of presidential children is more complex. Several were married outside the White House during their father’s presidency and some of these were spectacular social events.

After the death of her father, when Fanny Hayes was married in Ohio, the sitting president William McKinley was in attendance, as well as his Cabinet. Anna Roosevelt Dall was married at the family estate in New York. In the last years of her father’s presidency, she became a powerful White House aide.

The wedding of Luci Baines Johnson was a national social event, even though it took place at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. And the small, private wedding of Julie Nixon, shortly after her own father had won the presidency, to Dwight David Eisenhower II, himself the grandson and namesake of a president, prompted widespread public interest and curiosity.

Dorothy Bush, daughter and sister to two presidents, was the only presidential child married at Camp David.

Here is a list of 23 weddings of presidential children married during their father’s presidency. Children married in the White House are underlined:

Maria Hester Monroe, Samuel L. Gouverneur,	March 9, 1820
John Adams, II, Mary Catherine Hellen	Feb. 25, 1828
Andrew Jackson Jr., Sarah Yorke	Nov. 24, 1831
Abraham Van Buren, Angelica Singleton	Nov. 27, 1838
Elizabeth Tyler, William Nevison Waller	Jan. 31, 1842
Nellie Grant, Algernon Charles Satoris	May 21, 1874
Frederick Grant, Ida Marie Honore	Oct. 20, 1874
Alice Roosevelt, Rep. Nicholas Longworth	Feb. 17, 1906
Jessie Wilson, Frances Bowes Sayre	Nov. 25, 1913
Eleanor Wilson, William Gibbs McAdoo	May 7, 1914
Anna Roosevelt, John Boettiger	Jan. 1935
Elliot Roosevelt, Ruth Googins	July 22, 1933
FDR Jr., Ethel duPont	June 30, 1937
John Roosevelt, Anne Lindsay Clark	June 18, 1938
James Roosevelt, Romelle Schneider	April 14, 1941
Elliot Roosevelt, Faye Emerson	Dec. 3, 1944
Luci Baines Johnson, Patrick John Nugent	Aug. 6, 1966
Lynda Bird Johnson, Charles Spittal Robb	Dec. 9, 1967
Tricia Nixon, Edward Ridley Finch Cox	June 12, 1971
Maureen Reagan, Dennis Revell	April 25, 1981
Patti Davis, Paul Grilley	Aug. 14, 1984
Dorothy Walker Bush, Robert Koch	June 26, 1992
Jenna Bush, Henry Hager	May 10, 2008

Obama and his girls

The planned release of President Obama’s new book, Of Thee I Sing, a Letter to my Daughters, represents a seismic change in the conventional presidential parenting philosophy.    Recent White House families, including political dynasties such as the Bushes, the Clinton’s and the Kennedy’s have all held to the idea that the less the First Children are in the limelight, the better off they will be in life.  And while history offers some dramatic exceptions to this rule, (Webb Hayes comes to mind,) events and the personal biographies of the children, themselves, seem to back this up.

The Obama’s entered the White House embracing this same view, declaring their daughters off limits    with the media.  Now, the announcement of the book tops off more than a month of speculation on the subject.  Only weeks ago the president and first lady started talking publicly about their daughters in speeches and events.  Some journalists wondered aloud if this meant the daughters were now fair game for the media.  Were the Obama’s parting with the tradition of keeping the First Kids under wraps?   Others suggested that the comments were only coincidental, that they were just slip ups from a mother and father who were naturally proud of their girls.  But a book involving the daughters, scheduled with the publishers in December, 2008, and now being announced less than two months before the congressional election, is no coincidence.

Conclusion?

Long ago, even while they were still lecturing the media on protecting the privacy of their family, the President and First Lady had made a calculated decision to eventually bring their daughters into the limelight.  The timing is surely no accident either.  Although the book will not be released until after voters go to the polls, the promotion for the book, including excerpts will take place in the weeks before.

What does it all mean?

Politicians often use their children and their pets to remind the public that they are only human, just like everybody else.  It is sometimes a plea for sympathy.  “Hey, lighten up a bit.  I am a dad, just like you.”  It is sometimes designed to help foster a personality cult.  “If you don’t like my policies, maybe you will like me, my wife and my kids, as people.”

Presidential candidates invariably use their children as surrogates.  When Ulysses S. Grant did a whistle stop tour on his way to Washington, he sent his young children out to give speeches to warm up the crowd.  Both the Kerry and Bush children were active in the 2004 campaigns.  After the nation’s infatuation with the Kennedy clan, Lyndon Johnson showcased his daughter’s weddings on national television before audiences of 50 million people.  Julie and Tricia Nixon became ornaments on their parents’ arms as they campaigned for the presidency in 1968.

And presidential kids can be powerful surrogates indeed.  If your donation to the Democrat party meant a picture in a receiving line with the governor of a state or one of the Obama girls, which would you choose?

Most First Families have been strident in protecting their personal privacy.  And the philosophy is as old as the presidency itself.  Zachary Taylor once said, “I don’t want my son near the White House when I am president.”   His son, Richard Taylor, was a famous Confederate general in the Civil War and is one of the few presidential children mentioned in history books without being identified as a member of a First Family.

After winning the presidency, Jacqueline Kennedy fiercely protected her children from the public.  There were not only the Kennedy compounds In Hyannis Port, Massachusetts and Palm Beach, Florida and the presidential retreat at Camp David, but Jackie insisted that an additional home be built in suburban Virginia so even when the family was forced to stay in Washington, she and the children could get out of the White House.  Those famous pictures of the Kennedy kids romping in the Oval Office?  They were taken while the First Lady was out of the country.

So are the Obama’s cynically using their daughters to promote their political brand, a brand that is slipping after two years of a deepening recession?

Not likely.  At least that is not likely the only reason or even the first reason.

Barack Obama’s father walked out on the family when the President was only a child.  It is very likely that his “Letter to My Daughters” represents something much deeper, a message for father’s as well as daughters.  And maybe even an indirect but special message to some African American father’s .

The President and First Lady have offered a refreshing example of parenthood in the White House for all of us.  They used their initial popularity, their political equity, to send their daughters to private schools, even though they are both big public school advocates.  They brought into the White House a beloved mother in law to keep some continuity.  They kept their promises to the children, even at political risk.  “We are going to Chicago.”  They have included them in foreign trips and sometimes conspicuously briefed them and made them a part of things.  Remember Sasha’s trench coat in the Kremlin?

This new book, Of Thee I Sing, a Letter to my Daughters will probably be as revealing as Obama’s old book, Dreams of My Father.  But not revealing of the father or the daughters, rather revealing of Barack Obama, himself, revealing of a man who conquered his demons to become president.  And revealing of a family that is forced to show its love for each other onstage before the world.  And that is probably a good thing for us all to see.

Why We Love Chelsea Clinton?

The Chelsea Clinton wedding to Marc Mezvinsky this Saturday is heading toward the history books with a full head of steam.  Driven by America’s bi-partisan respect for this dignified, private presidential child, who has endured so much, and taking place only hours from the media capital of the world, this wedding will surely rank as one of the top social events in American history.

Why do we love Chelsea?

1.  She is the ugly duckling who has become a beautiful swan.  As an insecure, twelve year old in the White House she was lampooned by Saturday Night Live and the butt of cruel partisan jokes.  Today she is a drop dead, gorgeous young lady who is having the last laugh.  She is “the comeback kid of the comeback kid.”

2.  During the White House she kept her mouth shut.  Because Chelsea refused to answer critics or even her parents’ political antagonists during those years she became a blank slate for Americans of all stripes and opinions to write upon.  They could imagine her feelings in their own way as they watched the great personal story of her family unfold.

3.  She is a survivor.  We watch reality shows with less drama than Chelsea has suffered.  To offer a comparison, the last president to be impeached was Andrew Johnson.  His son was terribly traumatized by the process and apparently took his own life shortly after the Johnson’s left the White House.  I once asked George W. Bush, “Which is harder, running for president or watching your father run for president?”  He didn’t hesitate.   It was harder to watch his father run.

We may never know the pain that Chelsea Clinton suffered alone, without a sibling or friend to trust, as every crude and intimate story of her parents’ life was passed over the transom.  But in spite of the odds she has clearly landed on her feet.  She has been resilient.

4. She has maintained her dignity.  She is Rudyard Kipling’s hero, who kept her head when all around her were losing theirs.  She has not become bitter.  She has never answered back the terrible things that have been said about her or her parents.  Not a word to a friend has surfaced.  She has remained transcendent, above the angry furor raging beneath her.

Here are five other great weddings of presidential children in American history.  Offer your own assessment of how the Chelsea Clinton wedding compares.

1. The White House wedding of Maria Monroe.  An event marred by a murder, it was the first great social event in American history.  It became the subject of Cabinet Meetings.  The uninvited diplomatic corps became enraged and the resultant furor stiffened the president’s spine as he enunciated his famous Monroe Doctrine, our most enduring foreign policy initiative.

2. The wedding of Fanny Hayes, daughter of President Rutherford B. Hayes.  She came to the White House at the same age of Malia Obama.   And the nation followed her life.  Only when both of her parents died did she finally marry.  The nation was overjoyed.  The ceremony was held in Ohio and the sitting president and his cabinet took their private trains to journey to the event.

3. The Westminster Abbey wedding of Esther Cleveland.  Now this one gets complex.  Imagine trying to explain the Clintons in one paragraph?  President Grover Cleveland married his own ward in a White House ceremony.  He was 49, she was 21.  Much of the nation was outraged.  The president did not kiss the bride at the White House wedding.  But when the couple had a child of their own, the nation was smitten.  It was not the baby’s fault.  The lives of Ruth Cleveland and later her sister Esther were followed avidly.  When Ruth died at age 12, the nation went into deep morning.  The Curtis Candy Company issued its controversial “Baby Ruth” candy bar.  When Esther finally married minor English gentry at Westminster Abbey in London, England it captured the news on both continents.

4. Alice Roosevelt may have had the greatest wedding in American history.  She is referred to by some as the first great female celebrity of the 20^th century.  She shocked the nation by smoking cigarettes in public and driving a car without a chaperone but was too popular for pulpits to condemn.  The number one hit song in the country was about her.  There was a color named for her.  Alice’s wedding to congressman Nicholas Longworth covered every inch of the front page of the Washington Post.

5. Tricia Nixon’s wedding represented the high water mark in weddings for presidential children.  After the two Johnson daughter dress rehearsals, this resulted in national television specials that ran in prime time with photographs and some film footage of the event.  Tricia Nixon Cox was a stunner, who appeared twice on the cover of Life Magazine.

Chelsea Clinton’s wedding comes in a different time.  With a world of terrorists and suicide bombers, no parent, especially a parent in political life, wants to see their daughter’s face appear on magazine covers around the world.  Privacy has become an important part of security.  But the curiosity and good wishes of the American public have no such restraints.  This wedding will be ranked by many as one of the ten greatest social events in our history.

A Chelsea Clinton wedding “rain out” more likely

With the weather forecast for Rhinebeck, New York calling for thunderstorms for five of the next seven days, the idea of a “rain out” for the July 31, 2010 Chelsea Clinton wedding is getting more attention.   We are in a drought now but it looks like changes are coming and what will the weather look like when presidential daughter, Chelsea Clinton marries Goldman Sachs banker, Marc Mezvinsky?   As we move deeper into July each weekly seven day forecast is being anticipated and for a very good reason.  Weather can be a big deal at weddings.  And it is the one thing that even Chelsea Clinton cannot control.

The wedding festivities between Marc Mevzinky’s and Chelsea Clinton are believed to be taking place at the Astor estate in Rhinebeck, 90 miles north of New York City.  Those familiar with the estate say that it was probably chosen as the site because it can easily accommodate a rain emergency.  The event will reportedly all be under tents to keep inventive paparazzi at a distance.   The sky above will likely be declared a temporary “no fly zone” by Homeland Security.  And yet, no matter how complete the contingency plans, rain can make for a different wedding.  Shuffling the 400 guests in and out during a New York downpour will require some expert planning.  The wedding pictures, with the requisite sunshine, may have to take place under hot lights or even a day or two before.

Jenna Bush and Henry Hager had to sweat out the possibility of a Texas thunderstorm on their May 10, 2008 wedding day.  There was lightning and rumbling thunder throughout the nighttime sky before the sunrise finally appeared.  The skies held all day.  If the storm had come the Bushes would have resorted to their “rain plan,” but the ranch would have become a sea of mud, with cars coming and going, sometimes driving across lawn and open grasslands.  Ladies would have been rushing into the tents, their high heels caked with mud.

Rain was a major consideration for the last White House wedding of a presidential child, June 12, 1971.  Tricia Nixon was planning a Rose Garden ceremony.  In the summertime, in Washington it rains every third day.  As in the case of the Clinton’s and the Bushes, the Nixon staff had to plan two weddings which was an enormous strain and burden on the White House.  It is why the staff had initially tried to talk Tricia Nixon out of her Rose Garden ceremony.

The morning of the Nixon wedding there were intermittent showers.  President Nixon consulted the latest Air Force weather report which anticipated a break in the clouds around 4:30 pm.  The White House permanent staff said that Tricia Nixon had nerves of steel.  She kept to plan A.  The break in the clouds came as predicted, the sun appeared, the plastic coverings were removed from the chairs and the only White House Rose Garden wedding ceremony in American history unfolded without a hitch.

Meanwhile, local residents in Rhinebeck, New York, are philosophical about the upcoming Chelsea Clinton – Marc Mezvinsky wedding.  “Maybe rain this week is a good thing,” I was told by a friend who has lived nearby most of his life.  “If it rains enough, maybe the sun will come out next week in time for the wedding.”

The Clinton’s are a family who knows well the value of contingency planning and will likely be ready either way.  And Chelsea, known for her poise and self composure is not likely to be ruffled by a little rain.

Come to think of it, the Clintons have had their share of rain in their lifetimes and come through just fine.  A tent full of celebrating friends, trapped together, with a downpour outside, and good food and talented musicians inside, everyone dressed to the nines, at one of the most important social events in our lifetime, it might just make for a glorious, unforgettable moment for the history books.  So rain or shine, Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky will tie the knot this July 31, 2010.  The skies can do what they will.

Obama’s and the Chelsea Clinton Wedding?

It’s still a possibility.

According to a knowledgeable source with ties to the Clinton’s and Obama’s there has been no final decision on whether the President and First Lady, Barack and Michelle Obama will be at the marriage ceremony or reception of the upcoming Chelsea Clinton wedding.   According to this source, while the public is being led to believe that it won’t happen, security plans are still being developed for such a possibility.

What would it mean for the wedding, for history and for both the Obama’s and Clinton’s?  Would the appearance of the Obama’s, even at the reception, upstage a private, family affair?  Or would it add prestige and honor?

In 1897, Frances “Fanny” Hayes, daughter of former president Rutherford B. Hayes, was married in Ohio.  The newly elected president, William McKinley, and the entire cabinet made the pilgrimage, McKinley taking the presidential train, the Air Force One of its day.  Did it overpower the Hayes wedding?  After all, the nation was fascinated with its new president who had been in office only days.  No, by all accounts, Fanny Hayes and her husband, Ensign Harry Eaton Smith, captured the day’s headlines.  The public had been following Fanny since her adolescent years in her father’s White House.   All of the distinguished guests only ensured that the event would be set in stone as one of the greatest social events in our short national history.

According to some recent polls, the Clintons are now more popular than the Obamas.  So it is not likely that any guest, including the president and first lady, would upstage her marriage to longtime, 31 year old, boyfriend and Goldman Sachs banker, Marc Mezvinsky.

News about the wedding has been a story in itself, with speculation that the public, media savvy Clintons have purposely dropped disinformation to help shroud the event in privacy.   Hints about the wedding last summer embarrassed news agencies when it didn’t happen.  It is now set for July 31, 2010.  Published accounts were also wrong about the dress.  It will be a Vera Wang creation, not Oscar de la Renta as widely reported.    And the location will not be at Martha’s’ Vineyard but deep on the grounds of a Clinton supporter a few hours north of New York City.

All of these efforts may not be enough to sufficiently dampen public interest.  The Jenna Bush wedding took place during a low ebb in the popularity of President Bush and at a time when the war on terror counseled as little publicity as possible.  Jenna was married at the Bush family, Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas, a rather remote location.  But the Clinton wedding will be within driving distance of the media capital of the world.   And at a time when the Clinton presidency is being viewed more favorably in comparison to his two successors.

Weddings of presidential children, no matter how carefully planned and private they wish them to be, can prompt unexpected public reactions.  When the president’s son, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. married Ethel DuPont on June 30, 1937, the couple had every expectation that their wedding would be a private, quiet affair.   The ceremony took place deep in the DuPont family compound in Delaware, far from any public highway.  But on the wedding day, several hundred thousand uninvited people lined the roads to wish the couple well.  Three companies of soldiers were brought in to escort the president’s family.  And the Army Corps of Engineers was asked to set up a makeshift kitchen.

It is exactly such moments in presidential history that have made the modern presidency more  savvy and less likely to be ambushed by either the media or the public.  And it partially accounts for the Clinton sleight of hand on the details leading up to the event.

Still, this is a polarizing presidential family, whose star is now more clearly visible in the historic firmament.  With the Clinton’s we experienced a roller coaster of emotions in public life.  Some pundits predicted that it would be hard for Chelsea Clinton to ever trust a man or ever get married.   So this wedding ceremony is a milestone that marks a marriage that has endured, a presidency that grows fonder by absence and a child who landed on her feet in spite of the odds.  The media and public may demand to know more and celebrate it with more fanfare than Chelsea, the so called Garbo of presidential children, would like.   With or without the Obama’s it will be a moment in history.

Chelsea Clinton to be married

by Doug Wead

Chelsea Clinton, daughter of President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, the sitting secretary of state, is engaged to be married.  According to an e-mail that she and longtime boyfriend, Marc Mezvinsky, sent to friends this afternoon, the wedding will take place next summer.  A spokesman for the Clinton family has confirmed it.

Chelsea, the so-called “Garbo” of presidential children, surprised reporters last year when she campaigned openly and publicly for her mother’s presidential campaign.  Her new public persona inspired “Chelsea for president” campaign buttons.  She is currently attending Columbia University.

Her boyfriend, Marc Mezvinsky, is the son of Democratic congressman Ed Mezvinsky and Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky.  Both served in the United States congress representing Iowa and Pennsylvania respectively.  Marjorie was a force to be reckoned with in Pennsylvania politics, running as the Democrat candidate for Lt. Governor in 1998 until her husband’s financial problems forced her to withdraw.  Ed Mezvinsky reportedly served a prison sentence for fraud but was released in April, 2008.

Chelsea and Marc met in Washington, DC and both attended Stanford University.  Several major news agencies have staked out the couple off and on for years.  During President Clinton’s ongoing Monica Lewinsky scandal one major television network was going to break a story about the couple’s romance but backed off out of respect for their privacy.  At the time I was working on the book, All the Presidents’ Children, and a person representing himself as an associate producer offered me his notes.  I declined.

Chelsea and Marc live in New York where she attends school and he works for Goldman Sachs.

Chelsea Clinton Wedding Watch

Jenna Bush debuts on the Today Show

Heeeeres Jenna!

Jenna Bush will debut this Friday, September 18, 2009 as a correspondent on the NBC Today Show.  It will not be the first time a presidential kid crossed over to the Fourth Estate.  Call it “Stockholm syndrome” if you will, but these kids who suffer for years at the hands of the media and watch their fathers suffer even more, quite frequently find security by joining the ranks of their tormentors.

Most recently Ron Reagan, Jr. co-hosted the talk show Connected: Coast to Coast with Monica Crowley at MSNBC.   That ran from February to December, 2005 and followed a brief stint by Mr. Reagan as a late night host on a syndicated show.  Both Ron and brother, Michael Reagan, still have their radio shows but hailing from the opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Nor did this start with television.  In 1945, Anna Roosevelt, daughter of FDR, was a super powerful White House aide to her ailing father.  When the president died Anna joined her mother, the former First Lady, as co-host of an ABC national radio program.  For years Anna attempted to launch her own newspaper from Arizona.

Anna’s brother, Elliott Roosevelt, teamed up with William Randolph Hearst, the media magnate and his father’s most bitter enemy.  And this while the president was still in office.  Elliott became director of a Hearst owned syndicate of radio stations in Texas that routinely pilloried the president.

The kids of presidents do very well as educators.  Lyon Tyler was president of William and Mary. Harry Garfield was president of Williams College.  Helen Taft Manning ran Bryn Mawr College. Today, David Eisenhower, grandson of a president, has a successful academic career at the University of Pennsylvania.

And children of presidents have written hundreds of books, award winning books.  John Eisenhower is one of this nation’s greatest military historians.  Two of the country’s most beloved and prolific mystery writers, Margaret Truman and Elliot Roosevelt, were children of presidents.  There have been a slew of great warriors, including generals and two Medal of Honor winners. Most of all, they often succeed in their family business, politics, where they have a head-start in name recognition and sometimes fund-raising potential.  But, alas, try as they may, there have not been many successful media figures, either as business persons or correspondents.

Ron Reagan’s syndicated talks show folded under pressure from competition.  Anna Roosevelt’s ABC network program fizzled after a year.  And she and her husband were never able to get their newspaper off the ground. Michael Reagan, finding his own place in talk radio has been one of the more successful.  So when Jenna Bush takes to the air waves this Friday, we will all cheer her on and wish her the best but expectations will be quite low and that will likely bring a smile to her father’s face.  The Bush family has always done well when the expectations were low.

A Chelsea Clinton Wedding?

Can a child of the White House be married in peace?

The fox and the hounds are at it again.

Rumors are flying that Chelsea Clinton will be marrying her beau, Marc Mezvinsky, the last week of August on Martha’s Vineyard.  The Clintons deny any such plans.  But the National Enquirer insists that all the signs are there—including President Barack Obama’s scheduled vacation, also on Martha’s Vineyard.

If the rumors are true, Chelsea and Marc are doing their best to have a private wedding—in the fine tradition of many other White House brides throughout history—with media hounds pursuing in full cry.

When future ambassador Frank Sayre was courting Jessie Woodrow Wilson, they would “escape the eagle eyes of reporters,” by meeting at a canal’s bank and paddling away in a canoe.  Reporters clustered around the White House for Jessie and Frank’s wedding, awaiting the new married couple’s exit, but the newlyweds sneaked out the south entrance and escaped.

Six months later, sister Eleanor married Secretary of the Treasury William McAdoo, and the press was determined not to be fooled.  But Mac, as he was called, parked four cars in various places around the White House with the shades drawn.  At the appropriate moment, Jessie and Frank jumped into one car, with three other conspiratorial couples diving into the others.  In a whirl, all four cars sped away, “pursued,” Eleanor said, “by wild-eyed reporters.”  When all was quiet at last, Mac and Eleanor calmly got into the “real” car and motored serenely away.

But can a child of the White House be married in peace if they get married after their father has left office?  For example, Ms. Clinton?

Margaret Truman said, in 1956, “I feel that marriage vows are sacred, and I hope that mine will be spared the hurly-burly attending a news event.”  She and her husband, Clifton Daniel, managed it, allowing only ten invited reporters into the church in Independence, Missouri.

Julie Nixon was married just before her parents moved into the house on Pennsylvania Avenue, insisting on a private ceremony closed to the press, and officiated by her favorite minister, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale.

In a secret ceremony that defied all odds, John F. Kennedy, Jr. and his bride, Carolyn Bissette, pulled an impossible coup on the media and wed on Cumberland Island off the coast of Georgia, in a church that didn’t even have electric lights.

But these are exceptions to the rule.  Ten-year-old Fanny Hayes was the same age as Malia when she entered the White House, but her wedding, which came long after the family had moved out of Washington—even after her father had died—still commanded stellar attention.  The sitting President and his Cabinet took trains to Ohio to be present as Fanny Hayes, daughter of Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19^th president, was wed.

And the wedding of Esther Cleveland to minor English gentry at Westminster Abbey in London was a huge international event, even though her father, President Grover Cleveland, had long ago passed from the public stage.

So the wedding of Chelsea Clinton, whenever it comes, will be a biggy.  The nation still sees her walking across the White House lawn, flanked by her mother and father, quietly taking each of their hands in her own, a teenager, holding things together.  And the nation loves her for it.  When the daughter of any former President and sitting Secretary of State gets married it is a big deal around the world. But a wedding for Chelsea?  It will be a moment for history.

Chelsea Clinton Coming out. CBS interviews Doug Wead.

And Chelsea Clinton for president? Wead on Fox.

The Obama’s: A functional family on the move

Some journalists are making a big deal out of how the Obamas are traveling to foreign ports together as a family unit. After the dysfunctional Clintons, Reagans and Roosevelts and even the Bushes, with their arcane rules of one at a time in the limelight, which meant a former president could not even be told his son was invading Iraq, it is a bit of a shock to see a working family, happy together, with dad doing his thing. In that sense, the journalists are right. This is something new.

On the other hand it is very irritating to read stories claiming that children of presidents have never traveled abroad during their father’s presidencies Anna Roosevelt was a major planner of Yalta and was there on board the Quincy, as were children of Winston Churchill. Notably, First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt was not allowed to come. Eighteen children of presidents actually served on their father’s staff at the White House and had full time jobs, some as the personal secretaries to the president.

As to children of the president traveling abroad? It is very common, one of the perks of power, and the further away from the White House the more they thrive. A trip to Europe has been almost a rite of passage for children of presidents in modern times and in earlier years, when it required a rather lengthy sea journey, it was the place where many lived both before and after the White House.

The Bush twins visited Europe during their father’s presidency, as did children of the Carters and Fords and Nixons and Eisenhowers. I actually traveled with Neil Bush to Europe during his father’s presidency. And he was all over Asia. The Kennedy kids visited Europe with their mother during JFK’s presidency.

FDR had sons in Europe during his presidency, of course in the war, but even before as tourists and businessmen. Joe Kennedy dragged Jimmy Roosevelt around with him when he sought contracts with liquor companies, anticipating the end of prohibition. And Johnny Roosevelt was in the headlines for accidentally insulting the mayor of Cannes, France.

With great fanfare, Theodore Roosevelt sent his daughter, Alice, on a foreign cruise to China and the Philippines. It captured headlines and diverted attention from his secret efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War. So this was a formal, secret use of his daughter in American foreign policy. Having Malia and Sasha along on these trips is not new.

Likewise, President Ulysses S. Grant sent his daughter on a European cruise to get her out of town. He was determined to keep the attractive Nellie from marrying someone on his staff. Like Alice Roosevelt, Nellie Grant had an on board romance and ended up marrying the man she met on the high seas.

When the Grant presidency ended the whole family took a trip around the world. The youngest, Jesse, was so impressed by the experience that he made world travel a fulltime career. Heads of state were told that the visiting young Jesse Grant was a likely future American president himself and so he milked it for all it was worth, wine, women and song.

Webb Hayes, son of Rutherford B. Hayes, was a multimillionaire, founder of what became the Union Carbide Corporation and a soldier of fortune in wars in China (the Boxer Rebellion), South Africa and the Crimea. When his father was president he was his personal secretary and bodyguard.

The Lincolns had planned a trip to Europe but America was in the middle of a terrible Civil War. Their dream trip never happened. The president was assassinated. But the First Lady made the trip years later and took their young son, Tad Lincoln, with her.

Some presidential children were raised in Europe, like Liza Monroe, who ran the White House for her father and a couple of John Adams’ sons and one of Jefferson’s daughters. George Washington Adams was born in Europe. His father and grandfather were both presidents.

When George W. Bush ran for president journalists wrote stories claiming that his foreign travel was limited to a quick visit to Israel with two other governors and a one week jaunt to China when his father was the American representative to the People’s Republic. In fact he had traveled many times to South America and Europe. His sister, Doro Bush, daughter of George H. W. Bush, was baptized in Communist China.

So Europe and foreign travel is no stranger to children of presidents. Just to the know-it-all journalists who don’t pay attention. Malia and Sasha are actually following a very predictable path. Perhaps the reason people are seeing this as new is because the Obamas are new. There were no headlines when Jenna Bush shopped the Champs Elysee but Malia and Sasha would attract a crowd of thousands.

What should we expect next? A guest appearance on a popular sitcom. Another common rite of passage for the children of presidents. And again, journalists will assure us that this too is new. “Unprecedented,” they will say, Malia and Sasha on a television show. Don’t you believe it.

What is new is that we have a functional family in the White House, a marriage that works and children who are not abused or neglected. Regardless of one’s politics, that is a bit of a new thing for Americans and that makes them fun to watch.