tv QA CSPAN August 1, 2016 6:00am-7:01am EDT
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support a progressive agenda and start fighting for the policies that bernie sanders talked about. we want to have affordable college, we want more progressives in congress and it does not matter which state. every victory you get is another vote and that is the lesson we need to learn. >> you can see the rest of that discussion from the net roots nation conference tonight on c-span. >> coming up next, q&a with author and journalist joshua , kendall. then at 7:00, washington journal is live with your calls and headlines.
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>> this week on q&a, journalist and author joshua kendall. he discusses his book "first dads." brian: joshua kendall. author of first dads. what is this book about and where did you get the idea? mr. kendall: my last book was obsessives, and i did profiles of seven american icons were control freaks, from -- icons who were control freaks, from thomas jefferson to steve jobs. these were people with character disorders that had difficulty relating to other people but were amazing movers and shakers. i wrote a chapter on jefferson. jefferson, of course, is america's most articulate proponent of freedom and most articulate enemy of tyranny. with his own daughters, he was a control freak.
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he told them what to do, what to wear. jefferson also was an amazing politician. we all know how brilliant he was. but in the election of 1804, he was reelected by about 75% of the vote and it brought up the question of how one the nation and how one leaves the family. how one the nation and leads the nation. jefferson was a great visionary thinker and a great leader, but as a dad, so-so. he also neglected his daughters a little bit. when he went to paris he sticks , them at a convent school. one of his daughters famously had to be shepherded from london when she comes to visit him in paris. this question of how one leads a nation and a family, and sometimes there is a big , disconnect between the public and the private man. another example would be franklin roosevelt, who was a great communicator.
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he was one of the great presidents of the 20th century. he got us through the great depression, the nazis. most americans feel when he dies in april 1945, as if they have lost a father. but with his own kids, he is kind of distant. his own kids literally hold him up. fdr gets polio in 1921 and his comeback in 1924, he is leaning on his son, james. where fdr as president holds of the nation, his relationship with his kids is topsy-turvy and his kids take care of him at various points in his life. his kids hold him so he can hold the nation. another president of the same mold perhaps the 20th century's , best public and president, ronald reagan. great communicator, great, inspiring leader.
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got americans to feel great at about themselves. but with his own children he was also very distant and this came out when nancy reagan died earlier this year. a lot of the commentary was about their terrific marriage. but the bond often left their children feeling excluded. that was sort of the governing thesis of the book. i wanted to look at how one leads the nation and how one leads a family. sometimes, the president is the same and public and in private. john adams was an authoritarian president, he gave us the alien and sedition acts in in 1798. he was also what i called a tiger-dad. he really was very tough with his kids and very authoritarian.
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he tells john quincy, his eldest, you will either be president or be a failure. john quincy lives up to the challenge, but his two brothers do not do so well. the struggle with alcoholism. adams would be an authoritarian president, an authoritarian dad. truman was a connector as both a president and a dad in the same way that obama i think as a connector as a president and a dad. i describe both obama and truman as nurturing dads. margaret truman once described herself as a total daddy's girl. obama, whatever everyone thinks about his politics, most are very proud that he has read all seven volumes of "harry potter" to malia. obama and truman both of the -- both get the same kind of criticism that they are too soft. republicans have been criticizing obama for giving away the store to the iranians.
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truman had that same criticism that he was too soft in his , decisions. but his public self was very similar to his private self. i think that is also true with obama. brian: 43 men have been president. 153 children? mr. kendall: that depends on if you count the illegitimate children. brian: i'm not. five presidents had no children. he most children born to anyone -- legitimate -- 15. what about the five that did not have any children? what impact did it have on them and the presidency? mr. kendall: the first, george washington, that was very significant in our history. washington writes in his first inaugural, he never actually
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says it, but he writes something to the effect of -- you can trust me, americans, because i do not have any biological children and is therefore there is no danger i will pass on the reins of power to a child. the last thing we wanted in the 1780's is a monarch. americans seem to hate dynasties, to this day. i wrote an op-ed a year ago when jeb bush announced -- and i think some of his problems had to do with this hatred of dynasty. washington was one. he was actually a very sweet dad. he is an interesting case because he had a very critical mother. this comes out -- the argument that ron turn now lays out his terrific biography, that washington had a very difficult mother. he developed a sense of control as a child. that became his sense of control and decorum as a leader.
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he said to himself, i will not be the lousy parent i had. his father died when he was about 14 and he decided to be very sweet. he really made an effort with martha's children. he is a nurturing dad. not quite as gifted as a parent because it did not come naturally, he worked at it. but nothing truman and obama, naturally. because they had a lot of support as children, they were very nurturing. james polk did not have any biological children. another case is james buchanan. james buchanan is our only bachelor president. his new biography i read about in the works that will argue that buchanan was gay, and that seems to check out. but buchanan adopted his niece.
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so, the five who did not have biological children all adopted children. you can see from those relationships, you can get a sense of what they were like as family leaders. what is so interesting about children as opposed to wives, his obvious leave and tell something about character, about how i man interacts with his wife. but the children are really powerless. women, it is certainly -- is more of an equal relationship. maybe not so equal in the 18th century. children are, they are really at the mercy of their parents. what can they do? you get a sense of how a president treats someone who is powerless. a really interesting example was james garfield. president in 1880. the book starts with garfield -- i was so moved by how sensitive he was to his boys.
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the book starts in july of 1881, garfield is about to go to the reunionee union -- 25th at williams college with his two sons were about to start at williams college. he is jumping around the bed with them and singing gilbert and sullivan songs with them. you get a sense he is a tune to what his children were feeling. garfield also had tremendous empathy to african-americans. in his inaugural, he wanted to make that a centerpiece of his administration. sadly, that day he goes to union station a few blocks from here and gets shot. he dies a couple months later. of course, jim crow sets in and race relations are horrible for the next 80 years. if you have an watching a news the summer, race relations are still in not great shape.
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brian: warren harding had no children. but tell the warren harding story. mr. kendall: his wife had a child and he also had some grandchildren. he never was seen with those grandchildren. so, he had some grandchildren through his wife like washington. washington was very proud of taking care of his grandchildren. harding, no one knew about it. harding, i have a chapter in the book called double dealing dads , dads with illegitimate children. harding is one of the well-known examples. he had a mistress, a young woman -- he was in his 50's when he was president. he had a young woman from ohio in her early 20's and the a -- they were having a sexual relationship. no one knew about it and the first inkling came in 1928, five years after his death, when she writes a memoir. no one believes her. she said the president fathered her daughter.
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no one believes her. the rest of the mainstream press says, no way. in the 1960's, a harding biographer stumbling upon some manuscripts in ohio, and he finds 200 love letters that harding wrote to another woman. those letters were recently released by the library of congress. then people say, if he could carry on with this other woman, maybe there was something to her allegations. then last summer, ancestry.com did dna testing and she was telling the truth. brian: how long do they all live and how long did kerry phillips live? mr. kendall: kerry phillips lived about 20 years after harding's death. brian: how close to the oval
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office did the harding love affair get? mr. kendall: if you want to go for details, i think it was sex in the coat closet. brian: of the oval office? mr. kendall: yes. and he does not leave the daughter any money in his will, and that is why she writes the book. the harding family thinks she is a money grabber. the evidence does seem to check out now especially with the dna. brian: how many interviews did you do with ancestors or people who knew something about these presidents? mr. kendall: i do 18 of the presidents in depth. six chapters. each chapter i focus on three presidents with illegitimate children. i focus on harding, grover cleveland, 1884. then tyler.
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john tyler, who apparently had lots of slave children. i do 18 presidents in depth. in many of those cases, i spoke to descendents. john tyler, he is born in 1790 and i spoke to his grandson, which is amazing. his grandson was born in 1928. brian: his grandson has alzheimer's? mr. kendall: yes. the reason for that huge age discrepancy has to do with the theme of that chapter, that tyler was a lusty fellow and he was having children when he was about 70. one of tyler's sons was having children when he was 70, and that was when harrison was born. brian: let me quote something you used from a professor. you say that tyler often boasted about having fathered a
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staggering total of 52 children with black women over the course of his life. if you happen to talk to darrell dance -- darrell dans? mr. kendall: i interviewed darrell dans and she has written a book quoting a lot of present-day tyler's -- present-day people who claim to be tyler's. in that chapter, i lay out the the and i think circumstantial evidence is pretty compelling. i'll so have a photo of one of the black tyler's who looks a lot like tyler. i think the tyler allegations are kind of where the jefferson allegations were a generation ago. now there is dna evidence, but until annette gordon reed -- the harvard professor, started writing her terrific books about sally hemmings, most journalists
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and historians poo-pooed that. there was compelling circumstantial evidence about jefferson. i make the argument that the tyler case meets the same -- there's a lot of circumstantial and there may one day be dna evidence. brian: i want to focus on tyler for a minute because out of all the chapters, it seems his life was extraordinary. 15 children. how did that divide up between wives? and those were legitimate. mr. kendall: i make a joke that was the mostet fertile election in history. there are allegations that he was from -- he may have had four black children. 10 from harrison and 15 from child or -- from tyler from two marriages. even if we include the white
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children, there are 10 from harrison, 15 from tyler from two marriages. eight from his first wife, 7 from his second wife. andfirst wife dies in 1842, then he marries a beautiful woman 30 years younger with an , hourglass figure in 1844, julia tyler. then he has seven more children with her. the allegations about the black children go back 30 years. brian: how much of these former presidents having children by black slaves, in most cases, is new information? mr. kendall: the jefferson is well-known but the other presidents, it is not well-known. what i found was so interesting, was that martin van buren's vice
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president richard johnson had black children, and that was known in the 1830's. johnson was eventually kicked off the ticket in 1840 because of opposition. as i quote one of tyler's alleged slave children who told a newspaper in the 1840's, such things happen on plantations, preferring to the slave masters having children with black women. it was not as rare as we think today. brian: from your book, in 1845, a administration critic accused the president of staging wild sex parties with his two would -- with his two adult sons robert and john junior, both of , whom worked as presidential aides. again you are talking about john
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tyler. what kind of a person was he? mr. kendall: john tyler was a very tempestuous person. this is the chapter on doubledealing dads, and i focus on harding, tyler, and grover cleveland. an argument that runs through that is that these were all compartmentalized men, often men who have affairs are that way. in fact, both cleveland and harding had dual personalities. cleveland refers to himself as having two personalities -- grover the good, who was the politician, and he is considered a pretty decent president, in the top half of a lot of presidential polls. he had grover the good, and big steve. use known in buffalo as a womanizer in a drinker. harding had dual personalities. he even had a name for his member -- jerry.
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jerry was the kind of sexual side of harding that had the affair. brian: did he use that word in his relations? mr. kendall: privately. jerry, he would use that name. tyler, i did not come up with evidence of a second name, but very compartmentalized. he can be a southern gentleman but he also had an aggressive side. when he was in grade school, he bound and gagged a teacher. i wrote a piece comparing it to donald trump. donald trump punched out his third grade music teacher. you may remember, he then went to military school and had behavioral problems. tyler was a little like that. he is very compartmentalized. he could be a southern gentleman. with his children it was, do as
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i say, not as i do. brian: and those were his children we are talking about? mr. kendall: yes. i try to relate the parenting to the politics. for instance, grover cleveland had an illegitimate child that he really had nothing to do with, and i argued that he kind of betrayed that child. but as a president, he was quite solid. tyler kind of the trade the black children and he also in a sense but to write the country. -- betrayed the black children and he also in a sense betrayed the country. when the civil war starts, we have five ex-president's and tyler is the only one who signs up for the confederacy. he will be in the legislature of the confederate house of representatives. lincoln can't stand tyler come
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-- can't stand tyler, even though lincoln was a wig in the 1840's. tyler is the only president whose death was not mourned. lincoln refused. brian: you say he left some of his kids out of his will? mr. kendall: his first family, he left them out of his will. i argue he kind of betrayed his country and had this penchant for betraying his kids. at the same time, what is so interesting about tyler is he was kind of a wheeler and dealer and got some things done. his biggest economic was getting -- accomplishment was getting us texas. he was kind of a trickster. i guess what i'm really interested in looking at fathering is trying to capture the complexity of human beings, and fathering is kind of a w in to character. we tend to think that this is a bad guy or a good guy, but you see that a lot of these men who
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had been president had different parts. they were compartmentalized and some can be very laudable and some could be disappointing and horrified us. brian: where do you live? mr. kendall: boston. brian: what do you do? mr. kendall: author. brian: full-time? when did that start? mr. kendall: this is my fourth. brian: what did you do before that? mr. kendall: journalists. i wrote on health care for business week. i freelanced. a lot of health and science. brian: did you grew up in boston? mr. kendall: manhattan. brian: where did you go to college? mr. kendall: yale. brian: you did some lecturing at yale. mr. kendall i have a small : affiliation with my college i spent a lot of time researching at yale. that kind of reconnected me with my alma matter.
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i had to spend time in new haven. brian: what led you into writing in the first place? mr. kendall: i guess maybe -- this book is dedicated to my own father. my own father was kind of a tiger-dad. i relate to john eisenhower, ike's kid. my father was -- i resume he -- recently wrote a piece in slate about my father because his history was amazing. i father was a secret nazi jew. my father was born in romania in 1925. my grandfather was a soldier in world war i in austria, saw some anti-semitism and decided to convert. my father was raised catholic
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and he was going to just with school in the 19 -- just with school in theit 1940's. the nazis marched in, and he served in the nazi army as a jew. that was the safest place for him to survive the holocaust. brian: did they know? mr. kendall: they did not know he was a jew. my father then moves to the new york in the 50's. i didn't know until i was about 12. i thought he was catholic. brian: did they raise you catholic? mr. kendall: they raised me without religion. my father went to jesuit school and he spoke like 10 languages and would recite latin. i loved words and writing as a kid. i have a very complicated relationship with him. on one level, he is very inspiring, another level, very tough. i connected with john
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eisenhower, who loved dwight eisenhower, but he was very tough. john eisenhower died a couple years ago, he wrote military histories and was very inspired by his father. but he also found his father tough to take at times. brian: what does it mean to be a tiger-dad? mr. kendall: ike is a tiger-dad. john eisenhower graduates from west point on june 6, 1944. that was tough to turn down. i have a scene in the book where he graduates and right after graduation, he goes to visit ike at the front. he is a nervous wreck, he has no idea how d-day is going. he is in full tiger-dad mode. he criticizes john. he is all over john's bidding. john gets a speck of dust in his uniform and is horrified.
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tend- we forget because we 1950'snder ike from footage when he was a doddering golfer, but he was a great physical specimen. people play tackle football in the army and he once tackled jim thorpe in a game. john said that ike never hit him, but if he had he would have killed him. john said he was born standing at attention. he was terrified of his father. at the same time, he admired him. that is kind of what tiger-dad -- tiger dads do they push the , kids really hard. brian: when do you remember your own father pushing you the hardest? mr. kendall: when i was in high school and he was telling me to be in the military. when i was 16, i was fighting for hitler. pushing me to get into college and study. again johnate --
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, adams was very tough on john quincy. in a weird way, that was my inspiration to be a writer. i've always wanted to be a writer. brian: how much of being in hitler's military impacted the way he was as a father? mr. kendall: it is very complicated because on the one hand, he knew that hitler was a nut, a mass murderer. on the other hand, there is some kind of weird admiration for hitler. my father as a mentioned in the sing thery, used to horse vessel lead in the shower. horse vessel was a nazi martyr. it is the nazi national anthem. if you sing it berlin today, you will get arrested. it is serious business. i was exposed to that. there are not too many jews for whom these chilling lyrics bring out memories of a frolicking father. he has this weird tie to the
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nazis. the rise and fall of the third reich, and the 1970's my father's copy was framed. he takes the dust jacket off and clips out the swastikas and saves them neatly. he says, i do not want the swastikas to go to waste. at the same time he would say -- hepler is horrible and i would say my mother was jewish and i would say, dad, i consider myself jewish. he would say, josh, you are just like hitler. hitler considered judaism a race. it is a very interesting argument and i wish i could have had it with him in terms of fleshing out the intellectual side of what judaism is. is it a race, a culture, a religion? he got so adamant. what i talk about in the slate piece is the terror that he must
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have felt. it must never have left him. at age 16, if it had been discovered that he was jewish, he could have been shot. brian: when did he die? mr. kendall: about two years ago and the book is dedicated to him. obviously i was thinking about him a lot, especially after he died. brian: back to tyler in -- and cleveland. not talked about how john tyler became president in the first place. mr. kendall: william henry harrison, 68 years old, has a cold on inauguration day after giving a speech for a couple hours. tyler, his vice president. -- tyler is vice president under harrison. harrison dies a month into his administration. then he is considered the accidental president. he is the first vice president to become president.
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tyler took a very strong stand. there was some question about whether he was really in acting -- really an acting president or if he was actually the president. tyler took a strong stance and said i'm the real deal. that was part of his personality. tyler liked to the control. he would say that no matter what the constitution said. he had a strong constitutional argument that was eventually fleshed out in the 27th amendment that the vice president takes office. that is part of tyler's doing and he set the pathway for all the other vice presidents. going to gerald ford, people who are not elected president. brian: the story about how he married his second wife and the story of the vote? mr. kendall: his second wife, tyler's first wife dies in he is
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-- and he is quite flirtatious with every eligible woman who comes his way. brian: you said he chases them around the white house. mr. kendall: he chases julia, the belle of long island. she's on a boat with the ship of her father, and there is an accident and her father dies and she literally jumps into tyler's arms and that becomes the basis for the courtship. i argue that tyler, he ends up becoming a father to his own wife. he is 30 years older than her and he ends up becoming a father figure to his wife just like harding was a father figure to his 20-year-old. brian: the story, it is on the potomac. was it a navy ship? mr. kendall: there was an explosion on board and several people, including her father and
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i think his secretary of state also dies, there were some prominent people. brian: you call this chapter the doubledealing dad. you say this doubledealing dad would also emerge as a surrogate father for his own wife. mr. kendall: she's not interested in dating tyler at first, and once she loses her father, the loss is so severe that tyler is kind of, he kinds -- he kind of plugs the hole. he becomes the husband and father figure. julia becomes very influenced by everything that tyler says and she is from the north from long island, and she immediately, i think the saddest paragraph in the chapter, she immediately sort of starts parroting
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everything that tyler says and she and tyler go away for a couple months in and they go 1844 back to the house in sherwood forest. brian: down in southern virginia. mr. kendall: that is where i met harrison, the grandson. he gave me a tour. while they were away, about a 10-year-old slave boy ate some dirt and dies. julia writes a letter to sibling and says there goes $300. it just seems like she has totally bought into, you would think someone from the north would accept it. she buys into his mindset and it seems like her, she is not a fully formed person when she marries him and that's where he is a father figure to her. brian: and all the presidents
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that you covered, did you find out anything that no one knew? mr. kendall: i interviewed chip carter and i say some new things about jimmy carter. people forget, most of us only think of amy and we forget that jimmy had three sons and as jimmy has acknowledged in books, without those three sons, he probably never would have been president. he is on "what's my line" in 1974. he stumps the pound. no one knows who he is. if we have long campaigns today, i think we have jimmy carter to blame. he is the first person who really takes iowa seriously. he has three sons and they're
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all married, and he has a staff of six, and he did not have any money. without that staff, they are going all over the country raising small donations. i spoke to chip carter and what came out from that interview was just how tough he was of the -- as a father. we tend to think jimmy carter, his biggest accomplishment as president was the camp david accords, he won a nobel prize, peace prize and there's no question that as a politician and post president, he is committed to peace and extremely concerned about talking problems through but what was shocking , was that in his own family he was very tough. he had a philosophy of spanking and jack carter, his eldest son came up to him in the 1980's and
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said dad, i think you ruined my life with your harsh parenting. to carter's credit, he takes jack seriously. he always works at everything, and he takes jack seriously and has written about it in a couple of his books. he tells jack, my own dad was tough. jimmy carter was born in the 1920's. getting whooped by your dad in the south in the 1920's was common. he realizes unwittingly that he passed on the harsh parenting he received to his sons and makes amends. i was in atlanta giving and talk -- giving a talk and i ended up passing on a book to jimmy carter to his grandson, a political consultant and his grandson, james earl carter, is the one who found the 47% tape that mitt romney said last
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election that is not concerned about the 47%. jimmy carter's grandson found that. gave it to "rolling stone." i met him and i passed on a book to his grandfather and i said, to america's best post president and also to america's best post presidential dad for the courage to become a father he had always longed to be and i was so moved by how carter really acknowledged that he had not been quite the dad. carter is in my first chapter , called preoccupied dads and that is the largest category. most people who become president are obsessed with politics and if you are obsessed with obtaining power and keeping power, you're not going to have a lot of time for children and that was true of the three people i profile in that chapter.
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franklin roosevelt, lyndon johnson who famously said i think about politics only 18 hours a day. brian: what did you learn from his daughter lucy? mr. kendall: i learned he did -- gave lucy the johnson treatment. i was so amazed, i'm not a lbj expert, but just how much he got done on the first couple of -- in the first couple of years before vietnam, amazing amount of legislation. through the johnson treatment and cajoling, he also did to his daughter. the public and the private. brian: how much did his daughter know about all of the mistresses he had? mr. kendall: i don't think his daughter knew much about it. johnson also comes out in the doubledealing dad's chapter. there is a mistress who wrote a memoir which includes canceled checks about a son who died in
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the 1990's. johnson once bragged to his staff that i had more women by accident than kennedy had by design. johnson was quite the ladies man and that has not come through in a lot of biographies. brian: which children, 153 legitimate children, 43 men, which had the worst relationship with their father or went on to live bad lives? mr. kendall: the saddest case was a suicide that may have been a result of a contentious relationship with a father. i told you that john adams was a tiger dad. be president or else. john quincy does the same thing to his firstborn and gives him the name george washington. with that kind of freight, you know what is expected. george washington adams was a smart kid, goes to harvard, wins
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the boylston prize, a big award over ralph waldo emerson. he goes up there and is smart as a whip but is a little shy and he just finds his father very oppressive. in his 20's, and 1820's, george washington starts drinking, is trying to work as a lawyer and then has an affair with an irish chambermaid which results in a kid. in 1929, john quincy adams is voted out of office, going back -- i'm sorry, 1829. in march of 1829, he is coming from washington going back to , boston, writes george washington and says please come to washington and help me move. george washington is terrified that his father will find that his life is a mess and he has an
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illegitimate kid. on the boat to washington, he committed suicide. he jumped off the boat. you can't say that his father killed him off. that would be crude. but you can say there was a tremendous amount of stress in that relationship. probably has a mental issue or other factors involved. what is so moving is that john quincy has an amazing comeback. after his presidency, he goes to the house of representatives and becomes this fiery abolitionist or quasi abolitionist and i think that death changed his life. out of that pain, he wanted to do something with the rest of his life. brian: you talked to a couple psychiatrists, medical doctors. why? mr. kendall: my interest is in
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personality. i think we have to try to understand the psychology. gerald post at george washington university, he's done psychological profiles of political leaders from bill clinton to saddam hussein. what i'm interested in is understanding what makes people take and when we think of presidents we tend to think of list of policies. coolidge, low taxes. roosevelt, the new deal. i'm trying to change that and have people think of them as decision-makers. how do they make decisions? i think seeing how they make decisions inside the family can flesh out our understanding of them. brian: chapter five is the grief stricken. i want to ask about somebody, william mckinley. you have calvin coolidge and the
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loss of his son and franklin pierce and the loss of his son and a couple children. what about william mckinley? mr. kendall: mckinley loses two children in the 1870's and as with john quincy adams, out of that tragedy comes some kind of energy and resolve and mckinley goes into politics in 1876 and his wife is very shaken. she developed a stroke and will be invalid for the rest of her life. i think there is a comparison between mckinley and roosevelt. at some level, franklin roosevelt, polio makes the politician, that he becomes deeper after he has polio, develops more empathy and is just a better speaker and i think the same with mckinley. out of the tragedy, he kind of
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develops a brand of, even though he did not have children, he is a seitive family man taking care of his invalid wife. americans fall in love with mckinley for that reason. he is very popular in 1896 and his wife is very fragile. mckinley, out of the tragedy, comes the political identity and tries to -- he is even keel and try to get everyone to get along. the pierce case is on the most -- one of the most horrific things i discovered. pierce in january of 1853, he is on a train going back to new hampshire and his third and only surviving kid gets his head split open during accident and pierce has to pick up his own son with a hole in the head and if you talk to a psychiatrist, that is the worst kind of experience.
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losing a child in a violent accident is the worst of the worst. his wife literally goes psychotic and starts writing letters to all favorite dead children. pierce is considered one of our worst presidents and he did nothing to stop the slide into the civil war. and i think that at the record. it was not an effective president, but i think you need to understand that something was going on inside of him. it does not explain away the lousy presidency, but it does it adds some context. i think grief has a huge impact on america. that's affected campaign 2016. joe biden would have been fighting tooth and nail against hillary clinton this past spring if he had not lost beau and a child before that. a lot of historians ignore the family life.
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it think it is squishy stuff. why should we care about the kids? look at this election. this has been affected by biden's family life and franklin pierce, his presidency. family life may be huge impact. -- made a huge impact. coolidge is another case. calvin junior dies in july 1924. when coolidge dies nine years later, dorothy parker of "the new yorker" famously said how could they tell? what she is referring to to the fact nine years coolidge was not really alive. he was sleeping, taking these long naps, sleeping as much as 11 hours a day. before the death of his child, he was a dynamo. there's an earthquake in japan in 1923. he's one of the first national leaders to respond to it. his very energetic. -- he was very energetic. he loses it and becomes lethargic and probably would
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have run for president in 1928. he could have run. there were no term limits. he could have run, and it would have been a second full term. he would have run had it not been for the loss of a child. brian: back to franklin pierce, you say the president who would continue to don black gloves for years everyday? mr. kendall: the observers in washington said that the white house is like a morgue. it cast a pall on the entire administration. what is so moving, lincoln loses willie. his 11-year-old son. one of the first people he years -- here's from is franklin pierce, who is still around. he says, mr. president, i know exactly what you are going through. i wrote in "the new york times" about presidential grief that , there are two pathways. one is post-traumatic stress, someone like coolidge was out of it or pierce who is out of it.
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the other pathway is hinted at, posttraumatic growth. which means that the person still experiences lost and is sickened by it, john quincy adams, out of that pain, come -- comes something amazing. some kind of energy. i think that happened with lincoln. he loses willie in 1862 and right around the same time he becomes this amazing civil war leader who is hell-bent on winning the war. he steps of the military campaign and uniting the country and willie was his favorite kid. and a few days his shot, i -- before he was shot, he says i thought about willie every single day. out of that pain comes some kind of heroism. brian: franklin pierce went on to be defeated and the election, -- in his reelection, but his wife did not make an appearance for the first year.
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you say because his son was killed. he put his hands in his pocket while talking about his beloved hawthorn. who is hawthorn? mr. kendall: nathaniel hawthorne, the scarlet letter, he was his buddy from college. no, i willquote is, not take them out of my pockets, i am in the country and i like to feel the comfort of it. mr. kendall: his wife becomes really crotchety. hawthorne writes a letter and says don't worry about not sending the invitation to the white house, as long as jane is there, i'm not so keen on going. she becomes really difficult. pierce has a problem with alcoholism early in his life and she makes some references to it, undermining her husband. all of the stress that pierce had to deal with, he had the violent death in front of his face, his wife collapsing, i think we have to take the family considerations, they are part of
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the historical record as well. brian: who else did you talk to? mr. kendall: what i really enjoyed with franklin roosevelt, i spoke to a lot of the grandchildren. franklin roosevelt had five children. franklin roosevelt's children did not do so well. he had five children who had 19 marriages. one was ellie seagraves, daughter of anna, roosevelt's eldest child. she was at roosevelt's inauguration and john botegur, another child of anna, he told me this amazing story. roosevelt was very charming, he did not connect. people felt like they did not know him. but they could be charmed by him.
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that is why the skills of a politician are not the same as the skills of a parent. roosevelt was a consummate politician but he really charmed john and had this wonderful memory of sitting on roosevelt's bed and reading the sunday funny papers. brian: in the acknowledgments you talk about belong to the -- belonging to the biographers association. biographers international organization what is that? , mr. kendall: a group of biographers and we meet every year at a conference. i'm on the board and every year we celebrate a biographer. ron chernau i guess is a household name now because of hamilton. we celebrated him one year, and stacy schiff, just america's -- a worldwide group led by the american contingent. we get together for annual conferences to discuss biography
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and how to tell stories. brian: how would you describe a biographer? mr. kendall: i think biographers just love information. we just try to go after everything. we can deal with the writing later. i think readers know what is on the page, but they don't know that to get that one paragraph it took, sometimes it can take a two-week trip or going to -- going through mountains and mountains of documents. it is wanting to know everything. i think that is what characterizes us. brian: you said that since 22 presidential children have attended harvard, 15 more than yale, the second-most popular academic destination, i also found it useful to visit the harvard university archives.
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did these children that attended harvard, did they get in because they were smart or because they were sons or daughters of presidents? mr. kendall: there was a piece i wrote for politico because obama isma -- malia going to the number 23 at harvard. she is taking a gap year this year. about nine presidents have attended harvard and when the president goes to harvard, they often do very well. barack obama was the editor of law review. john f. kennedy, his senior thesis became his first book. rutherford b. hayes was a distinguished graduate of the law school. until recently, the kids have not done so well. i spent some time at hyde park and a lot of the kids were roosevelts. franklin roosevelt's son james, i read his letters to his father from harvard and he struggled with german.
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he ended up flunking german and never graduated. roosevelt's kids were partyers. brian: another thing about sources, i viewed additional unpublished letters between charles adams and his father. eight letters have been reported as missing. there's an unpublished memoir. on the page before that, there's another unpublished memoir. how is it that after all these years, someone like you, you walk in and see something never published? mr. kendall: what you're talking about is archival resources. letters that are in the archives or a memoir in the archives and publishers, george washington adams wrote that is not a well known figure and wrote a memoir about his life. if you put it in barnes & noble, no one will read it. it will be of interest to
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historians. my method was to read to make -- read the major biographies and then do my own digging. i went to major archives. the massachusetts historical society has all the adams papers. john adams and john quincy adams. it also has the jefferson papers. people think, thomas jefferson virginia guy, everything must be , in charlottesville. actually, his family marries a coolidge, and all the papers, the bulk of the papers are in -- are insachusetts the massachusetts historical society. brian: have you decided what your next biography will be about? mr. kendall: i haven't finalized the topic. i spent so much time on the presidential families, i'm just not sure what the angle is.
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this is a new angle. there was a book on presidential children that came out. what i thought was so exciting was, it is not just about presidential children, it is about the interactions with the fathers. i want to look at a new angle. brian: you associated closest with john eisenhower the son of , dwight eisenhower. of all the other dads, who would you not like to have been the son of? mr. kendall: i think john quincy adams was really tough. brian: number one reason? mr. kendall: he had a son who is 30th in his class at harvard and he said don't come home for christmas. i will feel nothing but shame. there were 75 students in the class. brian: joshua kendall has been our guest. he is the author of "first dads." he lives in boston.
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we thank you very much for joining us. mr. kendall: it has been a pleasure. ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q-and-a.org. "q&a" programs are also available as c-span podcasts. >> if you liked this program, here's some others you might enjoy. evan thomas, author of "being nixon." -- on his book about the lives of children of dictators.
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and fred kaplan who shares his , biography of john quincy adams. you can find those videos and more online at www.c-span.org. morning,n c-span this washington journal is next. will hearnoon, we from the director of the national park service, which celebrates its 100th anniversary. a prime minister of singapore will speak as part of his weeklong visit to the u.s. journal,s washington we will preview the 2016 electoral map, including key house and senate races. for the center of politics at the university of gent -- virginia joins us. editor patrick tucker talks about the hacking of dnc e-mails and its potential impact on the presidential race.
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-- with the center for presidential transition discusses how the clinton and trump campaigns are each preparing to occupy the white house after the november election. ♪ host: good morning. monday, august 1, 2016. welcome to "washington journal." president obama will be briefed at the pentagon on the fight against isis. this week, both donald trump and hillary clinton are set to get their first national security briefings as presidential candidates representing the republican and democratic parties. we will talk about that later in the program. we thought we would start this morning asking you which candidate will be better on national security? for republicans
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