Disparate Housewives

...Did it keep them from serving successfully as president...

...by Noemie Emery The presidential campaign is young, yet in the lives of the candidates we already have the makings of a full season's run of Desperate Housewives...

...A son-in-law killed himself...

...his social-climbing (according to a hostile piece in an unfriendly glossy) third wife...

...It would be nice to have a president with a harmonious home life, who is happy himself, and an example to others...

...office, it is perfectly useless...

...Hostility towards their father (and mother) ran through these siblings' careers...

...There are a number of theories that make sense on paper—and, if true, would make life easy for biogra-phers—but in practice don't seem to bear scrutiny...

...would neither have lived nor have died as they did...

...Three of the top four Republican candidates have been divorced and remarried, one seems to be on the outs with his children, and one Democrat is a former first lady, elected to the Senate at first on the grounds that she had loyally stood by her husband after it turned out he had been using the Oval Office and pantries adjacent for trysts with an intern the age of their daughter, which he insisted were not really sex...

...Charles died at age 30 in a Manhattan hovel, wholly estranged from his family...

...Another endorsed his father's opponent when he ran for a third term...

...If this sounds like the extended Kennedy family, this is not a coincidence, as the combination of pressure and privilege—plus the presence of an example that may seem impossible to live up to—can have explosive results...

...Sometimes their children don't seem to interest them: There is the story of one troubled son of Franklin D. Roosevelt who had to make a formal appointment to talk to his father...

...Some poor fathers and unfaithful husbands have certainly been disorganized and unprincipled in their professional duties, but some have been quite the reverse...

...Hardly...

...they aren't often home...

...One lobbied against parts of his legislative program in Congress...

...Their union was solid, though at the time of the marriage the groom himself had been less than wholehearted, being in love with his closest friend's wife...

...But it's even nicer to have one who in the end wins the Cold War...

...Another admired political couple, John and Abigail Adams, had an idyllic marriage but made alcoholics of two out of three of their sons, and nervous wrecks out of all three...

...Reagan and Roosevelt, who communicated intense warmth to unknown millions they never met face to face, could be remote and distant from people close to them, their children included...

...Abraham Lincoln, usually rated the best of all presidents, gave us perhaps the worst First Lady in history, a self-absorbed clothes horse who may have spent even more money than Jackie but who, unlike Jackie, did not hold up well when her husband was murdered...

...John Kennedy was a devoted father (and son and brother), but a difficult husband whose egregious philandering drove his wife to distraction, and shopping...

...the put-upon wife of a former president whose indiscretions led to our second impeachment...

...To be fair to the children, presidents— like very successful people in any field—are rarely the best of all possible parents: They have giant-sized egos...

...and, saddest of all, a mother stricken with cancer, who makes use of her tragic, untouchable status to lob hand grenades at the foe...

...History tells us there is little discernible connection between a politician's public behavior and the state of his personal life...

...Thomas, the youngest, lived into his 60s, a ne'er-do-well and an embarrassment to his extended family, who were often called to make frantic visits to Boston to retrieve him following one of his drinking bouts...

...A daughter-in-law tried to commit suicide...

...As a cover for indulging our low curiosity, we are told (or tell others) that this is all heavy with portent, that it is key to resolving the Character Issue, that until you know the state of the family, you don't know the man...

...Some of the sons wrote gossipy books that accused their parents of neglect and adultery...

...In the book The Dying President, the author suggests that Eleanor's well-meant but incessant prodding and nagging may have shortened the president's life...

...What support he did get came from his old love, Lucy Rutherfurd, at that time a widow, whom his daughter Anna, sensing his loneliness, wisely helped him to visit...

...Unhappy families are not all alike, yet some have produced outstanding presidents...

...And, of course, one who wins World War II...

...they are workaholics...

...Her brother went from a career in ballet to a pseudo-career as a political maven, his sole purpose being to tear down his father's beliefs and his party to the delight of a (usually) liberal audience, crowned by an appearance at the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston, where he mocked the ideals of his father's party...

...they have other commitments...

...One left home to live with a rock star, changed her name so she wouldn't carry the name of her father, posed nude in Playboy to embarrass her father, and wrote several books—or at least, words on bound paper—that dragged her mother and father over hot, glowing coals...

...Does this speak well of Reagan or Roosevelt...

...The Father of Our Country gave his country a Mother who was a fine general's wife and first lady, stalwart at winter quarters at Valley Forge and other primitive venues, gracious at New York and then Philadelphia in the delicate role of First Mate...

...As a public embarrassment, this rivals three of the four living sons of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, who also took pleasure in running down Dad...

...This is possibly true, but when it comes to predicting performance in Noemie Emery is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard...

...Once in the Oval Office when the son started talking, the president picked up a paper and started to read...

...Two sons worked for their father's bitterest enemies, and another married into a family that openly despised him," writes Doug Wead in his book, All The Presidents' Children...

...It would be a mistake to assume, as some do, that dysfunction is therefore a sign of authenticity and humanity and to recruit the Gary Harts of the world as political leaders...

...President Bush, one of the few who can speak from experience, recently told a group of conservative journalists that what presidents need is the love and support of their families...

...Ronald Reagan was by all accounts a devoted mate to his second wife, but an unin-volved father whose two oldest children seemed hurt by his distance, and whose two youngest indulged in spells of rebellion that make those of Regan and Goneril seem tame...

...But Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt got little from their wives but added pressure...

...If only men who succeeded as both husbands and fathers were worthy to hold high public office, we would have lost both of the Adamses, two of three men now called our three greatest presidents (Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt), two of the three greatest presidents of the 20th century (Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt), as well as two of the four presidents (Reagan and Kennedy) who did the most to help win the Cold War...

...We have the ex-mayor who once held a press conference to announce to his second wife and the world that their marriage was over...

...As husbands and fathers, most of our notable leaders were in many ways short of ideal...

...Aaron Spelling at his most inventive never dreamed of such plot lines, and torrents of words have been written and uttered parsing their meaning, if any...

...an attractive young lawyer who may be a touch too outspoken...

...And if men who betray their wives will sooner or later betray their own country, then Alexander Hamilton, John Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr...

...John Quincy, the nonalcoholic, followed the same pattern with his three sons, one of whom, Charles Francis, was left to pick up the pieces strewn by brothers John, who died an alcoholic in his early 30s, and George Washington Adams, who drank incessantly, refused to work on any regular basis, lost his brothers' money, got the maid pregnant, and jumped, or fell, to his death from the deck of a steamer en route to Washington to help his parents move back to Massachusetts after his father lost the presidency to Andrew Jackson in the election of 1828...