Herman: A great look at an unlikely president from New York. No, not that one.
Ken Herman says our 21st president was a long-shot leader from N.Y. whom critics called a ‘pending calamity.’ Sound familiar?
AUSTIN — In the waning days of his administration, as White House reporters nagged President George W. Bush about his legacy, he reminded us that such things evolve. And he noted that people were still writing biographies about the first President George W., the one with the white hair.
It’s a good point. I’ve long been fascinated by how somebody decides to write the umpteenth bio of a famous person. Do we need another George Washington bio? And when will we get a good bio of a lesser-biographied president, say Chester Alan Arthur? And who’s going to write it?
I have the answers: Sept. 12 and my former colleague Scott S. Greenberger, who spent nearly four years researching a president you spent about four seconds learning about in U.S. History.
“Few Americans know anything about him,” says “The Unexpected President: The Life and Times of Chester A. Arthur” promotional blurb. “And even history buffs mostly recall him for his distinctive muttonchop sideburns.”
FYI, Arthur, concerned about what history buffs might say about him, had his papers set ablaze shortly prior to his November 1886 death.
The book’s promotional materials tease us with this: “Like our current president, Arthur was a wealthy New Yorker who was criticized as unqualified, unfit and corrupt” whose unlikely presidency was panned in advance by newspapers as “a pending calamity of the utmost magnitude” and who was branded as “about the last man who would be considered eligible” for the office.
I first got wind of Greenberger’s project a year ago. He didn’t know I had heard about it, so I sent him this email.
“Just wanted to let you know my book about Chester Alan Arthur comes out next week. The book is entitled ‘Who?’ Hard to believe, but I got a quarter million dollars for the movie rights. There’s early talk of it as a DiCaprio vehicle. You been working on anything interesting?”
Greenberger, wise to the ways of wise guys, responded: “You laugh now, but that’s what they said about Alexander Hamilton, and he never even made it to the top job. I think I may have Lin-Manuel Miranda’s next project on my hands.”
Nonsense aside, Greenberger’s book reproves a point that doesn’t really need reproving: There’s a great story behind each and every POTUS, even ones like Arthur who never were elected to the job. And, in Arthur’s case, not even nominated by his party when his term was over.
As you recall (or not), he was elected vice president in 1880 after a questionable career as a semi-upright-at-best New York political boss — using position and power for political and personal gain — and moved to the top job when President James Garfield was assassinated.
Greenberger’s book — replete with fascinating details, such as what was on a restaurant menu and exactly what people were wearing at a given event — is well done. Some of the best details are the result of 19th century reporters who left colorful descriptions of events.
Greenberger has a thing for colors and flowers, such as the “tall cross of white rosebuds, carnations, tuberoses and smilax” that turn up on the train carrying Garfield’s body and the “horseshoe of flowers: pink rosebuds and carnations and velvety pansies, surrounded by sweet-smelling mignonette” that turn up in another scene.
I tell you this just to give you an idea of the details and to gig Greenberger a bit for his heretofore unknown (at least to me) affinity for flowery details.
Greenberger told me he decided our planet needed an Arthur bio after he had read one about Garfield.
“I soon discovered that nobody had written a real biography of Arthur since 1975, and that book, written by a professor, was academic and dense,” he said. “I wanted to write popular history in narrative nonfiction style, so the way was clear for me to do something different.”
More from Greenberger: “Another thing that attracted me to the topic is that there are many parallels between the Gilded Age and our own time, and it is an era of American history that is sort of a mystery to most people, even though it’s when the modern world as we know it began to take shape. Granted I went to the D.C. public schools, but I don’t think I was the only one whose high school history classes included a heavy dose of the Civil War, a lesson or two on Reconstruction, and then a fast-forward to Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressives.”
Greenberger, now executive editor of Stateline, the respected daily news service of The Pew Charitable Trusts, worked at the Austin AmericanStatesman from 1996 through mid-2000. He helped us cover the Bush 2000 presidential campaign before moving on to The Boston Globe. The smartest thing he did in Austin was meet and later marry fellow Statesman reporter Michele Kurtz. This kind of thing happens. Newsrooms are romantic places.
Greenberger was co-author of former Sen. Tom Daschle’s 2009 book “Hey, Anybody Remember Me?” Just kidding. The book was “Critical: What We Can Do About the HealthCare Crisis.” As you recall, the book’s suggestions brought an end to the health care crisis and we’ve heard nothing about it since then.
Greenberger acknowledges his Arthur project got a break when another unlikely president got the job.
“I could pretend that I had a feeling that Obama’s successor would be a rich New York guy, roundly denounced by elites as a crook and a clown, who shocked everybody, including himself, by becoming president,” Greenberger said, “but that was just dumb luck, as was the title of the book, which my publisher came up with long before the election.”
Congrats to Greenberger on producing a great historical read and a great glimpse of a colorful, pivotal, oftoverlooked, slice of U.S. history. How can you go wrong in telling a tale involving political factions with great names such as the Stalwarts, Half-Breeds and Readjusters?