Pretenders in chief
It wasn’t always clear who was in charge of the US
When news broke on April 4, 1841, that William Henry Harrison, our ninth president, had died after only 32 days in office, Vice President John Tyler rushed to Washington to assume the role of commander in chief.
Given what we know of politics, this, one might think, was the correct course of action.
But the specifics of presidential succession were far from clear at the time, and with Harrison the first president to die in office, they were hotly debated as the leadership of the nation remained in doubt.
“Under This Roof,” by veteran White House reporter and @WestWingReport tweeter Paul Brandus, is a twopronged tour through the White House, covering the evolution of the building itself, and shedding new light on some of the historyaltering events that occurred within.
The beginning of Tyler’s presi dency is just one instance Brandus shares in which the leadership of the nation was in question.
Tyler took the vague language of the Constitution to mean that he automatically became president upon Harrison’s death, and he positioned himself as such, handling all official business.
But given that succession wouldn’t be officially clarified until 1967, with the passing of the 25th Amendment, Harrison’s cabinet refused to accept Tyler as the legitimate officeholder.
They informed him that he was merely “acting president” and that all of his decisions would need to be “approved by them.” They began referring to him as, “His Accidency.”
But Tyler forced the issue, and basically bullied his way into the presidency.
“I can never consent to being dictated to as to what I shall or shall not do,” he wrote in response. “I, as president, will be responsible for my administration. As long as you see fit to [cooperate], I shall be glad to have you with me— whenyou think otherwise, your resignations will be accepted.”
Five of the six cabinet members did just that, but there was no longer any dispute. John Tyler was the president of the United States, and every vice president from then on who ascended midterm would do so accordingly.
While this dispute involved a com plication of language, a later Constitutional crisis regarding the presidency was far more duplicitous.
In 1914, Woodrow Wilson, our 28th president, lost his wife of 28 years to a kidney ailment. The following March, he met a 42yearold widow named Edith Galt.
Awhirlwind romance ensued, during which the president, “in an attempt to impress her with his power and status, shared state secrets with her, a potentially foolish indiscretion.” Just nine months after they met, Galt and Wilson were married.
The new FLOTUS not only served her country — this being in the midst of World War I — by seeing our troops off to war for the Red Cross, but was also given unprecedented, and wholly inappropriate, access to classified information.
“She learned to code and decode messages for the president and other top officials, putting her at the very heart of the war effort and making her privy to the nation’s most important wartime secrets,” writes Brandus, adding, “It was astonishing.”
On October 2, 1919, more than halfway through his second term, Wilson had suffered a nearfatal stroke that “left him partially paralyzed, barely able to speak or move.”
That day, first lady Edith Wilson, aided by White House chief usher Ike Hoover and various doctors and nurses, kickedoff what Hoover would later call, “the beginning of the deception of the American people.”
Adopting a communications strategy of “no details, no explanations,” Edith was so secretive that not even the vice president or the cabinet knew the full extent of the president’s condition.
For the next 18 months, as the bedridden president relearned to walk and talk, the country was run by the unelected first lady, a woman who, just a few years prior, had been a simple housewife, then widow, with no experience in politics.
Edith Wilson took it upon herself to “screen all paperwork and visitors,” making her the sole decider as to which issues made their way to the president, and which were delegated elsewhere.
Edith continued in this role until the end of her husband’s term. She admitted that it was selfish, as she put the needs of her husband ahead of those of the country.
Brandus sees her actions as more than just selfish.
“While no crime had been committed, Edith Wilson — a devoted wife trying to help her husband — certainly participated in one of the greatest coverups in history,” he writes.
“By hiding her husband’s illness, by making decisions in his name, Edith Wilson — an acting president in all but name — placed the nation’s security and wellbeing in jeopardy. The condition of the nation, not its chief executive, should have been of paramount concern; astonishingly, for a year and a half, it was not.”