Teetering on the Edge of Fascism?

Poster from Gabriel Over the White House, starring Walter Huston, as President Hammond.

There’s a lot about U.S. history that I didn’t learn in school.
For example, I learned this year that Republicans took the presidency from a Democrat before 2000.
(The “election” was in 1877, a backroom deal—in which 20 electoral votes were conceded to Rutherford B. Hayes, to end Reconstruction—which made Hayes the 19th President by a single vote!)
In addition, I wasn’t aware that, during the 1930’s, America teetered on the edge of giving up on Democracy. 

Evidence for a “lack of confidence” in Democracy can be found in the 1933 film, Gabriel Over the White House—directed by Gregory La Cava, and financed by William Randolph Hearst.
(Hearst was a newspaper publisher and politician; his life was one of the inspirations for Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.)
“Gabriel” is the story of a political hack who’s elected President.
Early in his presidency, he nearly dies after speeding.
After the car crash, he changes from a figurehead, to an activist intent on saving the country.
According to IMDb, the film was released with two different endings—an American version and a little-seen European version.
(I’ve only seen the American version. According to sources on IMDb, the European ending is similar to that of the original novel. See below.)

When President Hammond (Walter Huston) is elected, he’s a caricature of a glad-handing politician.
He jokes about not fulfilling election promises.
His knowledge of geography is nil, so he asks his attractive young secretary (with whom he’s having an affair) where Siam is.
He’d rather crawl around on The Oval Office floor—with his four-year-old nephew—than pay attention to an army of the unemployed marching on Washington.
After Hammond awakens from his coma, however, he refuses Cabinet pleas to “defend the Capitol.”
Instead, he supplies food to the homeless men, and promises them jobs.
Dramatic lighting (and the sound of faint trumpets) reveal that this is a new President, guided not by his party’s needs, but by the Angel Gabriel.

The film script was based on a science fiction fantasy entitled Rinehard, by British author Thomas F. Tweed.
In the novel, American President Rinehard, changes, after a car accident, from a fan of “detective and wild west” tales, to a reader of political and economic tomes.
He dissolves Congress, fires his cronies in the Cabinet, declares martial law, creates his own militia, sets up agents in all state governments, increases the size of the Supreme Court (to 15), and replaces the Constitution—all to eliminate “red tape,” and create a functioning government.
At first, the White House staff is hesitant to follow (thinking he’s become insane), but one by one they conclude that it’s “a divine madness, the kind of madness that this crumbling world needs.”

Cover of Gabriel Over the White House, as published in Britain by Fantasy Books. Kemsley House, London. This is the version I read, but it was first published in Britain as Rinehard.

Cover of Gabriel Over the White House, as published in America by Farrar & Rinehart. Thomas F. Tweed’s name is not mentioned in the printed American version.

Oddly, the 1933 film credits list the Gabriel Over the White House author as “Anonymous.” Did Hollywood want to keep it hushed up that the author of “A Sensational Novel of the Presidency” was British? The story is told in first person by Hartley Beekman, Secretary to the President.

Tweed (1891-1940) was a British WWI Lieutenant-Colonel, and a political advisor to David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister.
According to Wikipedia, some characters in the novel are based on real people that both Tweed and Lloyd George knew.
Rinehard is set in the near future, and is about the world being given the government it “needs”—an efficient, benevolent dictatorship, where evildoers are punished.
(The secondary plot is a tale of Rinehard battling vicious Italian gangsters.)
Tweed later wrote another book known alternately as Blind Mouths or Destiny’s Man—which again involved a dictatorship and a healer.

It’s easy to figure out that Tweed was a Brit who never “crossed the pond.”
His novel is filled with British terms (“queue” instead of “line,” and “hire-purchase” instead of “buying on time”) plus awkward attempts at American slang.
(His gangsters seem based on British penny dreadfuls.)
A group of Chicago gangsters—"talking rapidly in Italian,” and described as “fat, swarthy, and soft-voiced”—are comically named Wolf Miller, Jose Borelli, “Spike” Jameson, and “Roddy” Greenblatt.
They commit a robbery with one thief costumed as Pierrot.*
(It’s strange that Tweed imagined that an Italian-American gangster would dress as an Italian clown; this “flourish” must have come from reading penny dreadfuls.)

The book was written in the 30’s, so it’s riddled with casual anti-Semitism, anti-Black, anti-immigrant and anti-Feminist sentiments.
A Chicago newspaper (Chicago Searchlight) is called a “filthy tabloid loved by Negroes, Jews and Italians.”
The President’s mistress/secretary (Pendie Malloy) is described as having a “faint strain of Jewish blood” because of her “acquisitive nose” and “full red lips.”
(“Acquisitive” is not my typo; that’s what Tweed wrote!)

The only sections that deal honestly with human emotions occur late in the novel, when an assassination attempt causes a head injury, and Rinehard returns to his former self.
Four years have passed since the car crash, but the befuddled Rinehard thinks it’s just days later.
He’s horrified to discover all the undemocratic measures he’s taken during his presidency, and wants none of it.
He asks that the White House staff set up the “television apparatus,” so that he may apologize to the nation.
However, his aides have become too invested in his legacy.
They refuse his request, causing a heart attack.
Rather than give Rinehard the medicine he needs, a staffer allows him to die.
The President’s legacy is left intact. 

President Hammond (Walter Huston) and Pendola Malloy (Karen Morley). In the novel, the secretary’s name is “Pendie Malloy” (short for “Independence”), but in the movie her name is Pendola Molloy.

In the novel, the only indication that Rinehart is possessed by an Angel is found on page 64.
Pendie Malloy tells the narrator (Hartley Beekmann) that: “Sometimes when Rinehard is dictating, he seems to be at a loss at a certain point. . .He lifts his head and bends it sideways, for all the world as if he were listening to something or someone.”
Malloy speculates to Beekmann that “God has become a little merciful,” and has “sent Gabriel to do for Rinehard what He did for Daniel,” lead The Prophet in the right direction.

Tweed’s 1933 novel presents an America in which “people had lost all hope and faith and belief in their institutions,” and have “a deep distrust of politics.”
Above all, they need a “Leader.”
After President Reinhard begins to present his “Rinehart bedtime stories” on television, the populace dutifully lines up behind him.
There’s no need to gag the press, or to interfere in the free expression of public opinion.
(Indeed, a science fiction-fantasy! Rinehart’s “bedtime stories” preceded FDR’s fireside chats.) 

Crime boss Nick Diamond in center (C. Henry Gordon) faces the President’s top aide, Hartley Beekman (Franchot Tone), on right. In the movie (and book), the President’s top aide heads a Federal Police unit that punishes criminals, not by imprisoning them, but with courts martial and firing squads.

The Hollywood film is somewhat different from the Tweed novel.
The film is set in the present (1933), rather than the late 1940’s.
The President’s relationship with his young secretary is obviously amorous in the film (but not so clear in the novel).
The film gangsters are slightly more realistic, and more “upscale.”
Several characters from the novel are combined in the film script, to simplify the plot.
The ending for the film is different too, with President Hammond dying after he’s signed a World Peace covenant.
However, the gist of the story is there.
Both the film, and the novel, are based on imagining whether America (and Britain too?) might be better off, if democracy was suspended and a “benevolent” dictator took power. 

In Eleanor Roosevelt’s 1939 article “Keepers of Democracy” (in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter), she describes a world in which the people of the U.S. had allowed themselves “to be fed on propaganda which has created a fear complex. . . People have reached a point where anything which will save them from Communism is a godsend, and if Fascism or Nazism promises more security than our own Democracy, we may even turn to them.”
(Sadly, this description of propaganda-believers sounds very similar to what’s occurring in 2023.)

President Hammond (Walter Houston) addresses the “army of the unemployed” under a statue of George Washington and offers them jobs as the “army of construction.”

In Gabriel in the White House, President Hammond becomes a dictator, but he’s also a protective figure, who gives people a sense of security.
In the film, he walks—unescorted and Jesus-like—to address the “army of the unemployed.”
He bravely confronts the evil crime boss Nick Diamond in The Oval Office.
He’s aware of his role as a servant of God and Country, and becomes remote from human affections.
In 1933, President Hammond was the only type of benevolent dictator that Hollywood (and Hearst?) could imagine as a substitute for Democracy. 

*”Pierrot” and “Harlequin” are both commedia dell’arte characters. In her youth, Dorothy L. Sayers did admit to enjoying trashy over-the-top “penny dreadfuls.” Their influence can be felt in Sayer’s 1933 Lord Peter Whimsey mystery, Murder Must Advertise. In that story, Lord Peter disguises himself in a Harlequin costume, while infiltrating a cocaine party, to solve a murder. 

Retribution of the Dollar-Hunters

Writers and journalists have traveled from “across the pond,” stayed for a while, examined American society, and published their viewpoints since the 1700’s.
They discussed topics like American individualism, and the large number of churches.
However, one attribute stood out—how fixated Americans were on making money, and the lives of the very rich.

French historian Alexis de Tocqueville (who visited America in 1831) was concerned that there would be “permanent inequality of conditions and inequality” because of American pursuit of self-interest and American disinterest in the general good.
He also discussed how quick Americans were to act in an excessively subservient manner to people they perceived as wealthy.

Book cover of Dickens & the Workhouse by Ruth Richardson, published by Oxford Press in 2012.

Novelist Charles Dickens asserted that Americans had a relentless focus on materialism—especially in relation to slavery, the prison system, and treatment of the mentally ill.
English economist John Stuart Smith described (in 1860) how American men were devoted to “dollar-hunting,” and American women were devoted to “breeding dollar-hunters.” 

Founder Thomas Jefferson, had a “complicated” history with money.
He assumed authority of the Monticello plantation (inherited from his father), at the age of 21, and was a wealthy man since birth.
As a young man, he advocated for abolition.
However, when he neared the age of fifty, he realized that Monticello earned 4% a year through the births of black slave children alone, and that these babies were his most lucrative “investment.”
He walked an intellectual tightrope on the issue of slavery for the rest of his days—fearing punishment from God, but unwilling to face bankruptcy.
(The book Master of the Mountain, by Harry Wiencek, tells the story of Jefferson’s financial decisions, in relationship to his views on morality.)

Religion played a part in American viewpoints about wealth.
The early Puritan and Calvinist settlers (ignoring the story of Job in the Bible) viewed material prosperity as a sign of God’s love.
During the Gilded Age (1877-1900), young boys read the rags-to-riches novels of Horatio Alger—a man raised in a Calvinist household who graduated from Harvard Divinity School.
Minister Norman Vincent Peale expressed his belief that one could “live successfully by picturing oneself succeeding,” both on his pulpit, and in his book The Power of Positive Thinking.
Several Protestant ministers—among them Joel Osteen and Paula White—continue to preach the “prosperity gospel.” 

Although many Protestant ministers didn’t believe the theories of Darwin, social Darwinism* had a big impact on American men in the late 1800’s.
According to historian Richard Hofstadter “American society saw its’ own image in the tooth-and-claw version of natural selection.”

Andrew W. Mellon (James Cromwell) in 2010-2014’s TV series Boardwalk Empire. In the episode “You’d Be Surprised,” Mellon testifies before Congress.

Andrew W. Mellon (1855-1937), Secretary of the Treasury under three Presidents—Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover—told Presidents that a Depression* would “be good for the country because it would purge marginal farmers and small business people.”
He also advocated for violence against labor unrest.
(After his death, the IRS sought millions from Mellon’s estate for back taxes; his estate finally settled for $668,000.)
Today, Mellon heirs still fund right-wing causes.

Along the way, there was some rebellion against the “love of wealth” ethos.
The ”Share the Wealth” clubs,* of “Kingfish” Huey Long (1893-1935), claimed to have seven million members in the early 1930’s.
In FDR’s first inaugural address he said: “Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”

American films illustrated our concerns.
In 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life, a guardian angel teaches George Bailey (James Stewart) the value of love, and his own life, over materialistic goals. 

Cousin Eustace (Charles Williams), Cousin Tilly (Mary Treen), Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell), and George Bailey (James Stewart) gaze at a basket of money in It’s a Wonderful Life.

It’s a Wonderful Life deals with many money issues.
Young George Bailey assumes that his future wife, Mary (Donna Reed) must prefer his high school rival Sam Wainwright, because Wainwright is so wealthy.
Banker Henry Potter (Lionel Barrymore) owns most of Bedford Falls.
Yet, Potter is so avaricious that he steals the $8,000 that Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell) loses, and then connives to send both Bailey and Uncle Billy to prison, because of the loss.
The alternative universe Bedford Falls—Pottersville, in which Bailey was never born—is a sleazy place of poverty, crime, and run-down businesses.
(Bedford Falls has been picked clean by Henry Potter. Uncle Billy has been committed to an asylum, and their bank is a brothel.)

At the end of the film, Bailey’s navy veteran brother, Harry, makes a toast: “To my big brother George, the richest man in town.”
George’s “wealth” is the love and admiration of the people of Bedford Falls, not the money in his bank account.

The Scarecrow (Patrick McGoohan) puts a gun to the head of a British soldier in Disney’s The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. The film and TV series were based on stories of the British smuggling gangs who brought in brandy and tobacco to avoid taxes, and novels by Russell Thorndike about a pirate turned vicar (Dr. Syn) who steals to give to the poor.

European popular culture tended to have a more egalitarian bent, and viewed wealth with suspicion.
English folklore told of Robin Hood, who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.
Dashing highwaymen, like Dick Turpin, were sung about in ballads and immortalized in plays.
French authors created Arsene Lupin (a gentleman thief)—and the much more ruthless Fantomas—criminals who successfully eluded the police.
The German legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin explains how the Piper—when cheated of his full fee (for luring away thousands of rats)—revenges himself on the town of Hamelin, by stealing away its’ children.

Americans favored some famous thieves—Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and Bonnie and Clyde, to name a few—but these were real people who Americans read about in newspapers and dime novels.
We also heard stories about industrious workers like Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, and John Henry.
When I researched Paul Bunyan, however, I discovered that the Bunyan stories were rooted in the lumber fields of Canada.
There weren’t any folk tales about John Henry; his battle against a steam drill originated in an 1870 song.
Johnny Appleseed was a real person—horticulturist Jonathan Chapman (1775-1845).
It turns out that Chapman was a missionary of the Swedenborgian Church, as well as a planter of apple trees.
According to Collier’s Encyclopedia, “a good deal of what has been presented to the American public as folklore, we now know never existed in the oral tradition.”

We might assume that love of money, and admiration for the rich, goes hand in hand with the famous “Protestant Work Ethnic,” but that isn’t the case.
It’s true that (according to Pew Research Center), Americans work longer hours per week than Europeans, and take shorter vacations.
It’s also true that millions of Americans have two, or three, jobs.
(It’s been this way since the 1990’s.)
However, people don’t have multiple jobs because they want to work more.
Most are doing so because of medical debts, because hourly wages are so low, or in order to feed and house their children.
According to an article in The Guardian (September of 2022, Michael Sainato), nearly 5% of U.S. workers hold two or more job positions.
However, many experts call that a serious underestimate.

In Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, she theorizes that because real wages have stagnated for workers since the 1970’s—without the safety nets afforded in other Western countries—we’re experiencing what political scientists (like Diana Mutz) call “dominant group status threat.”
A percentage of Americans feel that the “outgroups” (Blacks, Asians, immigrants) are doing “too well,” and therefore their own status is being threatened.
These deep fears are one source of MAGA support.

The Bizarro World of the Superman comics (art by Wayne Boring) is a crazy mirror image of the real world in which “bad” means “good” and coal is used for money.

To simplify, we’re living in a bizarro world where half of us believe that Democracy is only possible if we all have equal access to good health, education, and opportunity; while others just want to join the “top” caste, and are fearful of societal change.
Each believes the other is living in “Bizarro World.”

*Further information on these ideas is found in Wealth and Democracy by Kevin Phillips, published in 2002, by a division of Random House.

No Feeling for Human or Humanoid Dignity

Panels from “Space Falcon, Pirate of the Stratosphere” written and drawn by Harry Harrison.
In these panels, Falcon and Tubby imprison slavers Cassandra (and her associate), and rescue the half-dressed men who she has enslaved.

Currently, both the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild, plus the American Federation of Television and Radio Actors (SAG-AFTRA), are on strike.
Until the unions work out a deal with the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers (AMPTP) all TV and film productions, involving their members, will be halted.
Novelist and screenwriter, George R.R. Martin, recently said on Comic Book Resources (CBR.com) that a producer was quoted as saying that “AMPTP strategy is to stand fast until the writers start losing their homes and apartments.”
It looks as if this is going to be a long, long strike.

I recently retired from the world of design and print production, and I also paint and draw.
It seems to me that fine artists and book production people have some things in common with the writers and actors working in film and TV.
We’re all people who love what we do, more than we love making money.
Because we feel this way, we’re at a serious disadvantage in dealing with people “in charge,” whose sole business is generating money from our skill sets.

When I was a design and print production artist, I sometimes worked with managers who seemed almost resentful of artists.
Just like Alfred Hitchcock, who wanted his actors to be willing tools for his vision, these managers wanted artists to simply become their hands.
We’re at the threshold of editors using art-generating AI programs (like Midjourney and DALL-E.2, built from billions of images created by artists) to replace artists.
I remember dealing with several managers and editors who must love this development.
Now, by using AI, they can cut “prima donna” artists out of the illustration process completely!

Panels from “Captain Rocket,” written and drawn by Harry Harrison.

There’s a pattern of men being paralyzed, or held prisoner, in Harry Harrison stories.

Was Harrison subconsciously illustrating his position as a “wage slave?”

In 1964, Harry Harrison (1925-2012) wrote a science fiction short story “Portrait of the Artist,” that nicely describes just such a control-freak manager.
(Perhaps, the story is so perfect because Harrison was a centaur of sorts—an artist, and a writer.)
Note that the 1960’s were way before computer software was used for page composition.
(Programs that preceded InDesign weren’t in play until the 1980’s.)
The 60’s were the days of blue pencil, rubber cement, and India ink plus zip-a-tone on paper board.
In the future envisioned by Harrison, however, computers are drawing comic books, and have also taken over many service jobs.

In “Portrait of the Artist,” an experienced (read “older”) comic book illustrator named Pachs—who for years has used a Mark VIII Robot Comic Artist computer—is called into his manager’s office, and realizes that Martin is about to fire him. Martin says:

I’m going to have to let you go, Pachs. I’ve bought a Mark IX to cut expenses, and I already hired some kid to run it. . . You know I’m no bastard, Pachs, but business is business. And I’ll tell you what, this is only Tuesday, still I’m gonna pay you for the rest of the week. How’s that? And you can take off right now.

Pachs conceals his emotions, and leaves to get very drunk at a bar near the office.
(The bartender is an affable robot, with an Irish accent.)
I won’t spoil the tragic ending, but Harrison’s story concludes with Martin revealing his disrespect for Pachs as an artist, employee, and human being.

Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson) undergoes euthanasia—first step in the process of becoming Soylent Green. His friend Detective Thorn (Charlton Heston) is in the window.
In Charles Platt’s interview book with science fiction icons (Dream Makers Volume II), subject Harry Harrison tells Platt that his book Make Room! Make Room! was debased into the film Soylent Green.

After Harry Harrison fought in WWII, he returned to New York to study fine art.
He soon realized that it would be impossible to support himself as a fine artist, so he pivoted to comic book illustration and writing.
That was a good choice until the Comics Code hit, and publishers cut production by two-thirds.
By that time, Harrison had married and started a family, so he pivoted once again, to become a full-time independent author.
He’s best known for The Stainless Steel Rat book series, the DeathWorld book series, and the novel Make Room! Make Room! (that MGM purchased for Soylent Green).

AI-generated scripts for sit-coms, AI-created background actors in films, and AI-produced illustrations in magazines have a lot in common.
The purpose of each is to save time and money, but each also result in impoverishing the very people who originated the raw material.
The present systems undervalue the artists, and overvalue the overseers, who want creatives to act as their tools.

Detectives Matthew Sikes (Gary Graham) and George Francisco (Eric Pierpoint) help policeman Albert Einstein (Jeffrey Marcus) in the TV version of Alien Nation.

(The word “overseers” brings back fond memories of one of my favorite TV shows, Alien Nation.*
This series was cancelled in 1990, after 22 episodes, because its’ theme of accepting diversity was too controversial, and TV executives didn’t understand the show’s value.)

Managers obsessed with control, and executives obsessed with saving money, aren’t the only issues involved in more use of AI.
Writers, actors, and designers are also worried about quality.
We already live in a world in which network execs dumb down scripts because they underestimate viewer intelligence.
Just imagine what TV shows would be like if executives had full control over scripts.

It's difficult for many retired production and design people to look at new books and magazines these days.
We see “widows” (incomplete, one, or two, word lines) at the tops of pages and columns—once a real no-no.
Indexes (if there are indexes at all) are software-generated; they list every term and name in the text, but not the substantive information.
Pixelated images—that should have been swapped out for high-resolution images—are everywhere.
Layouts that may have looked OK on a monitor, are unreadable on the printed page.
We’re living in an era of “good enough” color reproduction, and “good enough” printing.

I assume that the family of Anthony Bourdain gave permission for his voice to be voice cloned in 2021’s Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain.
I guess that the family of Wilt Chamberlain permitted Chamberlain’s voice to be voice cloned in the three-part 2023 TV series Goliath.
In the first run of 1982’s Conan the Barbarian, Arnold Schwarzenegger mispronounced “lamentations of the women” as “lamination of the women,” and either he (or someone else?) later re-looped Conan’s dialogue.

Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) sits in front of the fire in Conan the Barbarian.

Today, Schwarzenegger’s lines would be voice cloned.
It should make a big difference to everyone, whether a person’s heirs consent to voice cloning, or the person consents.

The word “robot” comes from the Slavic word for “drudgery.”
(See my article on Rossum’s Universal Robots.)
It would be fine if all that AI did for humanity was end drudgery: coding text, checking that pages would print properly, or making it unnecessary for an actor to lose 60 pounds for a role.
However, the big problem is that people in charge (the overseers) are indifferent to quality standards, and oblivious to allowing artists human dignity. 

The jokers in charge don’t have the ability to judge, or evaluate, the material that AI produces.
To use the writing style and word combinations of scriptwriters to write dribble is unethical.
To use the face, or voice, of an actor to make them play a scene they wouldn’t perform is immoral.
To use the color sense and gesture of an artist to forge a scene that they wouldn’t paint is wrong.
With performers, it’s worse, because their own personas are being misused.

*The premise of Alien Nation (1989-1997, the series through five TV movies) is that a slave ship of humanoid space aliens (the Newcomers) crashes in the Mojave Desert, and the Government attempts to integrate the 300,000 aliens into California society. The primary storyline is Police Detective Sikes overcoming his prejudices toward the Newcomers. The secondary storyline is the Newcomers being pursued by technologically-advanced “Overseers” who want to re-enslave the escapees, as well as enslave the entire earth population.

Living in an Incoherent, Distracted Mass

 The December 1943 DC Comics cover of Wonder Woman running for President.

There have been forty-six presidents in U.S. history, and by many standards they’ve been fairly similar men—similar in ethnicity, height, religion, chosen professions, and age.
All but a very few had at least one ancestor who arrived on American soil in colonial days.
(Therefore, many either were slaveholders, or had ancestors who were slaveholders.)
Thirty-one served in the military.
Twenty-seven were trained as lawyers.
All but two (Catholics Kennedy and Biden), were Protestants—with thirteen Episcopalians.
It’s evident that there’s been “a presidential type,” and that for generations Americans tended to be fearful of non-British influence.

TV Wonder Woman Lynda Carter played President Marsdin in five episodes of Supergirl.

Of course, women have been cast as U.S. presidents in various films and television shows.
Presidents were portrayed as women in science-fiction projects like 1953’s Project Moon Base, and 2016’s Supergirl TV series (in which Lynda Carter was President Olivia Marsdin).
Most of the time, the productions have been comedies: 1964’s Kisses for my President; a 1985 TV series, starring Patty Duke (called Hail to the Chief, that lasted seven episodes); and most recently—Presidents Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Laura Montez (Andrea Savage)—in the Emmy-winning HBO TV series, Veep.
Although Candidate Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, all elected presidents have been White Christian men of Northern European descent—with one exception (Barack Obama) who isn’t White, but fit most of the other criteria.  

Thomas Jefferson (Ken Howard) and John Adams (William Daniels) in 1776. 

The actors portrayed the parts in both the Broadway stage version and the 1972 movie.

William Daniels was the same height as the Founding Father he played—5 feet 7 inches.

While Jefferson was very tall at 6 feet two inches, he wasn’t as tall as the actor who played him—Ken Howard who was 6 feet 6 inches.

(Adams and Jefferson later became the second and third U.S. Presidents.)

Despite the fact that there were many Dutch, German, and Swedish immigrants in the colonies, it won’t shock anyone to learn that nearly all U.S. presidents had strong roots in the British Isles and Ireland.
The only exception was the 8th U.S. President, Martin Van Buren, who was of pure Dutch descent.
(In fact, English was his second language.)
Dwight D. Eisenhower was predominately German and Dutch, with some British ancestry.
Donald Trump is half-German.

The U.S. is supposed to be a “melting pot.”
Yet, few people whose parents (or grandparents) weren’t born here, made it to the White House.
Three presidents—Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan and Chester A. Arthur—were the sons of fathers who were born in Ireland, and had mothers whose people were long-time U.S. residents.
Barack Obama is the only president with a parent of non-European ancestry—but although his father was Kenyan—Obama also had deep roots in America (and in the British Isles), through his mother.*
Woodrow Wilson was exceptional in that three of his grandparents were born in Ireland and Scotland.
Trump’s paternal grandparents were Germans, and his mother was a native of Scotland, making him a true “child of immigrants.”
(It’s bizarre that an “anti-immigration politician” would be one of the few whose ancestors arrived in this country so recently.)

We don’t have DNA results for many U.S. presidents.
However, it’s safe to bet that no presidents have ever been of mainly southern European, Native American, Jewish, French, Russian, Scandinavian, Slavic, South American, or Asian descent.
In Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves by Henry Wiencek, Wiencek describes how Jefferson recoiled from the prospect that “foreigners” would get the vote.
He’s quoted as saying: “They will infuse into [the law] their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.”
What Jefferson, and other Founding Fathers, feared was that “foreigners” (at that time, numerous Dutch and German settlers) were slow in assimilating into Anglo-Saxon culture.

Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis)—between abolitionist James Mitchell Ashley (David Costabile) on the left and William Seward (David Strathairn) on the right—in 2012’s Lincoln.

Actor Daniel Day-Lewis is 6 feet 2 inches—only two inches shorter than President Abraham Lincoln who was 6 feet 4 inches.

There’s no height requirement for becoming president, but they’ve usually been taller than average.
At 6 feet 4 inches, Abraham Lincoln was the tallest president.
Twenty-six of our presidents have been 5 feet 11 inches tall, or taller, and only three (Van Buren, Harrison, and Madison) were 5 feet 6 inches or under.
(The average male height in the U.S. has been 5 feet 9 inches, from 1776 through 2023.)

Although presidents are allowed to be as young as 35, most have been in their mid-fifties.
The youngest president was Theodore Roosevelt; he was 42 when he became president in 1901 (after President McKinley’s assassination.)
John F. Kennedy was the youngest elected president at age 43.
The oldest president was Joseph Biden who was inaugurated at age 77.
Until 69-year-old Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981, only two other presidents (Harrison and Buchanan) had been in their late 60’s when elected.
(It’s without precedent that the U.S. may be considering an 82-year-old Democrat running against a 78-year-old Republican, in November of 2024.)

The Constitution lists three qualifications for becoming president.
Candidates must be at least 35 years old, a natural born citizen, and a U.S. resident for fourteen years.
However, the phrase “natural born” wasn’t defined.
Was John McCain “natural born,” although he was born in the Panama Canal Zone?
Was Ted Cruz “natural born,” although he was born in Calgary, Canada?
British law of the era (when the qualifications were established), allowed foreign-born children to be “true native subjects” as long as at least one parent was British.
Thus, there’s a legal precedent for both McCain and Cruz being “natural born,” with John McCain’s case being stronger.
(Both John McCain’s parents were U.S. citizens, and his father, Admiral John S. McCain, was stationed in Panama.
Although Cruz’s father wasn’t a U.S. citizen, his mother was dual citizen of the U.S and Canada.)

It's interesting that the Trump administration changed the law—on October 29, 2019—so that automatic citizenship was taken away from children of U.S. government employees, and members of the armed forces, if the children were born on foreign soil.
(Now, these parents must apply for citizenship for their children.)
Since a child born abroad to two married U.S. citizens traveling abroad automatically acquires U.S. citizenship, it seems odd that the law was altered.
Does the Government just want more paperwork to shuffle?

According to Jamelle Bouie’s 7/2/23 N.Y. Times column “What Frederick Douglass Knew and Trump and DeSantis Don’t,” the Trump administration searched for a way to end birthright citizenship, but was unsuccessful.
Boule says that “the attack on birthright citizenship is an attempt to stigmatize and remove from society an entire class of people.”
(Is Trump still carrying a grudge because Ted Cruz beat him so many times in the 2016 presidential primaries?) 

If Republicans were able to eliminate birthright citizenship, what would the phrase “natural born citizen” mean, and why was this phrase used in the first place?
Obviously, the Founders were afraid of foreign influence, and didn’t anyone with strong ties to another country to be in charge.
Furthermore, they wanted all presidents to have been born on U.S. soil, and not to have acquired citizenship by governmental decree.
(They may have accepted a person born on foreign soil to American parents—as long as they were raised on U.S. soil—but we don’t know that for sure.)

The Founders didn’t mention experience, or education level, as a qualification for the presidency.
Despite some expressing anti-German prejudices, they didn’t specify ethnicity, or being from the British Isles.
They didn’t specify being a landowner.
They didn’t even mention whether a President could be a man or a woman.
They only listed a minimum age, being born on American soil, and residing here for at least fourteen years.
Making the qualifications minimal was an excellent decision, and I’m sure doing so was purposeful.

*According to Ancestry.com, President Barack Obama has extremely deep roots in the U.S.
He’s the 11th great-grandson (through his mother, anthropologist Stanley Ann Dunham) of John Punch—an African man who attempted to escape indentured servitude (in 1640), and ended up a slave in colonial Virginia.
Obama’s mother also had ancestors from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, and Switzerland.

Sex, Lies, and Streaming Movies*

Opposition parties (with the aid of the press), have long debated whether candidates were “fit” to be presidents.
The candidates honesty, adherence to societal norms, stability, levels of “masculinity” (whatever that means), and religious devotion, have all been measured and debated.
It was once thought that a divorced person couldn’t be elected president, or an atheist, or someone who shirked their military duty.
However, most of those “taboos” are now in the dust bin.

Integrity and character were once considered factors as to who should be elected president.
In 1952—when Candidate Richard Nixon was accused of illegally receiving $18,000 from backers—he denied using the money for his own support and played the “family” card, disingenuously saying that he’d never return the family cocker spaniel, “Checkers.”
(The speech worked, and Eisenhower kept Nixon as his running mate!)
There were many stains on Warren J. Harding’s legacy but the chief one was the “Teapot Dome Scandal”—a saga of drilling oil on federal land, bribes and interest-free loans, blackmail, gambling with the White House china, a murder-suicide, and rumored poisoning of a President by his wife.
Most of the “dirt” on Harding, came out after Harding died.
(”Teapot Dome” refers to the dome shape of one of the Wyoming oil fields where Secretary of the Interior, Albert Bacon Fall, illegally allowed private interests to drill for oil.
The corrupt former Cabinet official was eventually sentenced to a year in jail, fined $100,000, and lost his law license, but Fall was the only person who endured any consequences.)

Andrew Jackson (Charlton Heston) and his wife Rachel (Susan Hayward) in The President’s Lady. The 1953 film is on Jackson’s early life and his marriage to Rachel Donelson Robards.

Divorce was once thought to be an important issue that could break a potential candidacy.
Andrew Jackson’s marriage to Rachel Donelson Robards occurred before her divorce from Lewis Robards, making her an inadvertent bigamist.
(This scandal followed the Jacksons through their 34-year marriage, and his political career. Rachel died soon after Jackson was elected, and she was never First Lady.)
Candidate Gary Hart and his wife Oletha never divorced, but his being a front-runner (for the 1988 nomination) ended after photos of Hart surfaced on the “Monkey Business” yacht.
Andrew Jackson married a divorced woman, but the first president to be a divorced man was Ronald Reagan.
The next divorced president was Donald Trump—a twice-divorced, notorious womanizer since the mid-1970’s—who bantered about his infidelities (and personal sex life) with radio host Howard Stern during the 1990's and early 2000's.

The fact that Bill Clinton received educational draft deferments, and didn’t volunteer to serve in Vietnam, made him a “shirker,” according to a few WWII veterans.
Some life-long Democrats (like my father) chose to vote for Independent Ross Perot in 1992, rather than vote for him; however, Clinton still won two terms.

After President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, PT109—the 1963 film about his WWII exploits—was re-released.

Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, were young men of the same era, and received educational and medical deferments during the Vietnam War. However, Biden expanded health care and benefits for veterans, and frequently mentions deceased veteran son, Major Beau Biden, in his speeches. 

A poster for 1995’s Jefferson in Paris with Thomas Jefferson (Nick Nolte) Sally Hemings (Thandwe Newton), and Maria Cosway (Greta Sacchi). The movie deals with the period (1784-1789) when Jefferson was the U.S. Minister to France.

Publicity about sexual indiscretions have affected political futures since the nation’s earliest days but the stories weren’t a problem, as long as they were just rumors.
Federalist Alexander Hamilton might have become one of our first presidents, had he not confessed to a year-long affair with a married woman, and making blackmail payments to her husband.
Grover Cleveland and Warren G. Harding were both accused of siring children out of wedlock.
Al Gore fell victim to the indiscretions of the president he served.
Would Gore have won the Electoral College (after winning the popular vote, in 2000), if not for the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal?
In total, four U.S. presidents have been accused of siring children with women they owned as slaves (among them, the Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemming story), and at least seventeen have been accused of engaging in sexual relations outside of marriage. 

15th President James Buchanan was the only unmarried president—leading some to question his sexual orientation.
However, if Buchanan was gay, the word didn’t get out.
His image (in the mid 1800’s at least) was “manly” enough for him to be nicknamed “Old Buck.”
Sources like Collier’s Encyclopedia make a big point of his “near-engagement” to Anne Coleman in 1819, as if to prove his “sexual normality,” but “less conservative” sources speculate about Buchanan’s “special friendship” with William Rufus King.

Fictional President James Marshall (Harrison Ford), a Vietnam War vet, fights terrorists in 1997’s thriller Air Force One. No U.S. president ever fought in Vietnam; but candidates Al Gore, John Kerry, and John McCain were all Vietnam War veterans.

Pundits have had some odd ideas about masculinity.
Why else would a Newsweek cover story (1987) describe Republican candidate George H.W. Bush”—a WWII pilot, who flew fifty-eight missions and won the Distinguished Flying Cross—as a “wimp?”
A year later, Democratic candidate, George Dukakis, was criticized for not looking sufficiently “macho” while riding in a tank.

“Mental health standards” have also been high—for presidential candidates, at least.
In 1972, Democratic candidate George McGovern was set to run with Tom Eagleton.
After it came out that Eagleton had received psychiatric help for nervous exhaustion, however, McGovern felt forced to find a new vice-presidential running mate.
(The revised ticket lost to Republicans Nixon and Agnew.)
There was also a big to-do as to whether Ed Muskie (the early Democratic front-runner in 1972), had “cried” when responding to reporter questions about his wife.
Newspapers discussed whether the liquid on Muskie’s cheeks was tears, or melting snow, and he was proclaimed “unstable.”
(Soon, Muskie’s presidential campaign was dead.)

As to religion, no U.S. president has ever declared himself to be an atheist.
Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln were both “called” atheists because their religious views were atypical, and neither believed in organized religion.
Ulysses S. Grant was one president who refused to specify his Protestant religious denomination, but he never said he was without a belief in God.

Press Secretary Jerry Ross (Martin Short) sneaks the Martian “girl” (Lisa Marie) into the White House in 1996’s Mars Attacks!  He lifts a lever, under the bust of President Kennedy, which opens the door to a secret assignation space.

It's interesting that the press, and other societal critics, assumed for generations that the American public wanted a “paragon” as their president, but perhaps that was never true.
President Harry Truman never earned a college degree, and didn’t do well as a haberdasher.
Yet, many consider him a good to great president.
The fact that President John F. Kennedy conducted sexual affairs while he was in the White House was covered up at the time, but now that everyone knows, it’s done little to hurt his presidential legacy.
It appears that our “concern with fitness” is based on which political party we’re aligned with—and not by what attributes a great president should have.

*The title of this article is based on the film Sex, Lies, and Videotape, which is about sex, lies about sex, and recording stories about sex lives on videotape. Videotape is a tech dinosaur. The 1989 film starred James Spader and Andie MacDowell.