All in the (Presidential) Family

Opinions may vary about Donald Trump Jr., but nearly all can agree that his meeting with the mysterious Natalia Veselnitskaya—and two or four or seven other people in Trump Tower last summer—has done his father no good. I plead agnosticism on this particular case, tending to conclude that it affirms the Trump presidential campaign’s status as the most bumptious and chaotic since George McGovern’s 45 years ago. But it also reminds us that presidents, as well as presidential candidates, can choose their staff and confidants but cannot choose their families.

The past, in this instance, is a contradictory guide. Some very good modern presidents—Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan—have yielded less-than-stellar children; while some less-than-stellar presidents—William Howard Taft, Lyndon B. Johnson—produced admirable offspring. Raised involuntarily in history’s goldfish bowl, most modern presidential children have tended to pursue a respectable low profile—John Coolidge, the Wilson daughters, John Eisenhower, the Ford brood—endeavoring to avoid embarrassing their parents and doing no damage to their fathers’ reputations. Others—Margaret Truman, Ron Reagan, Chelsea Clinton—have embraced their celebrity status, with mixed results.

Yet when it comes to familial headaches, it is siblings rather than children who have tended to do genuine harm. The reasons are not especially difficult to guess: Presidential children tend to be raised in a political environment and imbibe certain lessons that can keep them out of trouble. Presidents, however, are usually family outliers and distant from brothers and sisters in pertinent ways. Dwight D. Eisenhower was one of six brothers, all of whom found success separate from Ike’s career. The same can be said of Harry Truman’s younger brother and sister and Ronald Reagan’s older brother, none of whom were ever cause for brotherly concern.

The Kennedy siblings were insulated by wealth, or junior partners in the family political firm. The sisters and brothers of George H.W. Bush—and Bush’s children, for that matter—have only added luster, in varying degrees, to the family name.

Jimmy Carter, however, was not so fortunate. Carter had two sisters, one of whom was a mildly colorful Georgia matron who rode a motorcycle; the other was an evangelical “healer” whose most famous convert during her brother’s presidency was the pornographer Larry Flynt—who swiftly relapsed. Neither sister, however, was ever likely to have caused sleeplessness in the White House. The same cannot be said of younger brother Billy. Manager of the family peanut business and proprietor of a ramshackle gas station in Plains, Billy Carter, with a Marine pedigree and good-ol’-boy persona, was initially embraced by the press as “colorful” copy.