All the President’s Kin is the title of my first book. It was published in 1980, by the now vanished but then esteemed Free Press. My basic argument was simple. That family members of presidents from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan were no longer bit players. That with changing cultures and technologies, especially with the advent of television, they had come to be major political actors.
I identified six different types of spouses and siblings, parents, and children, each of whom had a positive impact. Some were more important than others, but they all had significant political parts to play.
Type I: Decorations. Decorations make the president more attractive. They enhance the man, make him and his administration at the most more glamorous and at the least more appealing. They add nothing to the substance of the presidency but a great deal to the style. They lend an intangible aura of pleasure to the grit of day-to-day politics; their presence alone lends grace. At their best, Decorations are in fact quite removed from politics. In what would appear, but only at first glance, to be a paradox, it is this distance that allows their charm to have a political impact.
Jacqueline Kennedy was a quintessential Decoration.
Type II: Extensions. Extensions are the president when the president cannot be there. They have little identity of their own. Indeed, their value as Extensions is derived not from who they are but from what they are: close relatives of the president. What they say is only minimally important. Recognizing this, they usually say very little. When it is anything more than a pleasantry, we know it is the president speaking through a trusted mouthpiece. Extensions allow presidents to win friends and influence people without really trying, often without even being there. The very best extensions bear a physical resemblance to the president, for they are, in effect, his stand-in.
Lynda Bird Johnson was a quintessential Extension.
Type III: Humanizers. Humanizers bridge the gap between the president and the people. They are particularly useful to presidents who hold themselves apart from the people, who keep their distance. Humanizers lend credence to the belief that if the president has a relative who is that much like the rest of us, he cannot be all knight, king, or saint. They have an air or wit or color about them. They are fun. They are idiosyncratic. They are apolitical. The bestow upon the president some of their own lively grace, and at their best they amuse as well as reassure.
Billy Carter was a quintessential Humanizer.
Type IV: Helpmates. Helpmates derive their political impact from a good working relationship with the president. Although they are (here) either a spouse or a blood tie, the primary interaction is based on business. They become, in effect, trusted and respected junior partners sharing the challenges which the enterprise of presidential politics presents. Their proficiency is respected and their willingness to help with the presidential burden is mutually understood.
Nancy Reagan was a quintessential Helpmate.
Type V: Moral Supports. Moral Supports have a special place in the heart of the president. They are politically relevant because they lend an essential support to the presidential ego, and because they extract, in turn, an intense emotional commitment. A young child cannot qualify as a Moral Support. To be one it is necessary to be sufficiently intellectually mature to understand what the president is doing and given that, to lend heartfelt backing and encouragement.
Julie Nixon Eisenhower was a quintessential Moral Support.
Type VI: Alter Egos. Alter Egos are those rarest of relatives: people to whom we are so close, on so many levels, that they and we are one. The interaction is in every area. It is constant. I would claim that when a president has an Alter Ego, he or she is the second most powerful political person in America. And the benefit to a president fortunate enough to have one is considerable.
Robert Kennedy was a quintessential Alter Ego.
I return to All the President’s Kin today, on this Father’s Day weekend, because I am struck by how even here Donald Trump deviates from the norm. Not only does he not have any close friends, during his recent humiliations and tribulations members of his family, even close family, were nowhere to be seen.
Quite the contrary. While Melania Trump and son Barron have never been much in evidence, for years, most obviously 2015 to 2021, other family members were fully front and center. Especially his grown children Trump with his first wife, Ivana: Donald Jr, Ivanka – along with her husband Jared Kushner – and Eric. (Tiffany Trump, her father’s daughter with his second wife, Marla Maples, was also around, occasionally. )
Now though not so much – in fact, now not at all. Former First Lady Melania continues to be virtually invisible, as if her marriage was a sham and her husband a phantom. Ivanka and Jared have publicly distanced themselves, as if her father were toxic. And Donald Jr and Eric, usually relatively reliable stalwarts, have been hunkering down in hiding, leaving their father to twist in the wind – entirely alone. To be twice arraigned and indicted – entirely alone.
During Trump’s four years in the White House, some of his kin were constantly in and out of the Oval Office, especially Kushner. And others of his kin were constantly cheerleading, especially Donald Jr. But those days are over. For now at least Trump’s kin have receded into the background, leaving him in the foreground – entirely alone.
Happy Father’s Day.