All in the Presidential Family
Back when Jimmy Carter was running for president in 1976, his brother Billy had a tendency to mouth off and act so colorfully that a reporter suggested to him that, well, perhaps he was a little strange. “Look,” Billy replied, “my Mama was a 70-year-old Peace Corps volunteer in India, one of my sisters goes all over the world as a holy-roller preacher, my oldest sister spends half her time on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and my brother thinks he’s going to be president of the United States. Which one of our family do you think is normal.”
True enough. Then again, when it comes to families, there is no such thing as “normal.” Which is why every four years, we reach that part of the presidential campaign cycle where the family laundry comes tumbling out in soiled and smelly heaps.
Earlier this week, it became known that Cindy McCain had not one but two half-sisters, one of whom has been deeply offended that Mrs. McCain describes herself as an “only child.”
“I’m upset,” Kathleen Hensly Portalski told NPR. “I’m angry. It makes me feel like a non-person, kind of.”
Barack Obama had his own sibling problems this week, when a 26-year-old man, George Hussein Onyango Obama, shown standing dejectedly in front of a shack in Nairobi, told the Italian-language Vanity Fair that he is Mr. Obama’s half brother. “I live like a recluse,” George Obama says in the article. “No one knows I exist.”
Then there is Hillary Rodham Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham, who was spotted in Obama enemy territory this week, meeting with former supporters of his sister and Carly Fiorino, a McCain campaign adviser, according to the Scranton Times Tribune.
All of which proves once again that TV’s most far-fetched soap operas can be as sterile as academic studies when it comes to capturing the crazy, complicated, surprising twists in the dynamics of real-life families.
Mrs. McCain has defended herself, explaining that she was raised as an only child while her older sisters lived separately with their mothers. That has not stopped the criticism by some left-leaning pundits.
Mr. Obama is also under attack, with conservative talk radio blasting him for not doing more to help his impoverished family members. Mr. Obama devoted numerous pages to that part of his life in “Dreams from My Father,” a book that was in part an attempt to deal with Mr. Obama’s Kenyan father, who helped produce at least eight half-brothers and sisters from four marriages or relationships.
As for the Clintons — their critics have had a field day, seeing Tony Rodham’s meeting with Ms. Fiorina as proof of Bill and Hillary’s duplicity when it comes to their sincerity in supporting Mr. Obama.
Chances are this week’s mini-scandals won’t be the end of it, given that most Americans stem from extremely entangled family trees. But this is hardly a new problem: Presidents and would-be presidents have been embarrassed by relatives dating back to John Adams. He was accused of nepotism for appointing a son-in-law and the father-in-law of his son, John Quincy, to government posts.
One of the many scandals in the administration of Ulysses S. Grant involved his brother-in-law, who had been the equivalent of a corporate lobbyist.
And Richard Nixon so feared scandal erupting from his brother’s business deals that he had the Secret Service spy on him.
For George W. Bush, it was too late: His brother, Neil, was slapped by an administrative law judge for his role in the economically devastating savings and loan scandal of the 1980s.
And while Bill Clinton had to do some ’splaining about his half-brother, Roger, even before he was elected, there was even more sibling tension after he was sworn in, some again involving Mrs. Clinton’s brothers. They had a tendency to get involved in controversial business opportunities at most inopportune times for the sitting president — for instance, when Tony Rodham traveled to Cambodia during a violent election campaign there to scout out investment opportunities.
As for Billy Carter, he was often the subject of ridicule for his antics, which included drinking copious amounts of beer. But when he took a $220,000 loan from the Libyan government, which was looking for a favor from the United States — well, let’s just say having the Internal Revenue Service and other government agencies scouring your every transaction was a lot less humorous than launching a label called Billy Beer.
Read entire article at NYT blog
True enough. Then again, when it comes to families, there is no such thing as “normal.” Which is why every four years, we reach that part of the presidential campaign cycle where the family laundry comes tumbling out in soiled and smelly heaps.
Earlier this week, it became known that Cindy McCain had not one but two half-sisters, one of whom has been deeply offended that Mrs. McCain describes herself as an “only child.”
“I’m upset,” Kathleen Hensly Portalski told NPR. “I’m angry. It makes me feel like a non-person, kind of.”
Barack Obama had his own sibling problems this week, when a 26-year-old man, George Hussein Onyango Obama, shown standing dejectedly in front of a shack in Nairobi, told the Italian-language Vanity Fair that he is Mr. Obama’s half brother. “I live like a recluse,” George Obama says in the article. “No one knows I exist.”
Then there is Hillary Rodham Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham, who was spotted in Obama enemy territory this week, meeting with former supporters of his sister and Carly Fiorino, a McCain campaign adviser, according to the Scranton Times Tribune.
All of which proves once again that TV’s most far-fetched soap operas can be as sterile as academic studies when it comes to capturing the crazy, complicated, surprising twists in the dynamics of real-life families.
Mrs. McCain has defended herself, explaining that she was raised as an only child while her older sisters lived separately with their mothers. That has not stopped the criticism by some left-leaning pundits.
Mr. Obama is also under attack, with conservative talk radio blasting him for not doing more to help his impoverished family members. Mr. Obama devoted numerous pages to that part of his life in “Dreams from My Father,” a book that was in part an attempt to deal with Mr. Obama’s Kenyan father, who helped produce at least eight half-brothers and sisters from four marriages or relationships.
As for the Clintons — their critics have had a field day, seeing Tony Rodham’s meeting with Ms. Fiorina as proof of Bill and Hillary’s duplicity when it comes to their sincerity in supporting Mr. Obama.
Chances are this week’s mini-scandals won’t be the end of it, given that most Americans stem from extremely entangled family trees. But this is hardly a new problem: Presidents and would-be presidents have been embarrassed by relatives dating back to John Adams. He was accused of nepotism for appointing a son-in-law and the father-in-law of his son, John Quincy, to government posts.
One of the many scandals in the administration of Ulysses S. Grant involved his brother-in-law, who had been the equivalent of a corporate lobbyist.
And Richard Nixon so feared scandal erupting from his brother’s business deals that he had the Secret Service spy on him.
For George W. Bush, it was too late: His brother, Neil, was slapped by an administrative law judge for his role in the economically devastating savings and loan scandal of the 1980s.
And while Bill Clinton had to do some ’splaining about his half-brother, Roger, even before he was elected, there was even more sibling tension after he was sworn in, some again involving Mrs. Clinton’s brothers. They had a tendency to get involved in controversial business opportunities at most inopportune times for the sitting president — for instance, when Tony Rodham traveled to Cambodia during a violent election campaign there to scout out investment opportunities.
As for Billy Carter, he was often the subject of ridicule for his antics, which included drinking copious amounts of beer. But when he took a $220,000 loan from the Libyan government, which was looking for a favor from the United States — well, let’s just say having the Internal Revenue Service and other government agencies scouring your every transaction was a lot less humorous than launching a label called Billy Beer.