We may pretend otherwise, but there’s nothing unique for American presidents to use family members to fill various jobs in the White House. Presidential nepotism goes back to our nation’s earliest days.
- John Adams, our second president, employed his son John Quincy Adams first as his secretary, and later as the U.S. Ambassador to Prussia. Adams also appointed his son-in-law, William Stephens Smith, who had a rather shady reputation, to a number of government positions, with Smith ending up with the plum job of customs agent in New York.
- Presidents James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, John Tyler and James Buchanan all appointed close relatives to serve as their secretaries.
- President Zachary Taylor used military commissions to put his brother and son-in-law on the government payroll and declared them both to be special but “unofficial” presidential advisers.
- President Ulysses S. Grant placed a number of family members on either the government payroll or on staff at the White House. His brother, Orvil Grant, was ultimately implicated in scandals involving government trading posts with Native Americans.
- President Woodrow Wilson had family members as both secretaries and aides, while his wife Edith, actually ran the country for a number of months after her husband suffered a devastating stroke.
- Franklin Roosevelt employed a number of his family members. His wife Eleanor served as his roving ambassador at large. She traveled all over the world on FDR’s behalf, filing hundreds of reports informing him of various situations and often directly advising him on what action to take. His son, James Roosevelt, was not only one of his aides and closest confidants, but also helped the crippled president to get around and to at times simulate walking. In the final months of his presidency, Roosevelt’s daughter Anna served as the de facto “First Lady,” during the ongoing absence of her mother.
- President Dwight Eisenhower appointed his trusted son John as one of his closest White House aides.
- Most famously of all, President John F. Kennedy appointed his brother Robert to be his Attorney-General and his very closest adviser. He also appointed his brother-in-law Sargent Shriver as the first head of the new Peace Corps.
- President Bill Clinton appointed his wife Hillary to head an important task force to devise a national healthcare program.
A few examples may have been missed, but by now it should be clear that this issue is not a new one. The real problem with presidential nepotism is not the danger of the presidential family filling it’s pockets from government coffers. As anyone who has ever worked for a family business will know, the biggest danger is that it can be very difficult to fire an incompetent employee who just happens to be a close family member!
