From James Madison and Teddy Roosevelt to Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden, family members have created cringeworthy moments for chief executives throughout the country’s history. (Illustration by Emily Faith Morgan, University Communications)
Poor finances, questionable business dealings, legal troubles and bad behavior – while President Joe Biden deals with the sins of his son, he can take some solace in knowing he’s not the only chief executive in U.S. history to suffer at the hands of his family.
Presidential historian Barbara A. Perry, Baliles Professor of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, says presidents throughout the nation’s history have been saddled with relatives who made news for all the wrong reasons.
Hunter Biden has had a host of very public troubles, including allegations of drug use, a paternity suit, tax code violations, an illegal gun purchase and possible federal charges under the Foreign Agents Registration Act for allegedly working on behalf of China and Ukraine.
Unfortunately for President Biden, none of that is under his control.
“Hunter Biden is an adult, and there’s only so much you can do with an adult child,” Perry said. “You can imagine a parent pulling him aside and saying … ‘As you know, I’m running for president and you’re already a bit of an embarrassment by virtue of your lifestyle choices. We love you no matter what, but you just can’t do that.’ Of course, maybe he did have that conversation and it didn’t do any good.”
While his son’s behavior creates political headaches for the elder Biden, presidential history shows his pain is not original. In fact, it stretches back to the nation’s fourth president, James Madison, and his stepson, John Payne Todd.
Todd occasionally served as Madison’s presidential secretary, but his penchant for gambling and alcohol vexed the president. Madison tried to prevent Todd’s scandalous behavior from reaching his wife, Dolley, and wound up paying Todd’s creditors $40,000. That’s the equivalent of about $1.2 million in 2023 dollars.
Presidential historian Barbara A. Perry, of UVA’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, said history shows that President Biden will not be the last U.S. President with troublemaking family members. (Photo by Sanjay Suchak, University Communications)
“He pretty much bankrupted his parents,” Perry said. “Like Biden with Hunter, they were trying to help the child, knowing that the child’s misdeeds would eventually come back to haunt them.”
Family can be embarrassing in many ways. For instance, Abraham Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, was a controversial figure in Washington during her husband’s tenure, both personally and for her relatives fighting for the Confederacy.
Grover Cleveland made his own controversy by fathering a child out of wedlock, which turned into a political issue in the 1884 election.
And President Theodore Roosevelt struggled to reign in his rebellious daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth.
President Teddy Roosevelt’s family made headlines for its rambunctious children running about the White House, with oldest daughter Alice creating the biggest media stir. (U.S. Library of Congress photo)
In 1901, when Roosevelt took office, polite society frowned upon women smoking in public. The 17-year-old Alice was, therefore, forbidden from smoking in the White House. Instead, she took to the building’s roof to burn one.
She had her own style, too. She was often seen carrying a pet snake, attending horse races, driving her own car without a chaperone and even getting a speeding ticket. She would dance in public, sneak whiskey into parties and say whatever was on her mind, much to the media’s delight. She once remarked that her father’s political rival, William Howard Taft, was “great in girth … and great in nothing else.”
When Taft won the 1909 election, Alice buried a voodoo doll on the White House grounds before the family moved out. She was summarily banned from the premises.
“Famously, Teddy Roosevelt supposedly said that he could either run the country or run Alice, but not both,” Perry said. “She made colorful statements, including that her dad had to be the center of attention: He wanted to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. So, yeah, they had a fraught relationship.”
Alice Roosevelt, daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, was known for inciteful comments about her father and other political figures as well as her free-spirited behavior. (U.S. Library of Congress photo)
There have plenty of lesser embarrassments over the years. In 2001, President George W. Bush’s daughters made the tabloids with college partying. His daughter Jenna, then a 20-year-old student at the University of Texas, was cited for both possession of alcohol and using a fake ID to purchase alcohol within a five-week period.
There was a lot of embarrassment during the administration of President Bill Clinton, much of it brought on by the president himself. He did have help from his younger half-brother, Roger Clinton Jr., however, who was code-named “Headache” by the U.S. Secret Service.
Roger Clinton attracted attention for receiving $50,000 and a Rolex watch in exchange for lobbying his presidential brother in 1999 to pardon a convicted mobster. The pardon was not granted, but just before brother Bill Clinton left office, he granted Roger a presidential pardon for a 1985 cocaine possession and drug-trafficking conviction.
Family trouble can impact almost any president. Even Jimmy Carter had family problems.
“Jimmy Carter presented himself, I think quite truthfully and accurately, as the contrast to Richard Nixon – ‘I’ll never lie to you’ and ‘I’m a born-again Christian,’” Perry said. “Some might say he presented himself as a bit holier-than-thou, much like Mike Pence. In the case of Jimmy Carter, it was all true.”
If Carter was a pair of beige socks, his family were iridescent argyles. Carter’s sister, Gloria Carter Spann, a member of the Harley-Davidson 100,000-mile club for the number of miles she rode her motorcycle, was arrested in 1979 for refusing to stop playing her harmonica in a restaurant in Americus, Georgia.
His nephew, who was serving time in a California jail when Carter was elected president, told the media that his uncle “is in the White House, I’m in the big house.”
But Carter’s most memorable family member was his brother Billy.
“Billy, by virtue of just being a rube, was colorful,” Perry said. “Sitting out there at his filling station in Plains, Georgia, and producing what became ‘Billy Beer.’ All of that would have just been easy for President Carter to [shrug off and] say ‘Well, hey, that’s my little brother, and I can’t do anything about him. He’s always been a character.’”
President Jimmy Carter, left, and his brother Billy were contrasts in personalities. Billy was investigated by Congress for allegedly peddling his influence to Libyans. (National Archives photo)
It could have been just that. Then Billy Carter was accused of influence peddling on behalf of Libya and investigated by a Congressional panel. He told the Senate committee that he was “not a buffoon, a boob, or a wacko.”
“They didn’t find anything, but that was not helping Jimmy Carter in the year he’s running for reelection. He was already in trouble because of the Iranian hostages and the sour economy, and Billy wasn’t helping the cause,” Perry said.
The troubles of presidents past may be poor consolation for Joe Biden, but at least he’s not alone.
“With Hunter Biden, it’s not the first time a family member has caused a headache for a president,” she said, “and you can bet it probably won’t be the last.”
