In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

T here haven’t been log cabin presidents for decades. Presidential campaigns cost millions of dollars these days, and candidates must collect a lot of it themselves if they’re going to win nominations in the primaries and elections in the presidential contest. campaigns are more costly in 2011 than they were in 1984, when Edward Pessen published his book pointing out that few american presidents started out life in log cabins. Even a nice little home and yard are not enough. you must become a millionaire at some point, after begging for dough, if you are going to pay for campaign expenses these days. the us supreme court hails the million-dollar presidential contests as wondrous examples of freedom of speech. H H H years ago charles Beard made a career-line study of the men who drafted the us constitution and discovered that they were mostly men of wealth. in The Log Cabin Myth Edward Pessen does a somewhat similar study of the thirty-nine presidents, from Washington to reagan, who have been elected under that constitution, and discovers that, like the constitution-makers, they too for the most part have come from the ranks of the privileged. Pessen’s analysis, the first ever made of our presidents’ social backgrounds, is based largely on published sources, particularly presidential biographies; though it suffers at times from repetition, it is a convincing corrective to the popular notion that anyone can rise from rags to riches in this country if he tries hard enough. The Log Cabin Myth about American Presidents CHAPTER 2 4 The Log Cabin Myth about American Presidents 5 once when lyndon Johnson was showing friends around his texas ranch he pointed out a ramshackle cabin as his birthplace. “Why, lyndon,” cried his mother afterward, “you know you were born in a much better house closer to town which has been torn down.” “i know, Mama,” said Johnson, “but everybody has to have a birthplace.” to be sure. But the birthplaces of all our presidents—Johnson’s included— have almost invariably been good ones. to demolish the log cabin myth, Pessen first examines the social and economic circumstances of the presidents ’ families and then takes a look at the careers of each of the presidents before he entered the White house. his conclusion: “Very few began at or near the bottom. the lives of the presidents only illustrate this principle: americans who attain great worldly success, whether in wealth and property accumulation, occupational prestige, or politics, have typically been born to youthful advantages that were instrumental in accounting for their adult success.” one does not become a president (or, i would presume, a professor) without special advantages at the outset that are denied the vast majority of americans. Pessen describes all thirty-nine presidents, including Fdr, as basically conservative, that is, as upholders of the capitalist system, and he thinks the major parties pick candidates mainly for their ideological “soundness.” hence conventionality and mediocrity have been the rule, and our presidents have mainly served “not the general interests of the people as a whole, but the narrow interests of the small privileged and wealthy minority.” if intelligence and character were the criteria for high office, says Pessen, there is no reason why our leaders would not be drawn as often from the ranks of skilled mechanics, farmers, teachers, and architects as from the upper classes. i don’t find classifying both Fdr and reagan as conservatives especially illuminating; i am bothered by the fact that Pessen says nothing about the essential conservatism of the masses of americans who were not born to privilege. still, it is hard not to sympathize with his plea, at the end of his stimulating (and occasionally sardonic) survey, that “we seek in the future, as we have not sought in the past, to select candidates of commanding intelligence, learning, and above all patience, wisdom, and humanity—traits all that are not necessarily revealed by high social standing and the ideological preferences that typically accompany such standing.” REVIEW OF EDWARD PESSEN, The Log Cabin Myth: The Social Backgrounds of the Presidents (1985), Journal of Southern History, May 1985. ...

Share