Accidental Presidents Book Summary - Accidental Presidents Book explained in key points

Accidental Presidents summary

Name: Accidental Presidents
Rating: 4.2 (45 reviews)
Author: Jared Cohen

Jared Cohen

Eight Men Who Changed America

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Accidental Presidents
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What’s in it for me? A history of the accidental presidents who made America.

The electoral fortunes of American presidential candidates hinge on their individual charisma – their ability to embody the self-perception and desires of the nation in their own personalities. Vice presidents, by contrast, are usually chosen for more pragmatic reasons, like their ability to politick, horse trade and keep influential voting blocs onside.

But what happens when power passes from the former to the latter?

Well, that’s exactly what Jared Cohen explores in Accidental Presidents, a study of the men who found themselves in the White House after illness or assassins claimed their old bosses’ lives.

So far, that’s happened just eight times in the history of the US. Some cases are better known than others. Everyone remembers Lincoln and Kennedy, while names like Garfield and McKinley are often forgotten. Then there are the four presidents who died from natural causes: Harrison, Taylor, Harding and Roosevelt. In these blinks, we’ll explore how the decisions of the “accidental presidents,” who filled their shoes changed the course of American history.

Along the way you’ll learn

how the annexation of Texas ended up redrawing the borders of the US;
why a historic opportunity to advance equality was squandered after the Civil War; and
how a friend to segregationists ended up passing landmark civil rights legislation.

John Tyler, the first “accidental president,” annexed Texas to the United States.

In 1840, the Whig party’s candidate William Henry Harrison won the presidential election. Nicknamed “Old Tippecanoe,” the 68-year-old general was the republic’s oldest head of state. That wasn’t the only record he set: inaugurated on March 4, Harrison died 31 days later on April 4, 1840. It remains the shortest presidency in American history.

Lacking clear constitutional guidelines, the Whig party settled on Harrison’s vice president, John Tyler, as his replacement. A native Southerner, he’d been added to the Whig ticket to help win Virginia. As the campaign slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler too” suggested, Tyler was an afterthought who’d been destined to become little more than a historical footnote, until pneumonia killed Harrison.

He was also an outsider. Neither Whigs nor their Democratic opponents trusted him. The first group doubted his political credentials, while the second hadn’t forgiven him for his personal attacks on them during the 1840 campaign. Hemmed in on all sides, Tyler’s government was soon gridlocked.

Something had to give. Tyler’s strategy? Divide and conquer. If he could peel away voters from both Whigs and Democrats, neither party would be able to win the 1844 election outright. Historical precedent dictated that in such cases the House of Representatives determined the next government. That, Tyler calculated, would give him the presidency.

What he needed now was a signature policy. That’s when he started talking up the idea of annexing Texas. An independent republic since 1836, Texas was a natural candidate to join the Union, but annexation was a political hot potato for both parties.

Why? Well, opponents and supporters of slavery worried that a new state would upset the delicate balance between Southern slave states and Northern free states. Admitting Texas as a slave state would give the former the upper hand, while admitting it as a free state would tip the balance in the latter’s favor.

Tyler, however, was sure his gambit was a winner. In 1844, he signed a treaty that prepared the way for annexation. The issue dominated the presidential election as Tyler had expected, but his scheme didn’t come off: after slipping into third place, he withdrew from the race. But the wheels were already in motion. Tyler’s last act in office was to sign an annexation bill on March 3, 1845.

New territories threatened to upset the political balance of states in the US, until Millard Fillmore ushered in the Compromise of 1850.

The decision to annex Texas set in motion a chain of events that would change the shape of America forever. To begin with, Mexico still laid claim to the state and refused to accept the new borders drawn by the US. A bitter but ultimately one-sided war between the nations was concluded in February 1848 with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Victorious, the US set steep terms for peace: Mexico would forfeit all of present-day California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Utah and a good chunk of Colorado, Wyoming and Texas.

Seven months later, Americans headed to the polls. The Whigs had chosen Zachary Taylor as their candidate. A Kentucky-born general best known for his exploits in the Mexican-American war, he’d been selected for his popularity rather than his political bona fides. With Harrison’s death in office still fresh in their minds, leading Whigs insisted on installing a reliable party man as Taylor’s running mate: Millard Fillmore, a New York congressman more interested in patronage than high office.

Andrew Johnson wasted a historic opportunity and sold out America’s emancipated slaves.

By 1864, victory for the Unionist North against the Southern Confederacy in the Civil War was all but guaranteed. The question in November’s election was what would come next.

Abraham Lincoln, the abolitionist Republican president of the US since 1860, championed a radical reform of the old slaveholding South. A moral opponent of slavery, he’d already issued the 1862 Emancipation Proclamation freeing Southern slaves, and approved the Thirteenth Amendment to the US constitution, outlawing slavery in the US in 1864. His running mate, Andrew Johnson, had different views. An unabashed racist who’d owned enslaved people himself, he believed that black people in America, “have shown less capacity for government than any other race of people.”

Chester Arthur helped dismantle the very patronage system to which he owed his political career.

By 1880, many Americans were tired of politics. Principle had given way to patronage, and the nation’s highest offices were packed with the corrupt products of the so-called spoils system – machine politicians who owed their positions to the old-boy network.

The victor in that year’s presidential election, the Republican candidate James Garfield, offered hope. A former teacher from a working-class background, he owed his success to no one but himself. A friend to black Americans, immigrants and the poor, he championed educational reforms that would lay the foundations for a more meritocratic and equal system.

Theodore Roosevelt used his predecessor's assassination to make the case for reforms.

In November 1899, William McKinley's vice president died while in office. The 54-year-old Republican president was himself eight years older than the average life expectancy, but he was oddly complacent about filling the VP position – in fact, if it hadn’t been for the upcoming 1900 election, he would have left it vacant. When he was unable to settle on a running mate himself, the decision was left to the party’s convention.

The man chosen was Theodore Roosevelt. A progressive New Yorker known for his hatred of corruption and advocacy for poorer Americans, “Teddy” had ruffled a lot of feathers during his stint as the city’s police commissioner and governor. His selection as VP was partly engineered by New York’s top Republican political operator, Thomas Platt. The idea? Kick Roosevelt upstairs and give him a prestigious position with little real power in order to stop him from sticking his nose where it wasn’t wanted.

Calvin Coolidge continued Warren Harding's policies but made a clean break with his corruption.

The early twentieth century was a turbulent time in the US. Class conflict and political radicalism were on the rise. Then there were international affairs: in 1917, the US mobilized its forces and entered the First World War on the side of the Allied powers. By the end of that conflict, Americans were ready for some peace and quiet. In 1920, they elected a man who promised just that – the Republican candidate Warren Harding.

The economy grew at a steady clip, and the temperature of political debate cooled down, making Harding's administration one of the most popular in living memory. But voters didn’t know the whole story. Despite his sober public image, Harding was a prolific adulterer who loved nothing more than long, booze-fuelled nights playing cards with old pals from his native Ohio. Worst of all, he turned a blind eye as those cronies used their connections to the presidency to build a criminal empire in Washington.

Harry Truman oversaw the end of the Second World War and the creation of a new postwar order.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or FDR, was already a dying man when he was nominated to run for a fourth term as president in 1944. Aware that his poor health would likely put power in the hands of his VP, senior Democratic party figures were determined to prevent his old running mate – the ultra-left Henry Wallace – from standing again. The candidate they settled on was an unremarkable machine politician and self-declared “political eunuch” from Missouri, Harry Truman.

During the 82 days between Roosevelt’s inauguration in January and his death in April 1945, Truman kept a low profile. He met FDR just twice and didn’t receive a single foreign policy briefing or set foot in the map room, in which the US planned its war against Germany and Japan. When he learned of the president’s death, he asked FDR’s wife Eleanor what he could do for the family. Her reply? What could she do for him? After all, he was the one who was in real trouble!

Lyndon Johnson made good on JFK’s pledge to extend civil rights to black Americans.

The assassination of America’s telegenic young Democratic president John F. Kennedy in November 1963 shocked the world. What had happened? Some believed a sinister Marxist conspiracy was afoot. Others suspected a right-wing coup. Fear was in the air.

No one had more reason to be terrified than America’s black community. Kennedy’s victory in 1960 had been greeted with a wave of euphoria. As civil rights leader Jesse Jackson later put it, Kennedy was the first prominent white politician to declare segregation unconstitutional and denounce it as a moral evil publicly. His death seemed to mark the end of a brief period of hope.

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What is Accidental Presidents about?

Accidental Presidents (2019) explores the role of chance in American history. Whether they were felled by an assassin’s bullet or struck down by illness, eight US heads of state have died while in office. The vice presidents who succeeded them suddenly found themselves with the power to change the nation’s course. From the decision to annex Texas in the 1840s to the passing of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, the policies that have determined the fate of America were often forged by its “accidental presidents.”

Who should read Accidental Presidents?

History buffs
Americaphiles
Politicos

About the Author

Jared Cohen is the founder and chief executive officer of Alphabet’s technology incubator Jigsaw and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Cohen worked as an advisor to Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton between 2006 and 2010. Listed in Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers, he is the author of four books, including One Hundred Days of Silence (2006) and Children of Jihad (2007).

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