I Am A Fount Of Entirely Useless Knowledge
While looking around at some other blogs, I came across an interesting post by Taffy Stuck and Tongue Tied over at Solitude and a Cup of Tea. It is just some questions that she had around inauguration time and I thought they were actually pretty good and I had a fun time answering them. Naturally, I worked myself up into a frenzy, and ended up posting a comment that was tl;dr but I figured I would post it here as well because they really were some interesting questions. And, before you ask, yes TS&TT is not American, although she has been living in the U.S. for some time now.
Here is her original post:
”On the occasion of the US presidential inauguration, I thought of some questions. Humor me, will you?
1. Can the President be a single (without a spouse) person? If so, who would take on the duties traditionally fulfilled by the First Lady?
2. Has the constitution been amended to say Spouse of the President in place of First Lady? If Hillary Clinton had become President, would Bill Clinton have been called First Gentleman?
3. Can the President and the First Family have foster children? If so, has any President taken any?
4. If the President is an atheist, does the oath get modified to remove references to god? What replaces the Bible during the ceremony?
5. Is there a security deposit to be paid while moving into the White House? What happens if an outgoing President leaves massive damages behind? Who pays for the repairs?
Taffy Stuck and Tongue Tied”
And my response:
I think I can help you out with these:
1. The President can be single. There are no written rules regarding marital status for any politician. However, it can be difficult to have a political career without at least a long-term relationship due to the rampant homophobia of the American public. There has only been one unmarried President, James Buchanan. He is an interesting figure in that he may have been the only “gay” President (He never had a long-term relationship with a woman, had a lifelong male companion that he lived with, and was widely believed to be homosexual by his contemporaries). Buchanan opted to have his niece fulfill the First Lady’s duties, which, up until recently, has simply been to be the hostess at formal dinners.
2. I do not believe that that the spouse of the President is ever mentioned in the Constitution. The role of First Lady is simply a traditional role with no official power. Although this has been changing in recent elections, people should be voting for an individual, and not a married couple. As to your question on Bill Clinton, I think he would be a special case. Former President’s are still referred to as ‘President’ even after they have left office. I think that would be the case for Bill Clinton. But it is interesting to speculate what we would call the husband to the President. I think First Gentleman would do quite nicely. Also, I wonder what would be the title for the partner if we were to have another unmarried President. First Girlfriend/Boyfriend doesn’t exactly sound dignified.
3. Presidents certainly can have foster children and adopt children. Actually, a surprising amount of Presidents have raised children that were not their own, although the last one to do so was James Buchanan (who raised two nieces, one of which I mentioned above). In fact, most people don’t realize that George and Martha Washington never had any children together, but George raised Martha’s children as his own. Also, I think Andrew Jackson was the first President to “officially” adopt children (It was not uncommon in that period for people, especially the wealthy, to raise other children as their own and to take on wards, without ever having actual adoption papers drawn up).
4. The Presidential Oath actually has no references to any god. Officially, the entire ceremony is secular, and the use of a Bible or the inclusion of prayer is entirely up to the President being sworn in. For example, Theodore Roosevelt felt so strongly about the separation of church and state that he refused to use a Bible. John Quincy Adams used a book of law, and Lyndon B. Johnson used a Catholic missal. So an atheist could probably be sworn in on no book, or any book they felt comfortable with. Of course, they would be doing so with a great risk to their political careers, as Evangelicals and Fundamentalists would not be too keen on the President being sworn in on The Origin of Species.
5. The White House is owned by the public, although I think it is technically operated by the Department of the Treasury (I am not 100% sure though). There is no security deposit or anything like that, but I imagine that a President would be billed for any major damage that they cause in the White House. With that being said, there was some prankish vandalism that occurred in the transition between Clinton and Bush, which resulted in about $14,000 in damages. I believe that the taxpayers footed that bill, as no one could prove who did what, and it certainly was not solely (if at all) the Clintons’ fault. The White House is more like a museum and office building with living quarters than like an actual house. With so many people going in and out, it would be hard to say which one person has caused any damage, and I am sure the President would be the last person to blame for it.
