Madam President Ruled in 1919

Whenever I do signings for any book I always sell a lot of Madam President The Secret  Presidency of Edith Wilson. I start by telling people we already had a woman president. Usually people laugh but then I tell them to go to .gov and read about first ladies because there in Edith's bio is the statement that she ran the executive for two years. She did. It was a great cover up of a sitting Presidents inability to govern and his wife taking over and running the United States for two years.

Hard to believe really. The next question is how come I don't know this. A lot of history is papered over with mythology. The facts get lost under agendas and historical bias. Historians are loathe to say that Edith Wilson was President. It does not fit in the Wilson historical context. It is also too fantastic to believe. How could this be pulled off? No radio for one thing. Newspapers were the primary source of news and people were not used to seeing the President.

A press that was complicit in the cover up. Or at least a press that didn't question. Yet there were papers that did speculate that Woodrow Wilson had a stroke and his wife was running the country. But it didn't get much traction. Then Edith herself made sure her tracks were covered in a 1939 memoir where she said she never made any decisions but was just a steward. None of this is true. The fact is Edith Wilson was the President in 1919 albeit unelected and ran the country until 1921. Believe it or not.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

Why Do So Few People Know About Our First Woman President?

That's easy. History is written by the victors. And the victors were men. They wrote the history in 1921 the year the Edith Wilson Presidency ended. And for the next fifty years they held the Woodrow Wilson legacy together. Edith Wilson wrote a memoir in 1939 that claimed she was only a "steward" but never President. She too was committed to Woodrow Wilson's legacy to the point her relatives were never allowed to ask her about the President. That door was shut.

And so our First Woman President skirted the pages of history. It was always that lurking factoid. Something about a President who had a massive stroke and his wife stepped then stepped in. But it never got traction and the books that came out danced around the issue. A later history of Edith and Woodrow went so far as to claim Edith Wilson was power mad and grabbed power but never recognized her for running the White House from 1919 to 1921.

The government finally recognized what she did on a website that summarizes the first ladies. On .gov there is a reference to Edith that simply says she ran the Executive Branch for two years. It isn't much, but it is a beginning.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

Those Tough as Nails Feminists

They were tough. When I was growing up in Baltimore the feminist movement was in full flower. My mother was on board as were many East Coast Kennedyesque women who were willing to march, lay down in the street and do whatever it took to advance women's right. I hung out with a kid named Matt. He was cool. His parents were real hippies. His brother was a hippy. His father had long hair and his mother...well she drove an VW Micro bus, wore her hair down to her waist, wore high boots, long coats, and did not take anything from anyone. 

She was the activist mom of  the early seventies and had signs in her garage from demonstrations. His mother scared the hell out of me. One time I didn't eat the crusts of my tuna fish sandwich. She turned her dark eyes on me with her peace sign hanging down. Do you know how many kids are starving in China Billy? I did not. Well there are many and they would kill for those crusts. From then on I ate the crusts. 

But I think about my mother and Matt's mom and how they took nothing from anyone. And I think about the women's movement today. They will have to get tough because power is not given up easily and they are facing probably the most hostile administration in history to women's rights. It will be a tough fight...but you know what, I still eat my crusts. 

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

The Historical Significance of the Womens March

Alice Paul endured an  insane asylum and being force fed after being imprisoned. She headed up the National Organization of Women and believed the only way women would get the vote was through direct confrontation with the  men who held power. The President Woodrow Wilson and his young new wife Edith motored through the White House gates while suffragettes chained themselves to the gates and laid down in front of the presidential limousine. Wilson believed in state control of the vote and didn't think the Federal government should get involved.

Alice Paul would not be ignored. She managed to get arrested along with other women and ended up in prison. The President offered a pardon and they refused. A hunger strike began with Alice leading the way. Wilson began to lose the public relations battle when Paul became very ill and wealthy women began to join the picket line. Force feeding commenced but still Paul would not give up. The commitment to an insane asylum only hurt the presidents case.

Paul was released and Wilson eventually ended up asking congress to pass legislation giving the vote to women. It failed but the ball had started rolling and in 1921 women got the vote. And now women are marching to protest another president. This one wants to set women's rights back fifty years. The use of protest and creating dis-ease was Alice Pauls favorite tactic. She could relate to the women gearing up for the 21st.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

Edith Wilsons Movie Theatre at the White House

Edith decided that movies might help the President. Since the ravages of the stroke Wilson rarely left his bed and Edith needed to give him something to do. Besides the President had liked silent movies before and this seemed a logical way to entertain him and give some routine to the day. So the rug was pulled back in the Red Room of the White House and a projectionist was brought in. Wilson liked Westerns but he didn't want the accompaniment of a piano which was standard in most theatres. For the Edith  Wilson movie house the clicking of the projector would be the only sound.

So they did it. Wilson's Coney Island wheel chair was wheeled down to the Red Room and the curtains pulled. A sheet from the Lincoln bed was pinned to the wall. The chandeliers sparkled with the movie light as silent riders crossed the screen for the old man wrapped in blankets with his head cocked to one side like an expectant bird. Edith sat with him as they watched the movies in the morning and sometimes she would end up talking with her secretary or one of Wilson's assistants. Wilson didn't like films that were too intense so they had to show "mellow Westerns. During one of these conversations the President fell out of his chair in the darkness.

The projectionists was horrified and was convinced he just saw Woodrow Wilson expire. The question was whether to continue the film or let Edith Wilson know her husband had just died. He decided the film must continue. Edith eventually aw Woodrow on the floor and picked him up with assistance and put his back in his wheelchair. The film played on to the man in the darkness who watched with his head leaning left while the rest of the world galloped away.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

If Women Ruled The World Would Be Better Off

Lets face it, women are better people than men. I know I am a man. If you are married then you know what I am saying. Women are taught and have empathy at a very early age. It is in the genes. But more than that boys are told to act in self interest. Getting ahead and achieving is preeminent. And the guidelines are unclear. If you happen to make the football team by flattening the other kid so much the better. Or if you best the school bully with a punch in the nose even better. Or if you ride down the street with no hands and plow into a car then you are commended for being a daredevil.

Girls are told on the other hand to think of others. To put others before yourself. Ever watch women get together and compliment each other. I like  your dress. That is cute on you. Ever see men do that. Men  stare at each other and rarely give out compliments...they are too busy bragging. Men brag while women give compliments. The world is full of braggarts. In face we are up to the brim with braggarts and now we have a braggart in chief.

So how does this all relate to the world? Well. Wars. The ultimate hubris. Helping the less fortunate. The environment. Human rights. Civil discourse. We just saw a slash and burn campaign of men hacking each other up. Hillary never seemed to have a knack for it. But no. I believe after the Donald tour the world would be better off with those girls who were told to think of others before themselves. Man... do we need that now.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edth Wilson

Vote Like Your Life Depends On It....

We are at one of those crossroads in history. Ernest Hemingway and the ex patriots in France whiffed it after the carnage of World War I. The world would never be the same. Modernism arrived with tanks and the awful mass death of the trenches. The mechanized world demanded a new way of interpreting the world and the artists responded in kind. The old Victorian world was dead and in a way literary poetry and ethereal language died under the hard bitten prose of Hemingway. The world was dry and hard and remained so right up to World War II.

And we emerged victorious and frightened because nuclear arms might obliterate the planet. We lived under that shadow a long time. And then it seemed to lessen and the world seemed to put it all behind us. But we now have this. The world has changed again. People are being marginalized by technology. The Internet has literally squeezed the profit out of everything and so nobody can afford to carry anyone. The old world of the blue collar job has gone to India and robots have sopped up the rest. Our first African American president gave us a ray of hope and then collapsed under the forces that will not rest.

And now we must vote like our lives depend on it. The very dark clouds hiding under uber nationalism are the same ones that gathered in 1939 and plunged the world into darkness. The same pointed fingers that exterminated six million people are now fingering others as the root of our problems. It is a canard but it doesn't matter. People need someone to blame and there are always others willing to show us who. So vote like your life depends on it.

It might.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

Edith and Woodrow Wilson's Strange Road Trips

The President  had manged to get into a Coney Island wheelchair and sit out on the south portico of the White House to get air. He was wrapped in blankets and stared into the bloodless sun and wondered what had happened to his presidency. Meanwhile Edith was desperate to find something that would make the president happy or at least release him from his terrible depression over his devastating stroke.  She had begun showing him movies in the Red Room but he often fell asleep or began crying if the scenes were too intense.

Before they were married she and Woodrow would take long drives in the country to relieve stress and get away from the prying eyes of the White House. Edith wondered if it might work again and had a ramp built in the back of the White House so the President could get into the Pierce Arrow limousine. Even with the ramp it took four secret service men to lift him into the car. The agents positioned Wilson on the right side of the car with his right side facing out so no one would know his left side was paralyzed. They put his hat on and they were off.

The presidential limousine that weighed four tons and looked like something out of the Adams family went around Washington a few times and then they headed for the country. When cars passed them Wilson demanded the driver give chase and he be allowed to hold court on the side of the road for speeding. Many people were not sure the man in the back of the car was the president. Many had not heard or seen him for over a year. When he returned he was greeted by the families of the secret service men instructed to cheer.  Wilson turned to Edith with a tear in his eye..."you see Edith, they still  love me".

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

On The Book Tour of Madam President in Washington DC

The first thing you are is tired. You have just given everything at a radio interview and there is nothing in the tank but you have more interviews and CSPAN in the afternoon and you are in front of people from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation who might not be crazy about calling Edith Wilson the First Woman President. And it is the first day your book is out.

That alone is a conflict of emotions. Yes the book is a lot like a baby with all that anticipation. But there it is and there is not a lot you can do at a point. Forget that you don't know where you are and everyone knows it you have to focus. So you duck into a Starbucks for cerebral juice and hope you wont be so brain fogged in the next interview. Sleeping in a hotel room puts you behind the eight ball. Who sleeps well in a room that a thousand other people have slept?

But this is it. You either do it or you dont'. When people read your book back to you on the air you wonder who wrote it. They sound so focused, something you are not. No matter. Coffee. Uber. And then a flight back home the next day. Onward.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

Woodrow Wilson's Other Woman'

In light of the fact that Bill Clintons peccadillo's are fast becoming campaign fodder with Mr. Trump saying he is fair game and sure to invoke the equivalent of a nuclear first strike in the next debate by shaming Hillary with her shaming of Bills women...it is probably time to remember there is nothing new under the sun. And Woodrow Wilson beat Bill Clinton by about a hundred years with a woman named Mary Peck.

It was very nineteenth century in that no one could say what exactly happened but it went like this. Woodrow left his first wife Ellen for a "rest cure" and went to Bermuda when he was President of Princeton. There he met Mary Peck and hobnobbed with Mark Twain and other luminaries. Wilson had a quick mind and was taken with Mary Pecks wit, beauty, and her early flapper ways. Bermuda was the left bank of it's time and there was a bohemian quality to Mary that Wilson responded to. So what happened....

Well Wilson started writing letters. Hundreds of letters to her. And then he went back to Bermuda again without his wife. He saw Mary  Peck and if a physical component entered into the relationship it was here. Lets just say it got bad enough that Wilson confessed to his wife Ellen and they had to "put it behind them.;" Ellen would later say the "Mary Peck affair" was the only time he had caused her unhappiness. But it wasn't over.
'
Mary Peck surfaced while Wilson was in the White House and he had to help her out financially and then the letters he had written almost saw the light during his election campaign. And then finally he had to tell Edith about Mary as the letters were being offered around for sale. Edith took the high road and decided the past was the past. So when the circus begins in the next debate just remember it has all been done before.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

What You Don't Know About The First Madam President

She was from the South. Her name was Edith Bolling Wilson and married President Woodrow Wilson after his wife Ellen Wilson died. They were only married four years and then Woodrow had a massive stroke and Edith took over the White House. This was in 1919 and from here on Edith Wilson ran the government until 1921. She had only two years of school and had run a successful jewelry company after her first husband died. She owned one of the first electric cars in Washington and was given the first drivers license in the District of Columbia. She was fifteen years younger than Woodrow Wilson and considered very attractive. 

They necked in the presidential limousine when they were courting. Edith deciphered top secret codes for the President. When he had a stroke she controlled who saw him and who didn't.  She oversaw legislation and secured appointments for his cabinet. All this while her husband was on deaths door and many thought he would die. She saw the Vice President only once and told him his services weren't needed. She oversaw the end of World War I and was in the middle of the fight to get the United States into the League of Nations. 

She would show her husband movies and wheel him outside to the South Portico for air. She had him put in the presidential limousine and propped up so people would know he was still alive. She outlived him by forty years and was at John Kennedy's inauguration. She wrote a memoir in 1939 and denied running the White House. In the National Archives are correspondence that was never opened during her Presidency and discovered in the 1950s. She just couldn't get to it. 

She was our first woman President and has never been recognized for her service to the country.


Order from Barnes and Noble Madam President

What You Don't Know About The First Madam President

She was from the South. Her name was Edith Bolling Wilson and married President Woodrow Wilson after his wife Ellen Wilson died. They were only married four years and then Woodrow had a massive stroke and Edith took over the White House. This was in 1919 and from here on Edith Wilson ran the government until 1921. She had only two years of school and had run a successful jewelry company after her first husband died. She owned one of the first electric cars in Washington and was given the first drivers license in the District of Columbia. She was fifteen years younger than Woodrow Wilson and considered very attractive. 

They necked in the presidential limousine when they were courting. Edith deciphered top secret codes for the President. When he had a stroke she controlled who saw him and who didn't.  She oversaw legislation and secured appointments for his cabinet. All this while her husband was on deaths door and many thought he would die. She saw the Vice President only once and told him his services weren't needed. She oversaw the end of World War I and was in the middle of the fight to get the United States into the League of Nations. 

She would show her husband movies and wheel him outside to the South Portico for air. She had him put in the presidential limousine and propped up so people would know he was still alive. She outlived him by forty years and was at John Kennedy's inauguration. She wrote a memoir in 1939 and denied running the White House. In the National Archives are correspondence that was never opened during her Presidency and discovered in the 1950s. She just couldn't get to it. 

She was our first woman President and has never been recognized for her service to the country.

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Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

How Madam President Ran the White House with no Education

She did it by making it up as she went along. Edith Wilson had two years formal education as a child but she was basically home schooled. So when she found herself having to step in for her husband Woodrow Wilson in 1919 as President she had to fall back on some basic coping mechanisms she had discovered in her life. She had survived the death of a husband and child and inherited a failing jewlery company. Edith was nothing if not dogged and she persevered and turned her first husbands struggling jewelry company around in three years and became a lady of means.

She did it by delegating and by dealing with what was in front of her. Same with the White House. When Woodrow became persona non grata behind the presidential bedroom door the first thing Edith did was prioritize. If something did not have to be dealt with immediately then it might not be dealt with at all. Business was conducted by correspondence in 1919 and many letters to the President were never opened and discovered years later in the National Archives. But that doesn't mean Edith was not attending to the business at hand.

Her biggest job was one of making sure essential business was completed. This meant she had to use the men around the president and delegate away from the President who could handle very little. Edith was a gatekeeper and if she needed presidential input then she would present it to Woodrow. Few people actually saw Wilson from 1919 to 1921 who Edith did not deem essential. Think of someone who is running a household with little help. Some of the bills won't get paid. The dog might not get fed. The house might be a wreck. But the mortgage would be paid and the lights kept on and the children fed.

In this way Edith Wilson kept the United States of  American running.

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How Tough Was the First Madam President?

Tough. Woodrow Wilson had a massive stroke and left Edith Wilson  to run the White House. She had two years of schooling and no experience in government. But she had the best on the job training with Wilson who treated her as a Co President. Still, the fact remained Wilson was fighting for his life while Edith had to close out World War I and deal with America transitioning back to a peace time economy after World War I. And she was a woman at a time when the vote was still two years off.

Her life had not been easy. Her parents could only afford to send her brother to college and Edith was left to be home schooled by her grandmother. Her first marriage ended when her husband died suddenly and left her with a badly in debt jewelry company. Her first son had died after three days. Edith could have sold off the jewelry company but she dug in and took almost no salary and in a few years turned a profit. She then bought an electric car and met a lonely widower named Woodrow  Wilson.

But when the world turned upside down Edith Wilson had to make it up as she went along. Her husband was barely hanging on while she fought for passage of The League of Nations, handled the cover up of her husbands illness, made appointments, ushered bills through passage, and kept the Wilson White House together through 1921. Suffragettes demonstrating outside the gates of the White House had no idea a woman was now President.

Edith Wilson had to fill the role President except she was a woman who had the backing of no one. As Ann Richards said of Ginger Rodgers, "she did everything Fred Astaire did but she it in heels and she did it backwards." An apt metaphor for the unknown First Woman President.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

Would Robotic Police Be So Bad?

The gunman in Dallas was blown up with a robot. Lot of hand wringing. Military use of a robot. Is that even fair? The gunman was taken out with no more loss of life. And you know, if you think about it. Robotic police woudl not be bad. Say you are out at night. Say you are an African American in a white neighborhood. The robotic police car pulls you over. The robot approaches. License please. Maybe the driver has a gun. The robot waits. He cannot be killed. He is armored. He is not alive. The driver pulls out his license.

Thank you. The robot runs a check. His sensors tell him the driver has a metal gun. Could you please pull out your weapon. The driver does. The robot waits. No fear. No going for his gun since he is equipped with dual tasers and for a true emergency twin nine millineters already centered. So he waits while the driver pulls out his gun. Permit please. He waits again while the driver fishes for his permit. He is not worried about him pulling out another gun. He is not worried about him turning and shooting him or driving off. He waits.

Thank you. He runs a check. Thank you sir. He hands back the liense. I pulled you over for a tailight sir. Please get that fixed at your earliest convience. He hums back to his squad car. The African American driver leaves with his gun. The robot goes back to driving around. He isnt tired. He isnt crabby. He isnt scared. He just serves the public good. What a great cop.

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What Edith Wilson Could Tell Madam President

First Edith would tell Madam President don't do it. It nearly killed her. Then Edith would say if you are going to be President then don't listen to the men. Edith had all the men telling her to take over after President Wilson had a stroke and then they didn't tell her what was going on or how to run the White House. They basically told her to take responsibility for blocking Vice President Marshall so they could keep their jobs. So that is the first thing, bring in some women to help you.

Then if you get overwhelmed just handle the crisis. Edith had to handle finishing up World War I and the fight for the League of Nations. There were lots of other issues but Edith who had only three years schooling and some on the job training with the President had to go with her gut instinct a lot of times. So she concentrated on the two biggest crisis, keep her husband alive and fight for his dream of a League of Nations. Everything else delegated or threw into a pile and let the archivist sort it out fifty years later.

Finally don't listen to anyone but yourself. When the doctors told Edith they had to operate on her husband or he would die she vetoed them and said let nature take its course. Her husband survived. Or when everyone wanted to tell the President to compromise on the League and she alone stood between him and the doubters. Or when she signed bills and fought back against Senator Lodge and everyone who wanted to prove she was really the President.

After that just make it up as you go and stick to your guns, Madam President. It worked for me.

Madam President

Crazy Old Uncle Bernie

You know that crazy Uncle. He would get you laughing. Kind of cute in a weird old man way. Liable to go off on a rant and say all those things your mother and father would frown at. Like I'm going to break up the banks. Or you can have free college. Or I will help you with your student loans. Or the woman running against him is unqualified. Or you cant sue gun manufacturers. Or we are going to take all the money from the one percent and give it to the middle class,

And then mom would say, how are you going to do that Uncle Bernie? And just like Uncle Donald he didn't have a clue. We are just going to do it. Mom and dad would exchange glances over their coffee. Crazy Uncle Bernie had been through a series of jobs and always been a little unhinged. He would pop up on MSNBC as that Socialist from Vermont and say all the crazy things everyone wanted to say and then he would disappear.

Lately though Uncle Bernie has been getting drunk and hinting that if he can't have things his way then maybe he will let Uncle Donald start coming to the party. Uncle Donald was thrown out a long time ago after a fist fight broke out at Christmas. Well maybe I'll just ask Uncle Donald to come to the party if you don't like what I'm saying he sneered at the last get together. You have to wonder if Crazy Uncle Bernie might just be nuts.

Read the First Chapter of Madam President

Five Things You Might Not Know About Madam President

She started out as a Republican. She came from a conservative family and it was while she was at Wesley College she began to question the values of Republican candidates. She actually canvased for Republicans when she was thirteen, namely Richard Nixon. She then volunteered to campaign for Barry Goldwater. She was the only person to graduate Wesley College and be asked to give the commencement address. The address was widely reprinted and put her in Life Magazine and on the Irv Kupcinet show. She then went to Alaska and worked her way across the state dish washing and ended up working in a salmon processing factory.

When she went to Yale for her law degrees she bumped into a tall guy with a really bad accent named Bill Clinton. He had big goals and she wasn't sure she shared them. When he asked her to marry him she turned him down. She had her own political career and she didn't want to be in his shadow. Bill being Bill persisted and Hillary went with " her heart over her head"  and married him. But she kept her name and made it clear she wanted to have her own political career outside of the big dog.

After The Clinton Presidency she became the only First Lady to run for an elected office and win when she became Senator of New York. She she ran against  Barack Obama and won more delegates and primaries than any woman in history. And now she is running to be the First Woman President of the United States, All in a days work.

www.williamhazelgrove.com


Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

Will Somebody Tell Ben Carson To Go Home

Why is Ben Carson still running? The phlegmatic if not somnolent neuro surgeon just wont quit. Christie and others have had the decency to bow out and take the burden of watching a stage crowded with candidates.But not Ben. His burden has become our burden. The most hilarious moment was on CNN when he was asked why he was staying in when he was dead last. He looked like Rocky at the end of a long fight.  Because of the millions who want me to stay in he replied in perfect deadpan...blink blink. Then he nodded off. The millions were no where to be found.

But there is something more nefarious about the sleepy Ben Carson and the whole LETS BE PRESIDENT game show. The NY Times speculated that it is good for Ben Carson to keep running because it benefits BEN CARSON. For one it is good for his book sales. And two it is good for his cache as a public speaker. And three it gives him a reason for getting up in the morning even though it looks like he could go back to bed any minute.

But this is not good for our process. First he burns up valuable time on the debate stage. The questions are wasted on him and he knows it and makes quips about not getting time. He also takes votes away (the millions) from the rightful candidates who actually have a chance of becoming the nominee. Also it is craven for Ben to stay in just because he likes the limelight. Lets face it the life  of a retired neuro surgeon probably goes like this: Sleep until noon. Sleep some more. Read. Sleep. Golf. Sleep.Dinner. Nap. Speak sleepily to the wife. And then...zzzzzzzzzz.

So Ben is here to stay. Yawn.

www.williamhazelgrove.com

Our First Woman President...Edith Wilson

   It is still shocking to the majority of Americans to learn that President Wilson had a massive stroke in office. But to tell people that his wife, Edith Wilson, was the acting President for almost two years is unbelievable. The motivations among historians and the people at the time is simple. If you say Edith Wilson was President from 1919 to 1921,then you diminish the impact Woodrow Wilson had on the country and his legacy.

  Power is given to those who can act upon it, and President Wilson, who remained in bed only to be wheeled out for movies and some fresh air, could not act upon anything. The question then is; who was Edith Bolling Wilson? Was she a woman singularly gifted enough to run the country and nurse her husband back to health; or was she a woman doing the best she could in a world of men who saw women as little more than second citizens?  Now almost a hundred years later, we ponder the very relevant impact of our First Woman President again. 

Excerpt

She was from the South and had two years of formal schooling and wrote like a child.  She married a quiet man from Washington and her baby died after three months. Her husband then died and left her with a failing jewelry company that was severely in debt. She turned the company around while taking almost no salary. She bought an electric car and was issued the first driver’s license given to a woman in the District of Columbia.  She married a President who had been recently widowed. In four years, the President would have a severe stroke, and leave her to run the Unites States Government and negotiate the end of World War I.

 She was our First Woman President. 

Madam President--The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson