Americans want to know past presidents up close and personal

BOSTON -- Let historians endlessly contemplate how President Kennedy handled the Cuban missile crisis. Olivia Kennett prefers watching his family videos.

They caught her eye during her history class field trip to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. She could gaze to her satisfaction at the president's bare, chiseled chest and his wife Jackie's mannequinesque perfection.

"He was always the most attractive president. I kind of just appreciated him more as a pop culture icon than as a president," admitted the 17-year-old student from Rindge, N.H., who was blazing her own fashion trail with punked-up red hair and matching red eyeglasses.

What Americans know -- or yearn to know -- about past presidents is a question worth considering at Presidents' Day, the celebration of Washington and Lincoln that has expanded to honor all who have led the nation.

Americans are curious about their leaders -- though most can probably live very nicely, thank you, without learning Jefferson's stand on British trade before the War of 1812.

No, instead they tend to focus increasingly on presidents' private lives, often scrutinizing them through the lens of current events. At least that's how it appears if you review questions asked by the public at presidential libraries and museums.

"They're just questions that people can relate to," historian Gerard W. Gawalt says at the Library of Congress, which keeps papers of 23 presidents.

As a result, some questions veer toward anachronism or prurience, museum interpreters suggest.

Questions often spring from the latest social controversy, best-selling presidential expose, or a tangent of commercial and popular culture. Matters of race, sex, religion and personal health that might go unspoken at a cocktail party pass for polite conversation at presidential libraries.

People ask: Was Lincoln gay? How many children did Jefferson father with a slave? Did Franklin Roosevelt hide his paralysis from the public? (The answers: no, probably not; at least four, according to many historians; and not entirely.)

Sometimes visitors relate too closely to the answers. Thomas Schwartz, the Illinois state historian, remembers one tour of the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield: "When I mentioned that Lincoln liked strong coffee, someone from Starbucks immediately picked up on that and said, 'Do you know what brand?'"

Despite it all, many ordinary Americans still know lots about the presidents, especially favorites like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt, say personnel at presidential libraries. Many Americans are still uplifted by the leadership of the presidents, whatever their personal proclivities.

Carol Parks lingered recently over exhibits at the Kennedy museum. A lawyer in state government in Portland, Ore., she came to "to bring me back ... my thoughts of how he inspired me to public service."

She said that, for her part, she'd heard enough in recent years about "his sex life and all that kind of stuff."