THE HOT SEAT

Vanities/Books

A new deep dive into the terms of eight former presidents is chock-full of political high jinks—and déjà vu

In 1868, President Andrew Johnson found himself impeached and on trial before the U.S. Senate. Over the course of his term, he had essentially declared war on his own government, vetoing an outrageous 29 bills, firing officials without Senate permission, and pardoning old pals. Congress fought back: 15 vetoes were overridden, and after a nearly three-month trial Abe Lincoln's successor barely escaped conviction. "The question of whether a president could govern while being on trial was a hot topic," writes Jared Cohen in Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America, out this month from Simon & Schuster. "Johnson clearly thought he could."

Accidental Presidents—which focuses on the eight men who assumed the office after their predecessors died—is littered with such germane lines. Recounting then vice president Chester Arthur's electioneering on behalf of James A. Garfield, Cohen writes that Arthur "couldn't resist the urge to flaunt some of the shadier practices used to win." Other chapters flick at familiar themes: trust busting, scandal wrangling, and brawls that read like highbrow TMZ ("William O. Butler lunged toward Thomas D. Arnold of Tennessee," choking him "until his tongue protruded down to his cravat"). "Yes, we're polarized right now," Cohen, C.E.O. of the tech incubator Jigsaw and a former adviser to both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton, tells Vanity Fair. "Yes, politics is tense. But history helps us realize that we're actually— probably—going to be O.K."

The book is also a reminder that, when it came to succession, America's founders basically winged it. "if you think about how much we leave to chance, the fact that only Andrew Johnson was a disaster is really quite the miracle," Cohen says. Something to keep in mind for 2020?

Perhaps. "Until we start thinking of our vice president as someone who can be president, I don't believe that mentality will change."

CLAIRE LANDSBAUM