Outtakes
There's Something About Bill: End of the Line
By David Alire Garcia

Published: November 7, 2007

Three prior presidents were childless.

On paper, Gov. Bill Richardson is one heck of a presidential candidate. As his campaign has emphasized, he’s got experience to spare, he’s a successful hostage negotiator and he’s articulate in two languages. But compared to the idealized presidential image, there’s one big thing Richardson lacks: kids.

In the December issue of Playboy magazine, Richardson bears his soul on the subject in an interview with CBS News political correspondent Jeff Greenfield.

It’s a relatively small part of the seven-page interview, but it’s perhaps the most revealing bit of the governor’s personal life to emerge so far.

Greenfield asks Richardson whether being childless harms his White House chances. Richardson’s response:

“Someone once used it against me or implied it in a race. The explanation is that Barbara and I tried to have children, but we weren’t able to. We tried. We tried in vitro. It’s one of our great regrets.”

Asked why he never adopted a child, the 59-year-old Richardson tells Playboy, “We were always moving. I was in Congress, commuting back to New Mexico…Time passed us by.”

While Richardson doesn’t have the progeny backdrop Mitt Romney or John Edwards can deploy at a moment’s notice, if elected he wouldn’t be the nation’s first childless commander-in-chief.

James Madison, the nation’s fourth president and the recognized “father” of the US Constitution, was the first. Even though Madison’s wife, Dolley Payne Todd, was 17 years younger than him, the couple did not have any children together.

James Polk, the nation’s 11th president and prosecutor of the Mexican-American War, which ultimately brought New Mexico and much of the American West into the US fold, was the nation’s second childless chief executive.

And James Buchanan, the nation’s 15th president, rounds out the list. Not only did Buchanan not father any first children, he holds the distinction as the only president to never marry. He’s also regarded as one of America’s all-time worst presidents.

But Richardson can take solace in the fact that Buchanan’s reputation as a historical pariah is unrelated to his lack of a family. Instead, Buchanan didn’t have much of a plan to deal with pesky southern states seceding and a particularly bloody civil war got rolling just as he left office.