Confronting the Presidents: Read It!

Before buying Confronting the Presidents, I had to confront myself.

Bill O’Reilly, after all, was the political commentator who, for over two decades, had made me want to vomit nightly.

As the host of his own show on Fox News, O’Reilly called himself independent but came down nowhere near the center, generally ending up in bed with the right.

His viewership—largely conservative—only reinforced that landing point, leaving centrists like myself no choice but to pop a TUMS and watch sports instead.

When, after multiple accusations of sexual misconduct (all settled without a trial) came to light and prompted O’Reilly’s exit, I didn’t shed a tear.

That said, even I had to admit in 2017—the year of his departure—that a retrospective look at his portfolio, particularly in increasingly polarized times, revealed a surprising pattern of fairness.

He had aggressively challenged Donald Trump’s false claim that Barack Obama had been born outside the US, even producing the original newspaper birth announcements.

He had repeatedly engaged with left-leaning media personalities, the likes of Jon Stewart, in an effort to, yes, maintain ratings but also educate the American public.

By 2024, he even began referring to Obama as the hardest working modern president.

Moreover, his increasingly popular books were co-authored by Martin Dugard, a Southern California liberal.

In other words, despite missteps as a journalist, TV personality, and husband, as a writer, he had earned something meaningful—my trust.

Throw in the fact that his writing is clean, crisp, and to the point, and I’ve been left with no choice but to engage.

In Confronting the Presidents: No Spin Assessments from Washington to Biden, O’Reilly and Dugard paint intimate—and highly engaging—portraits of the forty-five men who have called themselves President of the United States.

The point, thankfully, is not to push ideology.

In their words:

The authors of this book are not interested in advancing false narratives or promoting fallacious conspiracy theories. We are a fact-based duo that strives for accuracy and insight.

In the case of this project, that insight is limited to about 400 pages, allowing what is technically a work of history to read like a novel, though devoid of the flowery language that sometimes adds depth but mostly just slows you down.

Included are the decisions—or lack thereof—that still resonate today, along with a medley of personal anecdotes, ranging anywhere from political maneuvering to marital infidelity to outright addiction.

The result is an uncommonly human look at the men who have held one of the most powerful positions on Earth, allowing us to justly revere—or condemn—their legacies.

Unless you’re a history buff, you may not know that:

• Andrew Jackson, the seventh president, was a Tennessee slaveowner and orchestrated the infamous Trail of Tears, but his governance was later complimented by Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Donald Trump.
• Franklin Pearce, the 14th president, went to school with Nathaniel Hawthorne (think The Scarlet Letter), was a pro-slavery Northerner, and died of alcoholic cirrhosis.
• Woodrow Wilson, the president of Princeton University prior to assuming the same role for the entire country (number 28 to be exact), was a Ku Klux Klan supporter.
• Lyndon B. Johnson, president number 36, signed the Civil Rights Act championed by his predecessor, all the while using the N-word and befriending staunch segregationists.
• Ronald Reagan, president number 40, didn’t start his day until 9:00 am, often took a nap, scheduled regular happy hours, and took Wednesday afternoons off.

 

Stated another way, unless you’re a historian, it’s hard to fathom a more digestible way of grasping American history than Confronting the Presidents, courtesy the man who once gave me indigestion.