First Ladies Read Free Page A

great Americans of our century—and she expanded the First Lady’s role as no one before her. But she should not be a model against whom all other First Ladies must be measured.Each First Lady has to deal with the particular political climate swirling around and through the White House when she arrives. Above all, she has to consider her individual, intensely personal relationship with her husband.
    Living and working together in the same house, a President and his wife often see more of each other than they have in any previous era of their marriage. The First Lady is frequently more intimately involved in her husband’s political reactions and decisions than ever before. Betty Ford was one of several First Ladies who told me this in unvarnished terms. Lady Bird Johnson made it even clearer. “You and your husband suddenly look at each other and say: ‘It’s just you and me. Other people—our children, friends—will try to help. But in the end it’s the two of us who are going to succeed—or fail.’”
    Another little-understood task which many First Ladies have assigned themselves is protector of their husbands from the killing pace of the job. One out of every five presidents has died in office, at an average age of fifty-seven. Almost as many died within five years of leaving office—and these too were comparatively young men—their average age sixty. While the life span of the average American rose throughout the nineteenth century, presidential longevity declined from an average of seventy-three for the Presidents before the Civil War to sixty-three for the Presidents who followed it. My mother considered safeguarding Harry Truman from his penchant for overwork one of the most important sides of her job. Again, Lady Bird Johnson said it best: “It’s up to you [the First Lady] to create a zone of peace, of comfort, within the White House where your husband can regain his equilibrium, restore his spirit.”
    Hillary Rodham Clinton may be able to change the public’s attitude toward overt political activity by First Ladies. For her sake and the sake of future First Ladies, I wish her well. I think a First Lady should be free to make political statements and commitments—if she has the ability and is so inclined. When it comes to First Ladies, I am for more freedom, in all directions.
    But Rosalynn Carter’s experience suggests that politics is still surrounded by an invisible boundary that First Ladies cross at their peril.She came to the White House determined to be Jimmy Carter’s public partner. Four years later she exited defensively, explaining again and again that she never told Jimmy what to do, he was a strong person and he made up his own mind.
    By now, I hope you are convinced that the title of this chapter is more or less justified. First Lady is the world’s, or at least Washington, D.C.’s, second toughest job. But it can also be a fascinating job. No one else has a better view of the maddening, exhausting, frequently baffling problems of the President of the United States, the most powerful politician in the world. No one else is as likely to meet as many electrifying, controversial personalities in any given calendar year. No one else is in a position to exert more influence on the future of the world—and on the way Americans think about fundamental values.
    If there is one quality that comes through vividly from studying the history of the women of the White House, it is their strength. Who else but a strong woman can live with the most unnerving aspect of her job—the knowledge that at any given moment somewhere in America there are probably a half-dozen individuals plotting to kill her husband?
    More than once a First Lady has made a significant political contribution to her husband’s administration. Even more often, and more difficult to discover, the spiritual strength of a First Lady has sustained a President in hours when the awful loneliness of the job threatened to