REMEMBERING PRESIDENT'S WIVES: HOSTESSES, ADVOCATES, POWER BROKERS

Here is the short list of wives of the Presidents of the United States who either served in my lifetime or died in my lifetime:

Grace Coolidge died in1957

Edith Wilson 1961

Eleanor Roosevelt 1962

Mamie Eisenhower 1979

Bess Truman 1982 died age 97

Pat Nixon 1992

Jackie Kennedy 1994 died age 64

Lady Bird Johnson 2007 died age 94

Betty Ford 2011 died age 93


Here are the living former and current first ladies:

Rosalyn Carter still alive and now the senior living former first lady

Nancy Davis Reagan still alive and now the oldest of the living group at 90.

Barbara Bush still alive

Hilary Rodham Clinton still alive

Laura Bush still alive

Michelle Obama current first lady. The first president’s wife born in my lifetime


RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY

First of all, I think, the president's wife should be called the President's Wife. "First Lady" is way too precious for the 21st Century.

In 1976, most conservative Utah LDS political activists and voters disliked Betty Ford. They were uncomfortable for starters that she had discussed openly breast cancer, for they did not want to discuss boobage in public, even in a medical context. She openly campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment, which Mormon men detested. The ERA in their minds would open the world up to more radical lesbianism. It also represented in their minds something that would force the LDS Church to admit women to the priesthood and pay women equally with men in the work place. Taking women seriously as equals was just about the last thing the Old Boys in Utah wanted to do under any circumstances.

The Utahns did not like Betty Ford especially after she spoke frankly on 60 Minutes about her children’s marijuana use and premarital sex. Betty made the comments around 1975; at that point she had lived in Washington since 1949. It says a lot about the drug and sexual climate of the place that she made those admissions without batting an eye. Washington has been soggy and kinky for ages; those are workplace hazards of the place. When she went public about her alcohol problem, it was certainly no surprise to people who knew the Washington social scene well. Washington’s cultural tolerances of alcohol caught many public figures and their wives.

The president’s wives are not elected to office with their husbands. Technically the best first ladies were people like Grace Coolidge, Bess Truman, Mamie Eisenhower, Jackie Kennedy, Pat Nixon, and Laura Bush who did hostess duties and little else.

Unfortunately, this nation has endured some Eva Perons of the West.

When I was quite a little boy, Edith (Mrs. Woodrow) Wilson died, almost a year into the Kennedy Administration. She attended Kennedy inaugural with about seven other past and future first ladies. In 1919, her husband suffered a stroke that incapacitated him, but she helped keep up appearances and she in fact did act in some ways as president. Technically, she should have orchestrated a resignation so that a fully functioning President Marshall could have been in place to meet the needs of the 1920s. However, the powerful do not give up power easily, so she became in some ways the first female acting president of the USA.

The first Mrs. Wilson, incidentally, was a civil rights social activist in Washington before her untimely death.

Even today, the hard line conservatives cannot stand Eleanor Roosevelt. It is hard to tell what they dislike most about her – her stands on civil and human rights, her instrumentality in founding the United Nations, or “My Day.” At one point in her first lady career, Hilary attempted to emulate Eleanor with her own weekly column, but she clearly did not have Eleanor’s stamina or clear writing style. Oddly enough, Eleanor influenced an actor/ screen guild president / California governor named Ronald Reagan. From 1975-1979, he presented nearly 1000 short editorials – most from a conservative point of view – on his syndicated radio program, most of them written by himself. The editorials also appeared in some places as a newspaper column. The spirit of “My Day” was not far away.

Americans adored Jackie Kennedy for no substantial reasons other than she was young, beautiful, stylish, glamorous, gracious, and sophisticated. It is interesting how many people prefer a first lady image rather than a working first lady resembling Hilary, who labored on health care (and botched it). She later became an actual elected senator and an actual secretary of state – both of which eluded Eleanor Roosevelt. She did serve as a United Nations delegate. She could have been the first secretary general of the United Nations, a position that her husband Franklin seriously contemplated before his death.


Jackie’s glamour image is somewhat misleading, because she was also bright and a hard worker – particular in the herculean efforts she brought to the White House restoration project from 1961-62.

Jackie was born in 1929 and served as first lady while in her 30s. She might still be alive if her health and emotions and not been undercut by the horrors that she witnessed in her lifetime.

Lady Bird and Betty are my first lady heroes – tough talking, willing to make a difference. Lady Bird was a Texas business woman along with being the wife of Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. I could not stand him, but Lady Bird was first rate. First of all, she put up with Lyndon’s eccentricities, and that took real character. Second she got involved in the cause of Texas wildflowers and national beautification. What’s not to love there?

Mrs Carter also had her causes, but she came and went quickly. I find it hard even to remember her as first lady.

Betty Ford spoke out on the dangers of drug addiction and of breast cancer. Heaven only knows how many lives she helped save and redeem. It is true that she supported abortion on demand as birth control, but that was hardly unique in the period – so did Carter, Hilary, Obama, and the Bushes.

Utahns adored Nancy Reagan in 1976. Well, Utahns disliked Betty Ford intensely in 1976. This situation has its ironies: for starters, the Ford family was one of the best looking political families ever with few skeletons in its closet. Certainly the Reagan family was more dysfunctional than the Ford family; heaven only knows their private lives could not stand scrutiny.

Nancy’s Reagan’s interference in the Reagan administration goes beyond legend. It is infamous. Anyone who consults an astrologer before overseeing her husband’s bookings cannot be all good. Peggy Noonan reported in What I saw at the Revolution that Nancy did not particularly care for the Sandinistas; she thought her husband’s public support for them was bad for the president’s image. She also wanted her husband to stop speaking out on antiabortion themes as well. That sort of thing only pleased his base support and did nothing to expand his foundation. She could sometimes satirize her own image – she once sang “Second Hand Rose” at a GridIron Dinner, but basically she and Madame Chiang Kai-shek would have gotten along famously. Who knows, they might have.

Barbara Bush also presented a force to reckon with in her husband’s presidency. She makes an interesting contrast to Betty Ford. Ford turned cancer and addiction adversity into causes that helped redeem thousands, maybe millions of people. In the early 1950s, her daughter died of blood cancer after early experimental chemotherapy treatment. Barbara so internalized her grief that her hair turned prematurely snow white. She could have advocated for childhood cancer victims – as far as I can remember, she did not. At least not to the extent that Betty Ford advocated for cancer and addiction.

Hilary was a power in her own right even in her husband’s administration. As a result, she was the most despised first lady since Eleanor. In all fairness to her, I think she would have been a marginally better president than Bill. She certainly could have done no worse.

She really should have been the first presidential wife to divorce her president in his term. Bill’s extramarital activities with Monica Lewinsky – I called her the courtesan of Lewinsky – certainly caused her plenty of negative emotions and of embarrassment. If her husband had possessed any decency, he should have resigned, but that is another story.

Few public figures are as difficult to write about as Laura Bush. As first lady, she did advocate for literacy, yet her years as first lady tend to fade in the mind – something that we cannot say of Hilary. As a youngster, Laura Welch was involved in an auto accident that killed another teenager. She could have taken that tragedy and used it to advocate for youth driving reforms. Instead she internalized it.

Michelle Obama is the first first lady actually born in my lifetime. I actually remember January 1964, because it was when Joseph Fielding Smith dedicated the church building I attended as a boy.