First Ladies (48 page)

The General maintained he was indifferent to whether he spent another four years in the White House. Not so Julia, who exuded the sort of determination that suggests she might have conquered the South more swiftly than her husband, if Lincoln had made her a general. On the eve of the 1880 Republican convention, Grant wrote a letter of withdrawal and gave it to his backers in case they needed it to provide him with a dignified exit. Julia exploded and ordered them
“not
to use that letter.” She thereby set the stage for one of the forgotten dramas in the history of American politics, the die-hard stand of the Old Guard Republicans around their favorite candidate.

Julia urged Grant to do the unorthodox—go to the convention floor, where his fame would sweep the delegates into a stampede in his favor. Grant refused. In those days, it was considered undignified for candidates to admit they wanted to be President before they were nominated. The General was adamant in his refusal to go “hat in hand” to the convention and beg for the nomination. Julia regarded this as “mistaken chivalry” and urged him “for heavens sake to go—and go tonight.”

The flabbergasted Grant, who knew his wife was headstrong at times, could only murmur: “Julia, I am amazed at you.” He was probably more amazed to discover she was right. Grant led on the first
thirty-five ballots, but he remained sixty-six votes short of the needed two-thirds majority for the nomination. The liberal Republicans finally coalesced around a personable vacuum named James Garfield, who Grant thought “had the backbone of an angleworm.” Forbidden by Julia to withdraw, the Old Guard grimly cast their 306 votes for the General to the bitter end, leaving the Republican Party seriously fractured. The fissure widened after Garfield’s assassination in 1881, enabling Grover Cleveland to win the White House in 1884 and restore the Democratic Party to respectability.

The widowed Edith Roosevelt remained aloof from politics until another Roosevelt reached the White House in 1933. Edith did not think much of Cousin Franklin. Any time a Republican newspaper wanted a blast against FDR, she was ready to supply it. She made headlines with her appearance at a Republican rally in Madison Square Garden in 1932. FDR, no slouch at this sort of game, wooed Edith’s easygoing son Archie and was soon entertaining him aboard the presidential yacht. When someone asked Edith for an explanation, she said Archie had been seduced “because his mother wasn’t there.”

Eleanor Roosevelt’s involvement in politics scarcely missed a beat after she left the White House. My father recognized her immense value as a symbol of America’s global commitment to democracy and appointed her a delegate to the United Nations eight months after FDR’s death. There she became a primary spokesperson for one of her favorite causes, human rights. Many people regard her as the guiding force behind the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which to this day enables the UN. to act on behalf of oppressed and deprived peoples.

Among the many former critics Eleanor beguiled in her post-White House years was the formidable Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights passed, the senator said: “I want to take back everything I ever said about her, and believe me it’s been plenty. She’s a grand person and a great American citizen.” Few people know that part of the credit for this unexpected display of political harmony belonged to
Harry S Truman, who had spent hours and hours converting Senator Vandenberg from the isolationism that typified the Republican Party of that era.

Eleanor Roosevelt examines the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. She was largely responsible for this historic document. My father appointed her U.S. delegate to the world body in 1946
.
(Franklin D. Roosevelt Library)

A few First Ladies have remained in Washington, or returned to it, and enjoyed the reflected glow of their previous fame, while serenely ignoring politics. The one who managed this difficult trick best was Dolley Madison. For nearly twenty years, she lived on her husband’s Virginia plantation, Montpelier, hovering tenderly over her “great little Madison” as he slipped into a long, slow decline. When he died in 1836, Dolley headed back to the capital, where she reigned as a sort of queen mother for the next thirteen years. Presidents, congressmen, and ambassadors flocked to parties at her house on Lafayette Square. She was a virtual fixture at receptions in the White House as well. First Ladies sought her advice on matters of protocol and social
diplomacy. Senator Daniel Webster declared she was “the only permanent power in Washington.”

When anything important happened in the capital, Dolley was there, ready to lend the event her inimitable personal touch. In 1844, Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, gave a demonstration of his marvel. Dolley was on hand to receive the portentous message that crackled from Baltimore: “What hath God wrought” Morse asked Dolley what message she wanted to transmit in reply. She told him to send “my love to Mrs. Wethered,” an old friend who was at the Baltimore end of the line.

Congress accorded Dolley a unique testimony of their near adoration of her. A North Carolina legislator moved that whenever she visited the Capitol, she should be seated on the House floor, instead of being forced to resort to the visitors’ gallery. The resolution passed unanimously, and two congressmen were appointed Dolley’s official escorts, to guide her to her seat whenever she chose to appear.

Edith Wilson spent her first three post-White House years caring for her crippled husband in a handsome red-brick Georgian revival house on Northwest S Street. (It is open to the public now and worth a visit.) After Wilson died in 1924, Edith devoted the rest of her long life to perpetuating his memory.

From the start, she nursed grudges and would brook no criticism of Wilson. Henry Cabot Lodge, the Republican senator who had led the fight against the League of Nations, was told he would be persona non grata at the funeral. Thirty-two years later, the
New York Times
columnist Arthur Krock spoke at ceremonies celebrating the centennial of Wilson’s birth. He was generally praiseful—but he opined that Wilson should have done more to make his diplomacy a bipartisan effort by inviting a few prominent Republicans such as William Howard Taft to the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. A few days later, Krock met Edith at another Washington affair and remarked on what a nice occasion the centennial ceremony had been. “Yes,” Edith said. “It’s too bad you could not have been
with
us.”

Of Wilson’s successors, the President who stirred Edith’s greatest enthusiasm was John E Kennedy, not because she agreed with his
policies but she liked his book
Profiles in Courage
. Perhaps she felt the title implicitly praised Woodrow Wilson, although he is mentioned only in passing in the text. I remain fond of this feisty Democratic First Lady for an anecdote connected to her support for JFK. When a friend with a Nixon-Lodge bumper sticker on his car called on her in 1960, Edith told him
never to
park in her driveway again.

Readers may be surprised to learn Bess Truman almost settled in Washington, D.C. Most people assume it was Bess, the supposed non-politician, who could not get out of the capital fast enough. Actually, Mother was a non-politician the way the retired Joe DiMaggio is a non-baseball player. Politics fascinated her, and at first she could not bear the thought of leaving Washington for small-town life in Independence, Mo. For a while, Dad was disposed to humor her, and they actually made a few discreet inquiries about buying a house somewhere in the District.

But Dad, the supposed political habitué of the partnership, was the one who decided that an ex-President simply could not hang out in Washington, D.C. It would make the incumbent uneasy and might lead to unpleasant clashes. This was especially probable in the atmosphere of livid dislike and sneering superiority with which the outgoing Truman Democrats and the incoming Eisenhower Republicans regarded each other in 1952. For the sake of his blood pressure, as well as the dignity of the presidency, Dad decided Independence was the best—even the only—option.

Mother took the decision with good grace. But she had no intention of spending the rest of her days in Missouri. She had always had a yen to travel, and what better time to do it than in the afterglow of the White House? For the next ten years, the Trumans came pretty close to being globe-trotters, with trips to Hawaii and Europe (twice) and numerous hegiras to New York and, yes, Washington, D.C. They made no attempt to imitate General Grant and Julia, but they enjoyed spectacular receptions at several special habitats, such as Winston Churchill’s spacious home, Chartwell.

The Trumans enjoyed all these expeditions immensely, even though the trips to Washington invariably ignited Dad’s political fires
and Mother occasionally had to do some emphatic stamping to put them out again. She finally convinced him that ex-Presidents only
think
they have power. If they actually try to throw their weight around, the results can be humiliating.

After Dad’s death in 1972, Mother overruled my cogent arguments in favor of a move to New York and the proximity of me and her four grandchildren and elected to stay in Independence. She demonstrated everything I have claimed about her passion for politics by staying in close touch with the electoral scene on both the national and state levels. When Missouri’s Senator Thomas Eagleton was massacred by the press for admitting he had a history of depression and had to step aside as George McGovern’s vice presidential running mate in 1972, Mother wrote him one of her no-nonsense letters, telling him Bess Truman still admired him. When he ran for reelection in 1974, she endorsed him wholeheartedly, and the senator won, as they used to say in the Kansas City clubhouses, in a walk.

In 1976, operating from a hospital bed while being treated for arthritis, Mother demonstrated her local clout. She endorsed State Senator Ike Skelton in his race for Congress from Jackson County (which includes Independence). In the primary, Skelton had run poorly in Jackson County. With the support of the old pro from Independence, he breezed to an easy victory against a discomfited, unendorsed Republican.

Mother was amazed and not a little pleased by the upsurge in Dad’s popularity during the post-Watergate years. Gerald Ford became the first of a long line of Republican Presidents who tried to claim similarities to Harry Truman. When the Truman Library dedicated a statue to Dad in 1976, President Ford was delighted to be the principal speaker. He and Betty Ford had a most enjoyable visit with Mother. She thought Betty was doing a wonderful job as First Lady—even though she said some things that left Mother gasping. “I like Mrs. Ford’s
honesty?
” she told me, reaffirming her faith in that basic Truman trait.

It was Betty’s honesty that rescued her troubled post-White House years. They began with a terrific struggle against the depression that
had descended on her when Gerald Ford lost his reelection battle against Jimmy Carter in 1976. Try as she might to see the future in a positive light, Betty could not shake off her gloom. Her problem was complicated—perhaps even caused—by the medication she took to dull the pain of osteoarthritis. A further complication was a tendency to use tranquilizers and alcohol to control her anxiety and enliven her moods.

By the end of her first year in Palm Springs, which the Fords had chosen for their retirement home, Betty was in a daze most of the time. Her daughter, Susan, grew deeply alarmed and persuaded her father to convene a family conference at which everyone tried to awaken Betty to her plight and persuade her to get help. She resisted mightily at first, furiously condemning them for invading her privacy. Perhaps that was an inevitable reaction of someone whose privacy had been invaded so often in the White House. Eventually, Betty calmed down and realized her husband and children were motivated by love. She soon sought help at the Alcohol and Drug Rehabilitation Service of the Long Beach Naval Hospital.

Betty found it easy to admit that she had become addicted to medication but balked at confessing a dependence on alcohol. On this point, of course, she was imitating millions of other Americans who have the same problem. Denial is the alcoholic’s first line of defense. Once more, Betty’s innate honesty triumphed over her attempt at self-deception. She not only admitted she was an alcoholic, she accepted her doctor’s advice and went public with the statement, to help others face the problem. Average folks do this at AA meetings. Ex-First Ladies do it on national television—one more testimony to the awesome power of their unelected office, even after they leave the White House.

With her life under control once more, Betty found herself almost as busy as she had been in the White House, coping with thousands of letters from people seeking advice or just eager to share their private tales of alcoholic woe. She hurled herself into campaigns to raise money for the National Arthritis Foundation and founded the Betty Ford Center for Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation at Rancho Mirage,
California. The center rapidly became a national resource for people with substance abuse problems.