Read Kati Marton Online

Authors: Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our History

Tags: #Presidents' Spouses - United States - Political Activity, #Married People - United States, #Social Science, #Presidents & Heads of State, #United States - Politics and Government, #Presidents, #20th Century, #Married People, #Presidents - United States, #United States, #Power (Social Sciences) - United States, #Biography, #Power (Social Sciences), #Biography & Autobiography, #Presidents' Spouses, #Women, #Women's Studies, #Political Activity, #History

Kati Marton

BOOK: Kati Marton
6.05Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Acclaim for Kati Marton’s

HIDDEN POWER

“What are the secrets of the successes or the failures of our best known first ladies? How have they affected the course of America’s history? Kati Marton knows, and she shares this very personal and acute knowledge with us. This is that rare book that is both dishy and informative.”

—Barbara Walters

“A deft survey of a dozen First Couples.”


Time

“Entertaining ….
Hidden Power
gets and keeps the reader’s attention.”


Los Angeles Times

“A smart, insightful look at how these singular marriages have shaped presidential history.”

—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Proof that there’s a genius to synthesis. Marton weaves through the relationships of presidential couples from the Wilsons to the present occupants of the White House as if she knew them all personally.”


The Austin Chronicle

“[A] smart examination of a woman’s role in the house.”

—Us Weekly

“Compelling …. Illuminating …. Fun, anecdote-filled and well-paced.”


The News & Observer
(Raleigh)

“An intelligent, entertaining look at recent presidential marriages and how they have affected the country.”

—Rocky Mountain News

FOR
RICHARD, ELIZABETH AND CHRISTOPHER—
the three who make all else possible

I
NTRODUCTION

I never wanted your advice and assistance more in my life. The times are critical and I must have you here to assist me …. I can do nothing without you.


JOHN ADAMS TO HIS WIFE, ABIGAIL

I hope some day somebody will take time to evaluate the true role of wife of a President and to assess the many burdens she has to bear and the contributions she makes.


PRESIDENT HARRY S. TRUMAN

IT IS MORE THAN STYLE, MORE THAN HAIRDOS AND WHITE HOUSE DECOR AND
inaugural gowns and controversies over china and guest lists. The role of presidential spouses (so far only women, hence the ubiquitous unofficial title “first lady”) is vital to a full understanding of their husbands’ administrations and the presidency itself. It is time to take up President Truman’s challenge.

What is most private in most lives—marriage—inevitably has a huge public impact once a couple reaches the White House. At the same time, the public pressures of the presidency reshape the private marital relationship, strengthening some marriages, deadening others, reshaping still others. Some first ladies crumble, like Mary Todd Lincoln; others take over in crisis, like the second Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, without doubt the most powerful first lady in history. For some first ladies, like Pat Nixon, one can only feel immensely sorry, as they seem to wither away from neglect. Others, like Eleanor Roosevelt, Nancy Reagan and Hillary Rodham Clinton, become highly controversial in their own right. And some, like Betty Ford and Lady Bird Johnson, emerge as nationally admired women who seem to transcend their husbands’ difficulties.

Inevitably, presidential marriages are different from all others. To get elected to America’s pinnacle of power requires absolute commitment not only from the candidate but from his spouse as well. Presidential couples must surrender most of their privacy and many aspects of family life
for their dream. What sort of marriages have as their central purpose the fulfillment of a single burning ambition? What sort of wives are willing to share the exhausting, sometimes humiliating journey? And what happens when they reach the promised land at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

The most confident presidents generally have been those with the healthiest respect for their wives, men who sought and listened to their wives’ personal and political advice. Whatever Americans may fear about the “hidden power” of presidential wives, it is unrealistic and unreasonable to expect the president to do without a full partner, both public and private.

A politician needs more than ambition and stamina to succeed. Ideally, he needs a partner who will be a trusted sounding board, a link to the real world from which his power and position isolate him. He needs someone completely trustworthy to whom he can confide his deepest fears and insecurities, a person to whom he can reveal his full appetite for power. “I am so devoured by egoism,” wrote Winston Churchill, whose marriage was among the happiest and most productive of any world leader in the last century, to his wife, Clementine, in 1916. He continued: “… I would like to have another soul in another world and meet you in another setting and pay you all the love and honour of the great romances.” Unfortunately, devouring egos are rarely capable of paying their partners that sort of romantic attention.

It is as difficult to stop a politician obsessed by power as it is to stop a fast-moving train. The human sacrifice is enormous, but the reward great. The presidential couple instantly becomes two of the most famous people in the world. They are surrounded by sycophants and ceremony. Their arrival is accompanied by the sound of “Hail to the Chief”; their first view in the morning is of the Washington Monument; their backyard is the Rose Garden; his office, the Oval; their transportation,
Air Force One.
Loved or reviled, their names forever evoke a time in our lives.

This volume is not another anthology of the lives of first ladies. Rather, it is a study of husbands and wives at the precarious intersection of power, love and marriage. How did both the inner life and public face of White House marriages shape presidential history?

I focus only on the twentieth century, as this is a study of both marriage and the presidency as we have come to know them in the recent past. Still, earlier presidential marriages carry similarly dramatic stories, from John and Abigail Adams’s astonishingly tender and productive partnership to the tragic collapse of Mary Todd Lincoln. They are worthy of equal study. While each couple’s story is of course unique, they all illustrate that the effect of marriage on the presidency(and presidency on the marriage) is far deeper and more profound than commonly realized.

If the present account is sometimes tipped to the women’s side of the story, this is deliberate. Too little attention has been paid to the role of first ladies in relation to the policies and administrations of their husbands. A successful presidential candidate identifies the pulse of his time, the issues that most concern people, whereas a first lady’s success depends on her grasp of the essence of her times. Lady Bird Johnson, for example, embodied the Ideal Woman of her era: modest but fearless, supportive but smart. During the greatest crisis since the Civil War, she stood by her man without losing her own identity, and in so doing won admiration even from those who disliked her embattled husband. On the other hand, Pat Nixon, withdrawn and self-effacing, seemed out of step with the nation, and her decision to disengage from her marriage and the resulting lack of involvement in her husband’s struggle to survive the Watergate fiasco hurt him.

Ironically, while women have been breaking down the last remaining barriers toward full equality, the first lady’s political role remains circumscribed, as the backlash to Hillary Clinton’s effort to make radical changes in the role of first lady clearly demonstrated. It was no accident that both Tipper Gore and Laura Bush presented themselves in the 2000 campaign as “anti-Hillarys,” more traditional wives.

But the institution’s outer face has never been the primary source of the first lady’s power. The quality of her relationship with her husband has been the key factor in determining the extent of her influence. For any real understanding of presidents, knowing the inner life of presidential couples—the human chemistry behind the formality of the office—is essential. Measuring the indirect and subtle role of a wife on a husband is the quicksilver part of the historian’s task. In studying the way a president
relies on his wife, we learn something profound about that commander in chief.

BOOK: Kati Marton
6.05Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Longing for Home by Sarah M. Eden
A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
Until Today by Pam Fluttert
Remember the Future by Delafosse, Bryant
An Act of Evil by Robert Richardson
Sapphire Blue by Kerstin Gier
The Lost Codex by Alan Jacobson
Freeze by Pyle, Daniel
Jonah Havensby by Bob Bannon