Ms. Mirrer good evening and welcome to the New York Historical society. Im louise mirrer, president and ceo, and i am thrilled to see you in our beautiful auditorium this evening. Tonights program, women in the white house, is part of our bernard and Irene Schwartz distinguished speaker series. I would like to thank mr. Schwartz for his support that has allowed us to bring many fine historians and writers to this stage. [applause] ms. Mirrer i would also like to thank and recognize members of the Chairmans Council in the audience and thank them for their generosity and all they do on our institutions behalf, and of course, my great and talented colleague, Vice President for Public Programs, dale gregory. [applause] ms. Mirrer tonights program is presented in collaboration with our brandnew center for womens history, and we are grateful to our partners at hogan lovells, who are the corporate sponsor for our womens history programming at New York Historical. Tonights program last about an hour, and it will include a question and answer session. You should have a note card when you entered, but colleagues are still going up and down the aisles if you have not received one. You will have an opportunity to write a question on the note card. They will be collected later on and used for the q a session. Following the program, there will be a formal book signing, and copies of our speakers books are available in our ny history store. We are pleased indeed to welcome back to the New York Historical society carol berkin. She is president ial professor of history america at the Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of new york. She has appeared in numerous television documentaries, including the pbs special alexander hamilton. She is the author of several books, including the fourth coming, which she will discuss in an upcoming Public Program here on may 23. We are also thrilled to count on our panel our own New York Historical trustee, annette gordonreed. She is the Charles Warren professor of american legal history at harvard law school. In addition to her role at harvard law, professor gordonreed is a member of the faculty of arts and sciences at harvard, and she was the carol k. Pforzheimer professor at Radcliffe Institute for advanced study. She is the author of many books, including the pulitzer prizewinning the hemingses of monticello, and her latest most blessed of the patriarchs. We are also glad to welcome gil troy back to the historical society, a professor of history at mcgill university, a weekly columnist for the daily beast, and the editor of the revised edition of the multivolume classic history of president ial elections. He is also the author of several books on political history, including his latest, the age of Clinton America in the 1990s. Our moderator is lesley stahl. She has been a correspondent for cbs 60 minutes for 25 seasons. Prior to joining 60 minutes, she was the cbs News White House correspondent during the carter, reagan, and george h. W. Bush presidencies. During much of that time, she served as moderator on face the nation, the cbs news sunday Public Affairs broadcast, where she interviewed margaret thatcher, boris yeltsin, yasser arafat, and virtually every top u. S. Official. She has a collection of emmy awards, including a Lifetime Achievement emmy. Her latest book is becoming grandma. As always, i would like to ask you, before our speakers begin, to please make sure that anything that makes noise, like a cell phone, is switched off. Now please join me in welcoming our speakers. [applause] lesley im going to start by putting on the coolest pair of glasses you have ever seen. [laughter] lesley when this topic was chosen quite a while ago, everybody i mean everybody was 100 sure we would have the first woman president. First grandma president. So in a way, tonight is kind of a consolation prize, because we are going to be talking about powerful women who are close to the pinnacle almost there. But for those of us who like to read about the presidency and i think the whole panel loves it, and you all probably do as well we know that first ladies can wield an awful lot of power. Some are quite open about it, some hide the fact. We will get to that. Lets start with carol, if we can, who is an expert in the 18th and 19th century era and presidencies, and ask, how did the concept of first lady come about . After you tell us that, give us your very best anecdote about a first lady. Carol actually, they werent called first ladies until sometime in the middle of the 19th century. What i think is most interesting is they werent particularly wellknown publicly. They were well known in circles of power, among diplomats and congressmen, but until the invention of the photograph, they were not widely known. Abigail fillmore is the first to be photographed, and from then on lesley [indiscernible] [laughter] carol it is her single claim to fame. She was more interesting than her husband. [laughter] carol from then on, the public got to know these women. It happened really rather quickly. Frances cleveland found her visage, her face, her photograph, appearing on advertisements that said, the first lady of the United States uses our cleaning powder. Of course, she didnt, these were all bogus, but she was on calendars, memorial plates, she was on ashtrays. So really, it is a Technological Development that makes the first lady a sort of household word. Lesley ok, best anecdote. Dont leave us hanging. Carol Grover Cleveland wasnt married when he began his first term, and so he, like any president who was a widower or a perennial bachelor as buchanan was called or whose wife was a recluse or sick, he had someone else come in. So cleveland has his sister rose come in to act as first lady. She is a bluestocking. That is, she is a writer, believes in womens rights, she is an editor. She really does not like this job. She is bored out of her mind. She records, she reports, that reception lines were so boring that she used to conjugate greek and latin verbs in her head. [laughter] carol just to keep herself occupied. As soon as she got herself out of the white house, she moved to utica and continued to be a writer. She buys a little house in naples, florida to get away from the winter. There, she falls madly in love with another woman. Evangeline simpson and Rose Cleveland live together in naples until evangeline decides she wants to be respectable, and she up and marries a 74yearold episcopal bishop from minnesota. You cannot get more respectable than that. When he dies, the two women flee together to italy and live together openly, and they are buried sidebyside there. I would give 1 million to know what Grover Cleveland thought about this. [laughter] lesley thats great. [applause] lesley boy, the competition for good anecdotes is on. [laughter] lesley im going to ask gil to tell us, what makes a successful first lady . What is the measure of that . And then your best anecdote. Gil there is a notion that every first lady is allowed to be whoever she wants to be, and this is kind of passed on first lady after first lady. I argue it is not true. There are whole series of dos and donts, invisible tripwires. When you are Hillary Clinton or nancy reagan, two very different and powerful personalities, and you cross that tripwire, you get pushback. You get demonized, often in the exact same way. Hillary clinton was called lady macbeth. Nancy reagan was called lady macbeth. It is deeply sexist. Every first lady comes in saying, im going to redefine this, take it over, feel empowered. They often find they have to be quite traditional. We have seen Michelle Obama, laura bush, barbara bush understand, if i dont want to generate static or make trouble, i keep quiet, keep traditional, perpetuate the sense of the first lady as part of this patriarchal role, and it works. Lesley even today . Gil i dont know what it does to the soul, but i know what it does to the polls. Lesley when i first met you at the reagan library, writing about the reagans, you and i talked about how the public sort of pushes against unelected power. When a first lady tries to wield power, in terms of policy, the public pushes back. You had told me that. Gil we are a nation forged in revolution, revolution against executive power. You see it to a certain extent with men, too, when there is a chief of staff considered to be too powerful. John sununu around george h. W. Bush. But particularly when it is around the wife, when she is unelected and unfirable. Although i would argue bill clinton fired hillary from being health czar. But she is perceived as being unfirable. Lesley best anecdote . Gil Jackie Kennedy hated the term first lady, she thought it made her sound like a saddle horse. She wanted to smoke, jack didnt want her to be photographed smoking. She wanted to cuss, jack didnt want people hearing her cuss. It gets difficult when Jackie Kennedy, who loved to ride horses, gets a fleet a whole bunch of stallions from saudi arabia. [laughter] gil im not a horseman. It is a whole bunch of horses. Jack goes not to jackie, because he is afraid of her to one of his aides, he goes, the israeli Prime Minister is going to come and give me some 10 bible, and i have to go, how wonderful. Meantime, jackie is going to be off with these white stallions in saudi arabia. Tell her to return them. He sends the aide to jackie. Jackie listens and says, tell him i am not doing it. [laughter] lesley that is really good. I should be taking notes. So annette, tell us about first ladies today. In this era, when we have women who are ceos of fortune 500 companies, what are the special restraints on a woman who had a career, like Michelle Obama or hillary, to kind of rein it in . Give us your concept of the role today. Annette it is a strange role, because it is actually a job, and it seems archaic, the notion that you are somebodys spouse, so therefore you have to become a hostess. It seems you ought to get paid for it, because it is a lot of work. It is odd to think of people who are very accomplished and ambitious being put to the task of something that sounds like it is from the 18th century. It is going to be interesting to see, now, with a first lady who is not playing the traditional role, and some people are upset about that. Other people, and i, would say, if you do not want to do that, you should not have to. What happens next . What happens if you have a man in that role . Would there be an expectation that this person gives up every single thing . It is very strange in modern times to have this very traditional notion of what a woman should be doing. Lesley best anecdote . Annette this is tough, because the person i wrote the most about was a widower. He was in the white house, and sometimes Dolley Madison served as hostess for him. I suppose the best anecdote is that while he was president , it is revealed that the person he is living with and having children with, a slave woman, was the halfsister of his deceased wife. People knew that and wrote about it. There was great consternation at monticello about this, and his daughters at some point come to washington to play the role of the dutiful daughters and hostesses. John quincy adams, who had sort of a weird relationship with jefferson over the years, wrote a series of poems anonymously about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. When jefferson is retiring one to the tune of yankee doodle, and other ones that aspired to be more classical. When jefferson is leaving office, he runs into quincy adams at the festivities for madison. He goes up to him and says, i just want to thank you for coming. I want to know, are you writing anymore poetry these days . John quincy adams puts this in his diary and writes he underlines poetry, because jefferson knows, even though it was anonymous, who did it, and this was his dig at him. John quincy got the message. Carol if it is any consolation, john quincys wife had a lot of difficulty with him and with their children. One son was an opium addict who fathered an illegitimate child with the chambermaid, and the other confessed to his mother that he had prurient interests, so he went to prostitutes. Annette there is another story about louisa and Sally Hemings. Jefferson invited native american chiefs to the white house. That had happened before, but he invited the wives. Many of the women in washington, the white women, were insulted, because it put them on par with them. Louisa is riding in her diary and says, what next, maybe the magnificent sally will make her appearance. There was a lot of bad blood between the two of them. Lesley let me ask this question, and anybody jump in. Can you tell us stories of first ladies who strongly influenced the flow of history, who had a huge impact on her husbands presidency and the direction the country moved in her time . Annette i could start with an influence that is very interesting, Eliza Johnson, who was the wife of andrew johnson, who is periodically listed as the worst or next to the worst president. In the years since i wrote a biography about him, he made it to being the worst. She taught him how to write. Andrew johnson did not learn to read until he was about 17 or 18 years old. He got married lesley i have a crack to make, but i better keep it to myself. [laughter] annette his wife taught him how to write, actually. So in a sense, that is an influence that you cant see in the white house, but just think about the kind of power that you had. You married somebody who teaches you, who educates you. That it is an amazing thing, to think of that kind of influence. Gil we can talk about the woman who was called madam president , edith wilson, Woodrow Wilsons second wife. Wilson is married, his first wife dies while he is in office. Lesley i have a crack to make, but i better keep it to myself. [laughter] annette his wife taught him how to write, actually. So in a sense, that is an influence that you cant see in the white house, but just think about the kind of power that you had. You married somebody who teaches you, who educates you. That it is an amazing thing, to think of that kind of influence. Gil we can talk about the woman who was called madam president , edith wilson, Woodrow Wilsons second wife. Wilson is married, his first wife dies while he is in office. On her deathbed, she says to the people around him, make sure he remarries. He marries this widow who runs a Jewelry Store in washington, d. C. They become very close very quickly, so much so that they say when Woodrow Wilson proposed to edith, she was so surprised that she fell out of bed. [laughter] gil that is early 20th century humor. Wilson has potentially the most influential soninlaw, because his treasury secretary marries one of the wilson daughters. A soninlaw with a role in the white house. We can talk about that later. [laughter] gil wilson has a series of strokes. In those days, you dont talk about those kinds of things. After world war i, the treaty of versailles, the league of nations, edith wilson does not want anyone to know. She ends up running the white house and covering this up for a very long time. You could almost say it is an act of treason, or an act of loyalty. That we can leave to our philosopher friends to figure out. Carol varina davis, the first and only first lady of the confederacy, and one of the most extraordinarily brilliant and interesting people i ever got to write about. When her husband was imprisoned by the union and put underground, literally, in a cell. There was no light. They kept the light on in the cell 24 7. There were guards outside. He had terrible eye problems. He was in terrible circumstances. He had always told his wife, in essence, that she was too uppity, did not behave like a good, obedient wife. But she is the person who got him out of prison. She broke every rule of gentile behavior you could possibly have. She went to men she did not know, which was a nono in the 19th century, and demanded that they send money to support his lawyer. She got him a lawyer from new york. She persuaded former abolitionists to sign a petition to get her husband free, and Jefferson Davis not one of my favorite husbands Jefferson Davis, who had berated her endlessly for her autonomy, now said, this is wonderful, you go, girl. She really had she not behaved in an unseemly fashion, with incredible determination and political sense she knew who to go to he would have rotted to death in this prison. Gil can i point out Something Interesting about this conversation . 25 minutes in, we have not mentioned the word eleanor. To me, that is remarkable progress. 25 years ago when i wrote the book on president ial couples, all we talked about was Eleanor Roosevelt. You would talk about the first lady of the moment, then Eleanor Roosevelt, little bit of jackie and lady bird johnson. Interesting to see how the conversation has developed. Annette i was about to jump in with that, because there was nobody like that. Lesley i was going to bring up nancy reagan, who i think and no one is ever going to know because she never told but i do believe she was far more powerful than we ever knew, and that she had great influence, particularly in the second term. We do know about her influence in terms of president reagans softening on the soviet union and gorbachev, but i think she was influential even in domestic policy. I think she grew enormously while she was first lady, educated herself deeply. Next question. Gil calls this the ivanka rule, cases where daughters take over the role of first lady. Do you have any examples . Carol several in the 19th century. Zachary taylors wife. The story was he was a general in the mexican war, and she made a pact with god that if he came home safely, she would abandon all fashionable life. Sure enough, he came home safely and became president , and she spent much of his president ial term in her room. She did not come out. Consequently, the daughter took over the role of the mother. Eliza johnsons daughters, when eliza was terribly ill, took over the role of the mother. This was what you went looking for and if it wasnt a daughter, it was a niece. Buchanan had his ward and niece be first lady. There were any number of them in the 19th century, attributed to the fact that it was absolutely, firmly believed that you had to have a hostess at any state affair. Annette jeffersons daughter martha played that role, after dolley did a bit for a time. She would come up from monticello reluctantly, as i said before, after the Sally Hemings allegations to create a united front. Other times, she came up with her kids and presided. Jefferson did a lot of entertaining. He did singlesex entertaining for the times she was not there, so it would be men from the federalist party, men from the Republican Party, not mixing people. You sort of wonder about that, whether because he did not have a wife that he could present, was the idea that everybody would come and it would be stag, instead of having women and it would be very obvious that he was by himself . Carol the other woman who is very influential we dont want to give too much away because we are doing a program on her was Dolley Madison, who really shaped informal politics in washington. She really understood that at social gatherings, you could get men to agree to what the president wanted to do, or get two warring factions together over ice cream. It would soften the ideological divide. She, i think, was also a very influential woman. Lesley all right, new topic. Gil, how important is it to a presidency that he have a happy marriage . Gil first of all, i would say that on the whole, for most president s and their wives, arriving in the white house has been very good for the marriage. How do you become president . You have to pass what david broder called the loony rule. You have to be nuts. This applies to all our leaders. The demands we put as a public on that individual, to jump through all these hoops, to be so public. And the marriage. It takes a huge toll on the marriage. What we often see happen is that over the course of the political career, as you build a political career or military career Mamie Eisenhower talks about how she had to move to 33 different government houses over their lifetime together. Pat nixon was so broken by the checkers revelations, when Richard Nixon gets on National Television and shares every single detail of their financial limitations, and she is forced to sit there. They paid a huge cost when they get to the white house, and at the white house, two things happen. First, they are living above the store. For the first time, they are home a lot. Lesley she can keep her eye on him. Gil the second thing, and this goes to nancy and Ronald Reagan, the obamas, the clintons. Being in the white house is so lonely. It is so isolating. You dont trust anybody, because everybody wants something from you and is often intimidated by you. Often, the intimate relationship you have with your significant other, your spouse, and sometimes your child, can be the one time you get some clear advice. During the irancontra scandal, nancy reagan keeps on bringing one powerful member of the Republican Party or the democratic party, of the republic, to Ronald Reagan to say, you have got to put your house in order. She says, all these men crumbled before my husband. She is the one who keeps pushing and says, ronnie, you have to deal with this. Ultimately, he deals with it. Annette what do you think about the johnsons, who had a close relationship . Who knows whether the relationship is happy or not . It is hard to see. But this wonderful tape, where she is critiquing his performance after he has done something. That was just fascinating, because here is this person who intimidates everybody. The famous picture of him leaning over people, this towering figure. It is lady bird, going down the list of things, what you did right, what you did wrong. He is accepting all of it. You see a sense of a team. Despite other stories about his womanizing and all kinds of things. Lesley he intimidated her, too. He was pretty brutal to her. Carol you can be a team without real affection. Annette thats what i am saying. Carol the happiest couple i ever encountered was julia grant and ulysses s. Grant. They were genuinely devoted to each other. When he gave up his presidency, they didnt know what to do, so they took a trip around the world. Reporters went with them. The reporters would record that at the end of the day, ulys that is what she called him and julie would sit in the corner Holding Hands like young lovers. He stayed alive with throat cancer, in deep pain, to finish his memoirs, so he could leave money to his wife, who by the way, i must tell you, was the dumbest human being. [laughter] carol if you dont believe ignorance can be bliss writing about her was so difficult for me, because she was an idiot. And happy, happy, happy, loved by her husband. [laughter] lesley what strikes me, in relation to this question about a happy marriage, is that you can look at fdr and lincoln. They did not have happy marriages, and they are the ones on mount rushmore. So i think i dont know. I always used to think it was really important, and then i looked at those two situations, and i get confused by it. Gil one of the things fdr did was he was constantly finding surrogates. He also had this very intermittent relationship with his daughter. Anna is living in the white house at the beginning of the roosevelt administration, and toward the end, he invites her back in. Two little moments. One is, roosevelt is going to yalta to meet with stalin and churchill, and she wants to go along, and Eleanor Roosevelt wants to go. The daughter wins. Carol there was only room on the plane for one person. Gil she later reports, somewhat guiltily, that she gets a whole reef of papers that were supposed to go to eleanor and instead go to anna. She says, i took them because i wanted that moment. Eleanor is upset with her, but not as upset as when Franklin Roosevelt is stricken and dies down in georgia. And it turns out that he is in the presence of his former lover, lucy rutherford, and anna knew about it and facilitated it. Ouch. She said, lucy listened to my father, eleanor didnt. Annette after he had betrayed her. Small point about that after youve given somebody five kids. But never mind about that. Lesley here is a little factoid off to the side over here. When anna moved into the white house, she brought her little kids. So there were these two little grandkids, beautiful children who lived with fdr. He would have his kind of levee style staff meeting every morning in his bedroom. He would be in bed, and he would invite his grandchildren come into the middle of the staff meeting, and they would jump up onto the bed. The secretary of state, secretary of treasury standing there, and he decides he is going to read the funnies to these grandchildren. He would act them out. If there was a quote, he would play the woman, then the man. The cabinet would just stand there. [laughter] lesley i think, carol, it was you who brought up the issue to me of friendships between first ladies. Carol there were some. Abigail adams originally thought louisa adams was too foreign. She had been educated in france and england, and thought of herself in many ways as french. Abigail thought, she is never going to make it. John adams and louisa were friends, but as time went on, abigail came to really respect louisa, and they developed a very close friendship. That was both family and two first ladies. Im trying to think of who some of the others lesley maybe we can talk more interestingly about feuds between first ladies. Gil Jackie Kennedy was marvelous with Hillary Clinton in terms of coaching her on how to handle having a teenager in the white house and kids in the white house, which i think is important to emphasize. One of the things that often happens is, because politics is a form of combat, you internalize. The men sometimes get over it, and the women hold on to the grudges. [laughter] lesley oh. Hold on. I know men who hold onto it more than women. Gil that is the role they have often played, partially because they are taking it on. One of the things you see with nancy reagan and Hillary Clinton is that Ronald Reagan and bill were always being mr. Affable and would let their wives be the lightning rods. That is a form of exploitation of the women, but it certainly was a dynamic that occurred. One feud we should talk about would be nancy reagan and barbara bush. 1980, and george h. W. Bush and ron reagan run against each other. Of course, this often happens reconciliation, Vice President george h. W. Bush, president Ronald Reagan. But nancy reagan is constantly putting barbara in her place, constantly disrespectful, constantly disrespectful to both bushes, but particularly barbara. There is a story where barbara shows up at the white house in a similar colored dress to nancy reagan, and nancy makes it clear the event is not going to start until she changes. And they are fellow republicans. Carol there is a similar feud between julia dent grant and mary todd lincoln. Mary todd lincoln, they are going to get in a boat to go into richmond and lord it over the defeated south. Julia gets in the boat and sits down in a seat. Mary todd lincoln gets in, and she says, you are sitting in my seat. Get up. Julia got up. She never forgot this. And then when they had a carriage tour around washington to see the lights, to celebrate the victory, mary invites her husband, ulysses s. Grant, to join her in the carriage and just leaves julia sitting there. Julia did not forget. When they were invited to the theater the evening that lincoln was killed, julia says to her husband, i am not going to be with that woman. Thank goodness she didnt, because her husband might have been killed as well. There was a feud that turned out well for somebody. Annette and holding a grudge, too. Lesley annette, do you have any stories of relationships between first ladies . Annette Dolley Madison and Martha Jefferson were close to one another. They shared a correspondence. Martha confided dolley was talking to her sister and to martha. Martha said she did not want any more children. She had a baby and was hoping this was the last one. She had four more after that, unfortunately. Thats the way. Jefferson, not having his own first lady, it was friends and his daughters friends who tried to step in and be helpful to him. They were pretty close. Madison came, james and dolley came to monticello quite a bit, and martha was always there. She did not have her mother from the time he was 12 years old, so dolley was someone she bonded with. Gil sometimes you can have a family feud. Ivanka has shades of anna roosevelt, in that she is going to have somewhat of an official role, but she also has shades of alice roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelts daughter. Alice was a character. She would say, if you dont have anything good to say, come sit next to me. Alice would literally put a tack under the cushion of a dignitary and watch them sit and blow up. She jumped into a pool on a cruise and met her second husband. Lesley alice was very mean to eleanor. Gil she was mean to many people. Teddy roosevelt said, i have a choice either handle my daughter or run the country. When he was governor and he wanted her to go to some conservative boarding school, she basically said, i will shame you, embarrass you, you are not going to do this. He knew it was true. When the tafts move into the white house, they discover a little voodoo doll that alice had left for them. And alice was banned from the taft white house, among other white houses. Lesley we have some questions from the audience. First for you, annette. Was Sally Hemings ever freed from slavery . Annette she was informally freed. She moved into charlottesville after jefferson died. If he had freed her, couple of things she was over 45. At this point, she was actually 53 years old. Any enslaved person over 45, if you freed them, you had to petition the legislature to allow them to remain in the state, and say how youre going to take care of them for the rest of their lives. You sort of imagine jefferson putting that in a document, asking the legislature to allow Sally Hemings to stay in state and say, here is how im going to it would be an admission they have been living together, and he wasnt going to do that. She moves to charlottesville. She is listed on the census in 1830 as a free white woman. In 1833, they do a special census to ask free blacks if they want to go back to africa. She says no. She is listed as a free negro woman at that point. It was informal freedom. She lives with her sons and dies in 1835. Lesley two questions that are virtually identical about teddy roosevelt. Do you think that Edith Roosevelt was very influential . Do you think Theodore Roosevelt would have been so successful as president if he was not married to edith . Annette i think she was very influential. He loved her very much. I think this was a situation it is a traditional kind of thing. It is not like she was making policy. But his affection and devotion for her certainly made him. Lesley here is another one. Let me go here. This is a question about women first ladies who are married to introverts. The questioner brings up Grace Coolidge and pat nixon. What is the difference, when the president is an introvert . Annette wow. Pat nixon is a fascinating character to me because she is sort of a mask that you never get behind. I get the from the things i have read, he was not a womanizer. Lesley [indiscernible] annette what . Lesley the inflatable doll . Does anybody know what im talking about . If you were around during nixon times, it was close to scandalous. He would go out on weekends with a friend in florida, and there was an inflatable manikin or something. Anyway. I digress. Annette not with anybody alive. Carol i dont want to picture that. Lesley he wasnt a womanizer with real women. Annette i wasnt expecting to get to that point. Gil there is a heartbreaking anecdote about pat nixon, which is that first of all, if you go to the early campaigns, the 1948 president ial campaign, it was called the pat and dick show, and they have a good dynamic. It gets ruined over the years. Jump ahead to 1973, and it is the worst spring of the nixon presidency. It is watergate. Day after day, revelations are emerging. Day after day, haldeman and john dean are imploding. Richard nixon is sitting there brooding, watching a movie in the white house. Julie turns to her dad, says, you are not the only one suffering. Mom is suffering, too. Then julie feels badly that she should not have done that. Richard nixon comes back and says, you were right. That is a rare moment of humanity. Of course, and it is the family that tries to keep nixon together during those moments, when the president of the United States is falling apart. He did not have twitter to share his craziness. [laughter] gil we now have stories about the drinking and praying and raging. Annette talking to the portraits. Gil Anthony Hopkins made him seem too crazy, but he was definitely going to crazyville express. Lesley at the end of the nixon presidency, when the pressure was intense but before everyone realized he would leave office, it was pat nixons birthday, and i was a reporter at cbs news in washington. Word got out that he was taking his wife out to dinner for her birthday. I was led to believe it was a cbs news exclusive, so i was sent to the restaurant with a camera crew. There were 10,000 reporters and cameras, the worst scene you have ever seen, pushing to get a picture. Everybody crowds around nixon to ask him watergate questions. I turned to my right, and there is pat nixon, pushed to the side. I was with helen thomas, who knew pat nixon quite well. Pat turned to helen. Tears are streaming down her face. She says, helen, can you believe with what has gone on, he took time to take me to dinner . I almost burst into tears. I wanted to say, look what he has done to you. But she was just overwhelmed that he had done this tiny gesture, after all he put her through. So gil, you mentioned that there are invisible tripwires for first ladies. You mentioned a couple. This person wants some more tripwires. Carol until about the 1830s, it was the unwritten rule that the first lady did not go to visit anyone else. She had to wait until someone came to visit her. This is one of the reasons why someone like louisa adams said being in the presidency was like being in prison, because the limit on your sociability was such that you could not go calling. It was not written in a book, but that was the rule. Annette there was a concern about Martha Washington at the beginning, that she and george were a bit imperious. There was a sense that he would have levees and would have people come. She was called lady washington. There was a concern that it was too much like british people. Too grand, in a way. For the first couple, the very first first couple, they had to think about how to present themselves in a republican way. But it was really just that she was an aristocrat what passed for an aristocrat from virginia during that time period. It was not so much about wanting to be english, as she was just a very high status person, and they didnt know what to do. Carol she was really a fairly folksy woman. She would go in the winter to the military camp and she would be knitting socks for the soldiers. She was really a homebody. She just wanted to talk about her children, never wanted to leave virginia, didnt want to go to new york. Some of that must have been a tremendous burden on her as well, even though she certainly was part of the virginia aristocracy. I always picture her, if she were alive today, she would subscribe to ladies home journal. She is a downtoearth woman, so the levees were really they were struggling to figure out how to impress foreign diplomats that they werent just country yokels, and how to meet the demands of the republic. I think it is quite hard annette she was a pretty tough person. I interviewed erica dunbar armstrong, who wrote a book about ona judge. This is a slave woman who ran away. George is constantly talking about martha insisting that this woman be found. They never managed to find her. Even after she is married and has a place for herself. Martha has other slave women to serve as her maid. She is still trying to track this woman down and bring her back to monticello for slavery, but they dont succeed in that. Lesley wasnt there a lot of pressure on the washingtons in that era to create a monarchy . But they fought against that . Annette there were some people who wanted that, but other people, supporters of jefferson, the Republican Party, who were totally against that. Jefferson was very critical lesley but the washingtons were against it . Annette they definitely were against it. But the people who were opposed you are absolutely right. There trying to figure out how to set things up and show themselves to be serious. There is one somewhat funny thing. Martha said you know the quote about the two worst days of her life, when her husband died and when Thomas Jefferson came to visit . [laughter] carol they actually offered, basically, a kingship to washington, and he said, absolutely not. I did not fight for years for independence to become a king. But they were in a difficult circumstance, because european powers there was a lot of aristocratic behavior on behalf of the diplomats on the part of the diplomats. They were trying to feel their way into how properly to behave. Annette i think if jefferson had had a wife. There was a scandal when the ambassador from Great Britain comes, and jefferson greets him in a bathrobe and slippers. Like, who are you . He is sending a message. I think if he had a wife, she would have said, put some clothes on. Lesley we have a request for us to talk about Michelle Obama as first lady, and how she handled the role, and how she helped develop the obama presidency. The image of the obama presidency. Annette i think it is pretty clear that they were a team. She, having been sort of a highpowered person herself, turned that into brought that energy to being first lady. Very outspoken. I think there might have been some tripwires for her. Lesley id say. Carol wearing a sleeveless dress, apparently. Annette i think in some ways, her role as first lady was more astonishing than barack as the president. The idea of a black woman, the notion of being a lady so much of what slavery was about was to strip africanamerican women from a notion of femininity. It was something they were not supposed to be. I think culturally, it was harder for people to accept her than it was to accept him. You are used to men as leaders in other places, but the idea of a lady and having black children in the white house as the first family, that sort of domestic arrangement, i think was more jarring to people. Lesley they presented such a traditional, middleclass american family, from the 1950s almost. Annette she came on television and did comedy routines. With ellen and jimmy fallon and so forth. Gil on the one hand, Michelle Obama was supposed to be an equal partner. She first met barack obama interviewing him. She had the job before he did. Then the message, again and again one of the invisible tripwires do not upstage the talent. That talent is always the president. I think she navigated that lesley you get the sense that she understood the tripwires and was not going there. For instance, someone like me tried desperately to get an interview with her, and she would only go on those shows where it could be light and talk about family and food, and would not go in any shows with policy questions. Gil another tripwire, for her particularly, was the stereotype of the angry black woman. Early on in the 2008 campaign, she crossed those wires and saw that stereotype being shoved in her face. I think that was part of the reason she was very careful to avoid substance. Only toward the end of the eight years did she come back to substance. Talk about the unfairness. And the degree to which she handled that with such calm and cool and dignity. Lesley i got the feeling, look what we have missed, because she was so internal and determined to be. Next question is about laura bush and what kind of impact she had on that presidency. Annette i like laura bush. I met her about three months ago in texas at the george bush library. She is a lovely person, a librarian. Very kind and gracious person. I think remembering, she softened him. She was the person that you wanted to see. She started the National Book she was very involved in the National Book festival, reading. I think she, as i said, she was sort of the pleasant part. Not that he was not pleasant, but i was glad for her presence. Gil we forget how angry people were at george w. Bush, and she was a normalizing presence. Somebody from the audience said she also stopped him from drinking. He sobered up. He was a party boy and was really quite out of control. I think it was her influence and presence that calmed him down and gave us the george w. Bush presidency. Carol that is a very sly role for a woman, to be a moral influence. Lesley i have a very sly question. I know you are going to remain anonymous, but i like this question because it relates to what is happening right now. Was there ever a first lady who did not live in the white house with the president , besides right now . Carol Eliza Johnson didnt go at first to the white house. Annette she came at some point, but spent most of her time long stretches of time lesley what about bess truman . Gil first of all, Martha Washington, because there was no white house. Trick question. Gil bess truman hated being in the white house. She wanted to be back home in missouri as often as possible. She sent her laundry back to missouri. She burned the letters she had written to him. He said, what about history . She said, that is what im thinking about. He had joined history, she didnt want to. There was a lot of back and forth. The nice thing is, they wrote, so we have harrys side of the conversation, and he was often in the doghouse with bess
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.