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Pat Nixon: Embattled First Lady

2012; Oxford University Press; Volume: 98; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jahist/jar556

1945-2314

Maurine H. Beasley,

Academic Freedom and Politics

While widely admired in public opinion polls during Richard M. Nixon's disastrous presidency, Thelma Ryan “Pat” Nixon has often been written off in history as a programmed Barbie doll—“Plastic Pat,” whose pasted-on smile and canned comments brought sneers to the sophisticated. This well-researched biography, part of the Modern First Ladies series, tells the story behind that smile: Pat Nixon's steely determination to stand by a husband who failed to value her role in his administration. Bringing considerable insight to this task, Mary C. Brennan, a professor of history at Texas State University at San Marcos, had the advantage of being the first biographer to access Pat Nixon's recently opened personal papers. Having written previously on conservative women of the 1960s, Brennan draws on her knowledge of the mores of the period. In this concise account, also based on personal interviews and extensive secondary sources, Brennan shows how Pat Nixon worked tirelessly to push her husband's career as the couple moved up the social and political ladder, branding themselves as the “Pat and Dick team” (p. 29). Although her performance resonated with American voters of the mid-twentieth century, the growing emphasis on women's liberation made it seem contrived by the time the Nixons finally gained the White House in 1968. The Nixon marriage, once a true romance between two self-made individuals, a hard-working schoolteacher and an ambitious young lawyer, had frayed for reasons somewhat outside the scope of this work. Preoccupied with his political fortunes and heavily engaged with advisers who lacked respect for his wife, the increasingly bitter and vindictive president shunted his wife aside, using her only as a “prop” for public relations purposes (p. 150). In contrast to her immediate predecessor, Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon had little encouragement to play a vital part in her husband's presidency.