American History Hit - First Ladies of the United States

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

Don talks to former White House reporter Kate Andersen Brower about how the role of First Lady has changed - and stayed the same - since the 1960s. Supporting their husband's presidency, while pursuing their own agenda. Each putting their stamp on their time in office - while often forming stronger bonds than their male counterparts. Produced and mixed by Benjie Guy. Senior Producer: Charlotte Long. For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. January 20th, 2021, Washington, D.C. Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th president of the United States.

Next to him, of course, is his wife, Jill Biden. But alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, our nation's first female VP, is our nation's first second gentleman, her husband Doug. For that matter, Jill Biden is something new herself. She is the first, first lady to hold a job outside of the White House, as she continues her career as a teacher, pursuing her own life and agenda alongside her husbands. The First Lady has been an ever-evolving role in our presidential politics, one that's reflected the personality of the woman who has occupied the office

and the personality of the nation who has elected her spouse. It's been this way all the way back to Martha Washington in 1789. And it'll be this way when the First Lady finally becomes First Gentleman, no doubt sooner than we think. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Don Wildman. It's great that you could listen. First Lady is a title that comes loaded with responsibilities and expectations that exist in no manual or rulebook and certainly not in our U.S. Constitution. The role is a fact of life for the spouse of any U.S. president, whichever he or she we elect every four years. Yet,

its reality is it's a contradiction within itself. The First Lady has always been required to play two roles inward and outward, public and private. Demanding from the title holder, those women down the ages of American history, a kind of behavior that would tie any normal human being into knots. It's a challenge and an enormous factor in the day-to-day life of any administration. And these stories have been told in a great book called First Women, the Grace and Power of America's Modern First Ladies, published in 2016 by our guest today, Kate Anderson Brower. Welcome to American History Hit Kate. Nice of you to join us.

Thanks for having me, Don. Okay. So First Lady is such a deceptive title. And I should quickly add one day, very soon, it will be first gentleman, first spouse. New firsts are coming, surely, and bring them on. But thus far, it has been all ladies. And as I say, the title belies the serious challenges of a job. Always been the case, I'm sure, but more so in recent times with certainly with media scrutiny.

It's both an official and unofficial role. And every one of these women has been. forced to straddle both those realms? I mean, just the title itself, to your point, Martha Washington called herself a state prisoner. Jackie Kennedy said the one thing I do not want to be called as First Lady, it sounds like a saddle horse. I mean, it's a very anachronistic, old-fashioned title for any woman. And I think, you know, as you said, there's nothing in the Constitution that describes what their actual job assignment is and what we expect from them, but yet there are such high expectations that are placed on them. So they're really set up in a lot of ways to fail, actually.

And one of my, I interviewed several first ladies for the book, and one of the interviews was really eye-opening with Rosalind Carter. And she said, I was criticized for sitting in on cabinet meetings. I was criticized when I didn't do more. And then I realized I just had to do what I wanted because no matter what, I was going to be under fire. And so I think these women are really, there's something that bans them together. They really have to, it's a, I'm sure it's true, the president as well. It's an on-the-job training to an nth degree. I mean, this is like, without any definition for each person who comes into the role. In your book, you cover 10 first ladies, Jackie Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon, Betty Ford, Rosalind Carter, Nancy Reagan, Barbara

Bush, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, Michelle Obama. That list in itself is startling because it's my lifetime. And so many of these people, these women, define, you know, a certain aspect of American life. And yet we didn't elect them into the role. It's crazy. It's fascinating to me that oftentimes we don't give them enough credit. You know, you look at someone like Betty Ford, for instance. I interviewed Steve Ford, whenever children. He said, you know, my mom was an ordinary woman in an incredible time. She was married to a man who was never elected to the presidency. And she ended up changing the world.

I mean, I was so interested in the effects they had after they left the White House. I think the most powerful thing a first lady can do is kind of harness that celebrity, really. And you have to remember, Betty Ford won the Presidential Medal of Freedom several years before her husband did. And he actually said, Gerald Ford said, you know, when the final tally of history is taken, her contributions will be bigger than mine. And I think we kind of lose sight of that sometimes. How in this half century, these administrations of your book, how has the role of First Lady evolved during this period? In some ways not enough, I think, you know, Jill Biden is the first, first lady to work. And I have talked to her about how she sees this position by continuing,

her job as a teacher. I think that sends a really powerful message. But being a teacher is also a very specific role. I don't know if someone like who's a lawyer, for instance, could continue working because there are just too many conflicts of interest. And I think that the White House has become really political since the Trump administration. This isn't shocking to anyone. But I wrote a book called The Residence, which was about the household staff there. And the first ladies are in charge of the staff. And the fact that, you know, Melania Trump, she had hired the chief usher who kind of runs the White House. And there was talk about firing him if he gave the incoming first lady, Dr. Biden, a blueprint of the residence. I mean, to me, that's kind of shocking because

every first lady invites the woman who comes in after them for a tea. And, you know, this happened with Melania Trump. She came to the White House with. Michelle Obama. I mean, what an awkward conversation that must have been. But we've, I think the partisanship has changed a lot. And so there was no meeting between Melania and Dr. Biden. So I think it's evolving in some ways in a negative way. Sure. Yeah, a reflection of exactly the divide that's elsewhere. I always find it is a reflection of the American sensibility, right? It's a little bit awkward. We both hold these first ladies and the families up as these exceptional and important people and expect them to behave accordingly while at the same time we want them to be humble and nothing special

at all. It's kind of how we look at politicians in general. But wow, the first ladies really catch the brunt of this dichotomy. I mean, that's exactly right. They can't win. I mean, they're all expected, right, to pick a platform, something they're going to try to champion while they're in the White House. And you had Lady Bird Johnson with beautification, which was really just, there were so many billboards on the highways. She was trying to. to plant more flowers. And she did a wonderful job. And that was, you know, fairly innocuous. I think the idea is you have to pick something that's not going to upset anyone. And then you look now into the modern age and Michelle Obama with her Let's Move campaign, which was about healthy eating

for children and lowering rates of childhood obesity. And it became a flashpoint in the conservative media that she was trying to police what people were eating. And so I think we've entered a new realm where it's become more complicated to be a first lady. In just a moment, we'll start to move through these bios a bit, but I just have one more general comment. It's a fishbowl life, certainly for the president, but really for the family and for the first lady. It's this crazy balancing act between what to show the public

and how to maintain some semblance of private life. This is really the odd consequence of the fact that the president lives in the house where he works, he or she eventually. That's an unusual thing in the world. You don't usually find, certainly, in a superpower country that everything happens in that one house. How did that ever come to pass that the first family never leaves the White House? I think that it's so claustrophobic for them. And it's only become more and more so. It's like living in a one bedroom apartment. It was described to me by one of Michelle Obama's age. She said it's like being in a beautiful apartment on Park Avenue

and you feel like you just cannot leave and you're a prisoner. You know, during the Nixon years, Pat Nixon would get dressed up with a really costume, had sunglasses and walk around Georgetown, you know. But there's very little they can do. I mean, sometimes they walk around the South Lawn, but they are kind of prisoners of the house. And I think that's because of security threats and that it's gotten even worse. They really can't leave without causing a lot of problems.

There's a lot of traffic. It's interesting when the Obama's lived in the White House because Michelle Obama had her mother, of course, living in the third floor of the residence in a suite. And the resident staff loved having Mrs. Robinson there. In fact, they told me that they would go and switch out the flowers in her room. And she would say, don't worry about it. She wanted to do her own laundry. I mean, it was kind of fascinating to have this woman who was a, you know, middle class mom from Chicago living in the most famous house in the world. And I think for the Obama's, it's particularly interesting because they were the first black president and first lady.

And then to have a staff that is largely African-American, that was really meaningful for them. So I'm a 60-70s kid. So Jackie Kennedy was, you know, the understood gold standard before horrible tragedy struck. She was the one who wanted to lift up the office, you know, polish the silver, if you will. This sort of set the whole identity of the first lady onto a new level, right? Yeah. I think for Jackie, she. came in and was horrified by what she saw. There was no effort in her mind, and I guess this is a

swipe at Mamie Eisenhower, but to bring out these incredible pieces of American history that were literally on the dirt floors of a warehouse facility. And she's the person who created the White House Historical Foundation. And she was able to get the DuPonts and other wealthy Americans to go out and try to find pieces that had been lost to history, really, and bring them back to the White House. She cared a lot about the House. And in a way, it was also egalitarian. She wanted children from all over the country

to be able to see the most beautiful house in the world. And she's the first one dealing with that huge factor, which also defines Jack Kennedy as well, which is television. You know, she brings the crews into the White House. For the first time, you know, because of television being new, Americans are able to see the inside of the White House and to understand the changes she has in mind and to understand her. You know, she was this enigmatic figure, even on camera, frankly, in my opinion, but she was saying hello to the American people from within the White House really for the first time in

American history. That was a huge change. And it also set a new standard for how the first lady needed to look or conscious of what she wore at all times, you know, what dresses she in. It's this sort of elevating it to almost a royalty status, which is so strange, like I said, a dichotomy. Then there's this hard turn with Lady Bird Johnson. And she's interesting. I like Lady Bird Johnson, but I like her after the years. What I learned later as an adult more than as a kid, because, you know, we didn't really know her at all. She's one of those who is overshadowed mightily by her. Who could ever compete with Lyndon Bain Johnson, for God's sakes. She was in many ways the person that settled him and was able to kind of one of his top advisors, Joe Califano, he told me, you know, Lyndon Johnson was essentially a manic depressive. And he terrorized the White House staff because he was obsessed with the White House shower being a certain temperature. And it was always ladybird said to the head of the White House, the usher at the time, she said, Lyndon is first, the girls are second and I'll take what's left.

and I think that says it all about her. She put up with so much from him and he could be really cruel about her appearance. But she also won the election for him, you know. I mean, in 64 with the Civil Rights Act and the Lady Bird Express where she traveled to the Deep South because she was from the Deep South.

She could speak to people about the need to end racism and segregation in a way that was powerful. And so he deployed her. And there were actually bomb threats that the rails would be bombed. People were very worried about her on that trip, and she did it anyway. So she was a courageous woman. Yeah, they basically are sort of dispatched, as you say, deployed to both send the message of their husbands here, but also to soften them,

to humanize this political stance often. It's interesting. It all goes to a new level in that regard with Pat Nixon. She is on one hand, as benign as can be, you know, as far as our view of the first lady, I'm speaking as a kid watching television in those days. That is not a fair assessment of the woman. I mean, can you imagine the line that Pat Nixon had to walk being Richard Nixon's wife? The man's political career was a roller coaster ride from beginning to end, triumph to disgrace, several times over. And yet there was Pat in the background holding the line.

We got that woman wrong, didn't we? I think she, you know, she didn't grow up with much money. She had a really tough childhood. There's a great interview she did with Gloria Steinem. where she's like, you know, basically talking to Gloria Steinem as though she essentially is saying to her when she was first lady, it was kind of a coup that Gloria got this interview with her. And Pat Nixon said, you know, I didn't have the luxury to be a feminist. I don't have that luxury.

I had to fight for everything. I worked from a very young age to support my family. I think that she saw herself as a fighter and as kind of the underdog in a way that her husband was as well. And there's a great photo where she's in tears after he loses an election. I think it was the Kennedy election. And she was somebody who I think had that whole plastic pat image. And I think people never got to know her. I mean, can you imagine going through what she went through,

having to be the first first lady to leave the White House? And I think her staff really wanted to protect her. I'll be back with more from Kate Brower after this short break. You covered the White House for years for Bloomberg. What was it like behind the scenes? How did the First Ladies deal with the press? Did they let you in or did they manipulate you? What was the kind of experience you had with them in particular?

Well, it was when Michelle Obama was First Lady that I was working at Bloomberg and the tail end of Laura Bush's time in the White House. And the East Wing is perhaps more protective than the West Wing because I think that there is a general feeling among the First League. lady staff that they didn't choose to be there. They weren't, you know, elected officials. And there's a lot of concern that they're going to say something that will damage their husbands because in a way, it's like the vice presidency. They are there to not embarrass the president, too. So, I mean, there were a couple of private, you know, off the record conversations, but it was a really guarded East Wing. That's an interesting take. I never thought of that. The irony is we end up knowing so little about the vice president, whoever they are, they kind of stay way in the background.

Maybe Joe Biden stepped forward more than most, but we end up knowing the first lady way more than the vice president. It's kind of a sort of double-layer thing going on there. That's true. There was a lunch that Michelle Obama had with East Wing reporters, all of us, women, about a dozen of us. And in the lunch, we were talking about the anniversary of the Let's Move campaign. I think it was the one-year anniversary. And at one point, she made an offhand comment about her husband's had stopped smoking, she said. And that became the story out of that meeting, which was meant to be, you know, kind of just a very casual conversation. And suddenly the one thing she said was the AP wrote a piece about it. Then, you know, of course, I wrote a piece about it.

And everybody started writing about this. So I think that they're right to be worried about what reporters are going to say. say nothing is unscripted, right? You have to be a masterful media personality in this role because it really truly is too much to handle. So if there's a day we're not talking about, oh, my God, what happened, that's a day that that woman or man in the future handled masterfully because all kinds of things can go wrong. They can behave too naturally and get called out for it or they can be cold and distant and be

called out for that. You know, it's just you can't win, like you said. Interesting. I'm looking backward. There's an interesting camaraderie between these ladies. You have a nice story about Pat Nixon having Jackie Kennedy around after the assassination. And Jackie wrote fondly about it years later. Yes. In 1971, Pat Nixon invited Jackie and her children to the White House. And it was the first time she had been back since her husband's assassination. Jackie, of course, was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. She was incredibly fearful about going back to the White House. understandably. And she had been avoiding it. And it was Pat Nixon who reached out to her and said the official portrait was going to be unveiled in which she liked to come. And I think it was very emotional for Jackie to even make the decision to come. And there are wonderful letters in the Kennedy Library where she says to Pat Nixon, can you imagine, you know, the gifts that you gave me, the day that I had always dreaded was one of the best days I've ever spent with my children. And she

took John F. Kennedy, Jr., was still young. He was very young when his father was killed, but he says he did have memories of what the White House was like. I thought it was very touching that Caroline continued her kindergarten classes in the celerium of the White House even after her father was killed because he was, of course, killed in November, and they finished before Christmas. So she remembered what it was like being a little girl in the White House and going to school with their friends on the third floor of the White House. I think it was a cathartic experience for Jackie and an unusual one, such a strange thing, to have the Nixons and the Kennedys who had been, obviously, bitter arrivals come together for, I think, a healing moment in her life.

It's interesting. I wonder if this will play a bigger role down the years to come. The partisan divide is such a big deal in American life now. And to take that episode and imagine the Democrats and Republicans through the Kennedy years and the next year's coming together through the friendship or at least acquaintanceship of Pat and Jackie, that might play a factor in the near future. And I hope so, quite honestly. It's a very expedient way to have Americans come together. In a way, Nancy Reagan plays a similar role as Jackie Kennedy. You know, Kennedy's Camelot effect, she was kind of echoing that a lot after the sort of down-home Carter years. I liked Rosalind. I mean, she was a, she's a solid lady to this day, amazing long life. But to Nancy Reagan,

she was also a political manipulator. I mean, a fierce guardian of her husband's territory and legacy. That's right. I mean, she was essentially the Human Resources Department of that Reagan White House. She decided who was going to be around her husband, which is the most powerful position anyone can have, who would have his ear. And if somebody was too conservative, she would place them with somebody who was a little bit more liberal on certain issues because I think she was slightly more left-leaning than her husband and she also fired people it was interesting I talked to ron Reagan their son and he said you know my mom took the brunt of the criticism she fired don don regan don regan actually had the temerity to hang up on nancy Reagan you know and you cannot hang up

he hung up on her twice and that's just not going to work You're not going to stay in the White House after you do that. But I thought it was interesting from Ron Reagan's perspective that he thought his father got away with a lot more than his mom did because his father had his mom be the tough enforcer of that White House. And she didn't mind it because everything was about protecting him, of course. Yeah. I've always wondered if the insiders know more than we did, how much of Reagan's future

dementia and so forth was a factor that she was aware. of and was therefore stepping in and taking a stronger role. Not unlike Woodrow Wilson's wife taking over. Yeah, I've always been interested in that, too. I think towards the very end, it was obvious that things were slipping a little bit, but I never found anything in my research that was definitive. I think they've gone to great lengths to hide anything that would make you think that he was slipping too much at the very end. Barbara Bush, America's first grandmother. I think that's how I thought her. But she was also first lady, a classy woman who was kind of a pause before everything changes with Hillary Clinton.

Boom. This is a gigantic wake-up call to America. Finally, you know, I have to say, I'm the youngest of a family of sisters. We went through the ERA in my house. It was the 70s, like burning bras and everything else. And always waiting for America to catch up is kind of what I saw. Hillary Clinton was that. Not that radical version of things, but she was America finally really.

Oh, oh, oh, all that stuff we heard about 10, 15 years ago is now happening. And it's Hillary Clinton. And everybody had to get used to it right out of the gate. It was amazing. And they weren't ready. They were absolutely not ready. And that, you know, I talked to a few of her aides who said that she always wished she didn't have that office in the West Wing. That was just such an easy thing for people to criticize at the time.

And, you know, I actually interviewed Al Gore about the vice presidency. And at one point, I asked him, what was it like working in a White House with the most powerful first lady in American history, really? And he said, I think our conversation is going to be coming to a close sooner than I thought. You know, the idea that he didn't want to talk about it because it's still, to this day, she was taking on health care reform and he was doing reorganizing the government, whatever that is. You know, she had all of these assignments, although. it failed, right? But I think when she went to the conference in Beijing on women's rights and really

delivered a very powerful message there, she was our first, really outwardly feminist first lady, I think. And obviously, she saw Eleanor Roosevelt as her trailblazing first lady who came before her, and she had a framed photo of Eleanor on her desk. And I think asked herself what Eleanor would do quite often. In many ways, we talk about the divide has such an origin in Obama's White House because America's first black president, oh my gosh, it really goes back before that because it was our activist first lady who was a big shock to the system. There were those of us, I count myself among them, who said, oh, good, you know, let the women take over for goodness sake. And we saw her role as First Lady as a refreshing new take on how to guide this nation

with both genders. But a lot of America just did not get it. And that has lasted through, of course, because she's still doing her thing. And there's more to that divide that has to do with gender as as much it has to do with race. Oh, absolutely. I think we saw that in the election, you know, in 2016, and that she was carrying the weight of the presidency at her husband's years in the White House. And, you know, you could argue she wouldn't have gotten to that point without him, right, obviously. But a lot of her friends told her, you know, don't marry Bill. You should just pursue your own career. You should become president someday, right? You know, you don't need him to get to that level.

And obviously, she's smart and ambitious, but I think there's still, yeah, there's a lot of sexism in this country that I think made it very hard for her. But it's an illustration of how delicate the job really is and sophisticated the person needs to be as far as how they play that card. I mean, it turned out she had eight years ahead of her to do that. And one can speculate that those early years could have been handled different. differently, understanding what a bombshell she really was going to be. I mean, I just remember how it worked. You know, she stepped in in the, you know, the interim period between the election and taking office, the inauguration. She was already out of the gate. You know, that just worried a lot of people. Like, how dare she? Yeah, I'm not sure if there was a way to kind of baby step her way into it,

especially after the interview she did where she said, you know, I'm not some little lady at home baking cookies all day. You know, it was this kind of right away, you know, it was this kind of, right away, It was angering a stay-at-home moms, too, right? I think that maybe if she had people around her who could have helped her navigate it, we were just not ready for a woman to have an office in the West Wing and to have that advisor position. But look at Donald Trump and his children. Ivanka was an advisor. Her husband was a senior advisor.

And it shocked me that that wasn't more of a problem for the Trump White House, really. It's always a subjective thing every single time. We want to compare them. But every one of them is different. Every one of them is a real reflection. That's both the problem and the advantage. Okay, Michelle Obama, for my money, she's the modern first lady who really understood how she had to play both roles best. Political asset while doing a yeoman's job warming up a very chilly man.

I mean, he was a tough cookie. And the challenges for the Obamas in relating to America, obviously, are legion. They're the change. That was the, you know, the theme of their whole campaign, and it works. change is good. But it felt it to Michelle to introduce the change in the most comfortable fashion. And I thought she did a fantastic job at it myself. Oh, I do too. I mean, here's a woman who was the breadwinner in that family, right? Princeton, Harvard graduate, incredibly ambitious, intelligent. And then I think you can't separate race from the way that she looked at her role as the first black first lady because she was just under such a tremendous, amount of pressure to become the mom in chief. A lot of feminists saw that and thought, well, I mean, she's just as intelligent as he is. Can she continue? But really, I think she was sending a really powerful message to people that she's going to make this decision and for this period of time

devote herself to her children and only do things that were very necessary. I mean, she told her chief of staff, I will only campaign if you can prove to me that I'm going to make a difference in the midterms, you know, and she did because she was the secret weapon, right, to that White House. She's just somebody who I think has that natural ability to relate to people and to make fun of herself and her husband. And like you said, that's one of the key jobs of any first lady is to humanize their husband. She brought him down a peg or two, I mean, talking about him snoring. and I mean, just things that made him a human being when I think he's so professorial, right, and so thoughtful and the smartest person in the room kind of feeling I think that he carried

with him. Not that he always thought it, but I think everyone else did. And so I think for her, I think she did that job masterfully of being able to humanize him and then also make the decision to be a mother. I thought it was kind of an interesting act, too, to what Hillary Clinton opens up, which is this thing is changing. Women's role in society and American society has obviously changed and it needs to be reflected in the White House. That happens in a rather startling way, perhaps too hardcore a way for us back in the day with Hillary. Michelle does the same thing, but in her own style, which is a lot more smile involved and it was much more comfortable. And in that regard, she takes that new paradigm, I guess, of the first lady and sort of professionalizes it,

I thought. And it's going to be interesting to see how that moves off into the future. I'm going to stay true to your book. It was published in 2016, so there's plenty more to talk about after the fact, but I invite people to get a hold of this book and to look at your website, Katebrower.com, if I may be so bold. It's a really classy website. And it has an amazing array of books. And I just want to name a few of them. First in line, team of five, exploring the White House, the residence inside the private world of the White House. You are really, holding the hand of America and taking them inside. It's really cool. But you could do that because you were there. Being able to talk to people who see history unfold, whether it be first ladies or

the butlers and ushers at the White House, is incredible because they're the people who know what's really going on. What's new in your work these days that you want people to know about? Well, I just released a book called Elizabeth Taylor, The Grit and Glamour of an icon about the first real celebrity influencer, Elizabeth Taylor. And I was given access to her. private diaries and letters. And the book covers her AIDS activism, her years in Washington, which are fascinating. And it was just an incredible experience to get into her mind and read love letters between Elizabeth and Richard Burton. What could be more entertaining than that. What a cool idea. You're filling in the gaps of my whole background myself. So many of these

stories from the 60s and 70s are so interesting. Thank you so much, Kate. I hope we see you again on American History. Bye-bye. I love that. Thank you, Don. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. I hope you enjoyed it. Please don't forget to like, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you next time. This podcast includes music from Epidemic Sound.