First Ladies (47 page)

After 1960, expectations for presidents' wives would change rapidly, and few candidates' spouses would dismiss campaigning for their husbands as not “proper.” In fact, campaigning on her own would become the accepted—even expected route to First Lady. The old conflict between private “person” and public “personage” would continue to trouble all who took the job, and a new feminist movement would raise other expectations for each of them. Curiously enough, it was Mamie Eisenhower, generally perceived as the least shrewd of the three, who pointed out in 1977 how completely the job of First Lady had changed since she left Washington. Reticence and a place on the list of “Most Admired Women” no longer sufficed, she acknowledged when she met Rosalynn Carter and explained, “I stayed busy all the time and loved being in the White House but I was never expected to do all the things you have to do.”
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IN FEBRUARY 1960, WHEN
the field of likely nominees for that year's presidential election had narrowed to five,
Newsweek
compared the men's wives and predicted that one of them would preside over the White House in the next four years. As it turned out, two of them did; and before the decade ended, three of the five had served as First Lady. With very different personalities and priorities, each carved out an individual response to a turbulent period in American history—one of exhilaration, then questioning and delusion as attention turned from space exploration and the Peace Corps to John Kennedy's assassination and then to Vietnam. In less than a decade, the style of First Ladies changed too, so that campaigning became a requirement instead of an option. Acting as White House hostess dropped as a priority; spearheading substantive reforms rose. In short, the president's wife moved out of the society columns and on to the front page.

Of the five singled out by
Newsweek
before the major parties convened to choose their candidates, only Evelyn Symington fell from national prominence. Muriel Humphrey, the most traditional of the five and the one who described herself as a “mother of an ordinary family,” never lived in the White House, but she saw her husband take the vice presidency in 1965, and after his death she served briefly as a United States senator from Minnesota. The remaining three in
Newsweek
's list, Pat Nixon, the disciplined “super-duper” wife of the vice president, Lady Bird Johnson, the “human-dynamo business-woman,” and Jacqueline Kennedy, the youthful, “stunning egghead,” all got a chance to preside over the White House.
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As soon as the two major parties made their nominations in 1960, attention focused on Thelma (“Pat”) Ryan Nixon and Jacqueline
Bouvier Kennedy, whom the
New York Times
described as “fantastically chic.” Beginning what became almost unqualified adulation of everything the Kennedys said or did, the
Times
announced in mid-July that Jackie had already captured “fashion's high vote” by showing an interest in clothes that paralleled her husband's approach to politics: both the Kennedys combined “confidence, individuality, a mind of [their] own and a knowledge of issues.”
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Photogenic Pat Nixon, already a familiar face since her husband had just completed eight years as vice president, fared less well in the
Times
, but crowds came out to see her campaign for the Republicans.

This prominent role for candidates' wives marked a new development, fostered by the proliferation of television sets. By 1960, nearly 90 percent of American homes boasted at least one set. (The figure had been less than 50 percent when the Trumans left Washington in 1953.) Mamie Eisenhower had not ignored the medium—she had chatted amiably with Edward R. Murrow on “See It Now,” but the aging military wife lacked the charisma of a star. Both candidates' spouses tried to do better in 1960, and one major newspaper emphasized how they had broken precedents: “Never before have the wives of both candidates been so active. … Mrs. Nixon sits in on strategic councils with her husband, travels extensively, and follows a busy schedule of press conferences.”
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Not many years had passed since Eleanor Roosevelt had deemed campaigning for one's husband to be in poor taste—a view that Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower apparently shared.

Neither Jackie Kennedy nor Pat Nixon took real pleasure in the political game but each had learned, with varying degrees of success, to disguise her feelings. Pat Nixon insisted she found handshaking invigorating and the difference in crowds “interesting,” while the less experienced wife of the Massachusetts senator fought to curb her tongue on the subject. She had already angered reporters with her flip answers about wearing sable underclothing. Her lack of enthusiasm for the long hours of handshaking and small talk that went with winning primaries showed up in several ways. In the Midwest, she had reportedly baffled one audience by suggesting that everybody join in singing “Southie is my Hometown,” a song virtually unknown west of Massachusetts.
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Jackie Kennedy's pregnancy (announced soon after her husband's nomination) allowed her to retire to Hyannisport for the rest of the campaign, an absence generally interpreted as her best contribution to victory. Some wags suggested that the impending birth had been contrived to keep her home, and one story labeled the pregnancy a
hoax: John Kennedy would wait for the election returns to come in and then turn to his wife and say, “Okay you can take out the pillow now.”
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Although Jackie's political interest remained very low, she evidently had known the goal of John Kennedy's ambitions before she married him in 1953. According to her cousin, John Davis, she had initially dismissed John as “quixotic because … he intended to be President.”
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John Davis concluded that Jackie found the “unity and spirit” of the Kennedy clan appealing after the “dissipation and squabbling” in her own family, but that she never completely disguised her boredom with politics—or her preference for discussing art and artists.
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If the woman whose husband would be president did not enjoy going to the people, she could perfect another campaign style which made them come to her. By remaining aloof—but glamorous and confident in her aloofness—she stirred up more interest than if she had mingled with the crowds and hugged every child in sight. Jackie Kennedy had the uncanny knack of intriguing a nation, partly because her personal history read like a fairy-tale with more than its share of sophistication, money, and villains.

Born on Long Island in 1929 to a stockbroker and his society-conscious wife, Jackie Bouvier attended the fashionable Chapin School in New York and then the prestigious Miss Porter's in Connecticut. After her parents divorced and her mother was remarried, this time to Hugh Auchincloss, who was considerably wealthier and more successful than Jack Bouvier, Jackie and her younger sister Lee divided their time between Merrywood, the Auchincloss estate outside Washington, and Hammersmith Farm in Newport, Rhode Island. When time came for college, she took two years at Vassar and a year in Paris before finishing at George Washington University. Her stepfather arranged through a family friend for her to go to work for a Washington newspaper and soon she had her own byline for a column, “Inquiring Photographer.”

Although many other young women in the 1950s compiled similar records of international travel, multilingual competence, and careers of their own, none of the others topped off their accomplishments with marriage to a senator who seven years later won the presidency. Jackie's youth (she was only thirty-one when she became First Lady), her wit (she had joked with reporters about the meaning of “egghead”), and her flair for fashion all put her in sharp contrast to her immediate predecessors. She would have aroused curiosity even if she had done nothing more than play the White House hostess, but she resolved to do more.

Just weeks after John Kennedy's victory over Richard Nixon, Jackie gave birth to a son, and within days, she was announcing through her social secretary, Letitia Baldrige, “sweeping changes [so the White House would become] a showcase of American art and history.”
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Following this precedent-breaking, pre-inaugural announcement, Jackie assembled a large staff, until eventually Baldrige reported that she had “forty people … in the First Lady's Secretariat.”
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Not all of them could boast the credentials of Baldrige, who came well prepared for the job. The daughter of a congressman, she was a veteran of American embassies in both Rome and Paris, and she had been on the Kennedy staff since the summer of 1960, well before the outcome of the election was clear.

Astute observers did not fail to note how the wife of the presidentelect tailored her public statements to complement his upbeat, energetic approach to the office. While John Kennedy incorporated phrases about a “new frontier,” his wife talked of “new beginnings” and the “best” of everything. The
New Yorker
, in an amusing article entitled “Mrs. Kennedy's Cabinet,” underlined the parallels when it compared the Kennedys' appointments. Both John and Jackie had included Republicans (Letitia Baldrige and Douglas Dillon), the
New Yorker
pointed out, and both had rewarded early boosters (in her case, the hairdresser Kenneth). Their most important selections, however, had come slowly, with both Kennedys announcing on the same day the designer of her inaugural wardrobe (Oleg Cassini) and his secretary of state (Dean Rusk). Both Cassini and Rusk had been, the
New Yorker
explained, “rather dark horses.”
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As soon as her husband was sworn in, the new First Lady moved to leave her imprint on his administration. Old tensions about whether a president's wife should stress humility in order to appeal to the people or set herself apart at a royal distance went all the way back to the Monroe administration. Jackie Kennedy quickly took her place in the elitist camp. Within a week of the inauguration, she had begun her campaign to upgrade the taste of the nation. On January 25, she met with an old friend, the artist William Walton, and experts from the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Gallery to discuss plans for restoring to the White House its original furnishings.
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That same afternoon she took tea with George Balanchine, the Russian choreographer who then headed the New York City Ballet. By the end of her first week on the job, she had made clear that although she had listed her priorities in the same order as had Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower, placing husband and children first, she meant to perform in a very different way.

For a start, she meant to gain notice, and she began in what had traditionally been the province of presidential wives. Each White House family had enjoyed considerable freedom to choose what to bring into the mansion and what to throw out. Over the years many valuable pieces had simply disappeared—sold at auction or carted off as junk. Presidents did not usually involve themselves in the decisions (James Monroe and Chester Arthur were the notable exceptions), and wives could choose to reflect their own personal preferences or treat the mansion as a museum of the country's treasures. Following structural renovations in the 1920s, Grace Coolidge had prevailed on Congress to pass legislation permitting the president to accept appropriate antiques, but so few were forthcoming that the law had little effect. Lou Hoover had attempted to stimulate interest in the White House by asking a secretary-friend to write a book on the subject, but depression times were hardly conducive to attracting donations of the Federal or Early Empire styles.

The early 1960s found Americans in a more giving mood, especially when a popular First Lady and new tax laws encouraged them in their generosity. Television did its part by making Jackie Kennedy a celebrity. During her first year in the White House, two networks produced documentaries, showing how she had popularized the pillbox hat, bouffant hairstyles, and the name “Jacqueline” for baby girls. No one could explain exactly why she had achieved such instant stardom, but one commentator suggested that she appealed to the country's fascination with youth. The youngest First Lady since the 1890s, she underlined her youth by being frequently photographed with her two little children. More subtly, however, Jackie Kennedy offered a new model of womanliness. Here was a First Lady who seemed acquainted with Europe, informed about literature and the arts, yet attractive enough to compete with movie actresses and sex symbols. The “dumb blond” stereotypes of the 1950s appeared curiously dated, and NBC concluded its adulatory program on Jackie Kennedy with the question: “Whatever became of Brigitte Bardot?”
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This enormous popularity helped promote the campaign to furnish the White House with authentic antiques. The First Lady prevailed on wealthy individuals to contribute, assembled a professional staff to oversee the collection, and engaged scholars to give guidance and advice.
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To insure that her efforts could not be cancelled by a successor with different tastes, she secured passage of legislation making the furnishings of the White House of “historic or artistic interest … to be inalienable and the property of the White House.”
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John Kennedy feared that she might be criticized for extravagance, so
it was arranged that the sale of White House guidebooks, which began July 4, 1962, would help finance the project.

Jackie Kennedy's efforts to restore the White House (she did not like the term redecorate) received considerable publicity, including a one-hour special on national television during which millions of viewers watched her move through the mansion and describe the provenance and significance of the furnishings and artworks. Jack Gould, television reviewer for the
New York Times
, pronounced her an extremely able historian, art critic, and narrator, but even such an admirer as he could not fail to notice that she sidestepped the substantive questions. When narrator Charles Collingswood asked her what relationship the federal government should have with the arts, she thought it too “complicated” to answer but she reiterated her view that the White House deserved “only the best.”
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