Affairs of State: The Rise and Rejection of the Presidential Couple Since World War II.

AuthorPitney, John J., Jr.

A couple of years ago, a clinical psychologist published a damning analysis of Bill Clinton's personality titled The Dysfunctional President. Now that the Clinton scandal chart has grown more tangled than an Arkansas family tree, it's easy to see that many bad character traits took root in a place called Hope. But there is more to the dysfunction on Pennsylvania Avenue than one man's tarnished soul. According to books by historian Gil Troy and political scientist Thomas S. Langston, the American public has long had a troubled relationship with residents of the White House.

I use the word residents instead of men because Troy's Affairs of State concerns first couples, not just chief executives. Anyone seeking a collection of heartwarming anecdotes should look elsewhere: This book is serious political history with a tough-minded attitude. After examining presidential marriages from the Trumans to the Clintons, Troy reaches a dour conclusion: "The experience of the last half-century suggests that the First Lady has greater potential to hurt than help."

Any first lady must struggle with conflicting demands from the voters, who want her to have an active public role but don't want her to have any real power. Whatever course she takes, she will run into criticism. When Pat Nixon played it quiet, detractors mocked her as the passive "Plastic Pat." When Rosalynn Carter openly discussed policy issues, Newsweek asked whether "Lady Macbeth" lurked "beneath the soft voice."

Some first ladies have coped with the dilemma less adeptly than others, and Betty Ford gets a particularly harsh review. Noting that she wanted a salary for her duties, Troy observes: "If Betty Ford had received a salary, she would have been docked pay for dereliction of duties. Between her osteoarthritis, her chemotherapy regime, her periodic depressions, her daily tranquilizers, and her drinking, her aides never knew if the First Lady would show up to an event - or what her mood would be." Troy speculates that her liberal social attitudes may have cost President Ford the 1976 election. Here he un-characteristically reaches too far. Mrs. Ford surely offended some Americans when she went on 60 Minutes and made tolerant remarks about premarital sex. But her impact was trivial compared with the bad things that had happened during President Ford's tenure: the Nixon pardon, the 1974 recession, and the American defeat in Vietnam.

Troy is on firmer ground when he identifies another pitfall of first couplehood: People think poorly of presidents as spouses. George Bush, the joke went, minded every woman of her first husband - and had Bob Dole won in 1996, he would have reminded every woman of her first husband's divorce lawyer. Nixon fared terribly on this point: "[W]hile his wife often made him look good, their marriage often made him look bad."...

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