Checking out presidential spouses

Having been wed to two reasonably prominent, if not presidential, men (first ABC’s Peter Jennings and now former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke) Kati Marton, a one-time radio journalist herself, does seem well-placed to give a keen eye to the spouses of our presidents, Wilson to the second Bush.

Meticulously, Ms. Marton works her way through these marriages, tracking each spouse from childhood to White House. The book which rather gives away her raison d’etre for writing it is “Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our Recent History,” published by Pantheon (414 pages). We’re into power-behind-the-throne land here.

Not all presidential wives had the tact and admirable common, down-to-earth sense of Barbara Bush who once wrote, “I’m not too sure the American public likes the spouse to be too front and center. “A spouse has a fine row to hoe. Dennis Thatcher played it just right, in my eyes. He was supportive of Margaret always, yet had a life of his own.”

According to their friend, Canadian former-Prime Minister Brian Mulrooney, the Bushes have a more modern marriage than that of the Reagans. “Nancy and Ron lived for each other. The Reagans were interested in their family only insofar as it enhanced their relationship. Bar and George lived for their family. They were much less emotionally dependent on each other. Each was self-sufficient, each lived his own life separately. Ron and Nancy lived one life.”

The comparison between the Bush couple and the one that preceded them in the White House is quite vivid. Mrs. Bush never publicly put down Nancy Reagan, allowing herself at most an occasional remark like, “She and I are not alike and you can’t compare apples and oranges.”

Their styles were obviously very different. Ms. Marton quotes a staffer who had worked in both administrations who noted “The difference between Barbara and Nancy was that people knew Nancy would go to Mike Deaver or Jim Baker if she were upset about something. If Mrs. Bush felt strongly, we knew she would go directly to her husband. We would hear from the president, ‘Bar is really unhappy about …’ or ‘Bar says we ought …'” When asked about Nancy’s use of aides to bring pressure on President Reagan, Barbara tartly replied, “We do things differently. I have always been able to go through George.”

If Ms. Marton gets in a bit of the needle now and again on Nancy Reagan or Hillary Rodham Clinton, she does endeavor whenever possible to give credit for where she sees a definite wifely influence on policy. She credits Nancy on a bitter cold Geneva morning in November 1985 setting the scene for the hatless, coatless, smiling, 74-year-old American president who grabbed the hand of the 54-year-old Soviet leader in heavy overcoat, muffler and fedora, and led him inside. Without having uttered a single word, Nancy and spouse had the image they wanted beamed around the world and into the history books. Nancy had chosen the perfect location for the historic Soviet-American facedown – a cozy lakeside cottage with a roaring fire – the perfect setting for Reagan’s style of homespun diplomacy.

On the other hand, Ms. Marton has the hardest time working the late Mrs. Kennedy Onassis into having any impact on the national or international scene, although she gives her points for being able to chat up General De Gaulle in French on a presidential visit to France. The general clearly got her number though, as not long after the Kennedy assassination and funeral, when Culture Minister Andre Malraux spoke sadly of her future, the general retorted, “I wouldn’t worry. She’ll wind up on some rich man’s yacht.” Talk of prescience.

The book is chock full of anecdotal as well as insightful information on these wives and husbands so different and so powerful in the world’s eyes – the husbands that is. The one wife who truly stands apart and above all the rest however is Edith Wilson, who, when Woodrow Wilson suffered a crippling stroke, made up her mind to carry on so no one would know his real condition. She wrote in her memoir, “I felt that life would never be the same, that something had broken inside me; and from that hour on I would have to wear a mask – not only to the public but to the one I loved best in the world; for he must never know how ill he was, and I must carry on.” And carry on, she did. Neither the country nor Congress, nor even his Cabinet knew his real condition. Edith decided on the national agenda on her own”

Wilson once asked his doctor, the only other person to be aware of the president’s condition, “I’ve been thinking over this matter of resigning and letting the vice president take my place. It is clear I should do this if I have not the strength to fill the office.” But Wilson never brought the subject up again, and Edith controlled all access to him.

Ultimately well meaning, and competent though Edith Wilson was, she could not follow nor convince people to her husband’s position on America joining the League of Nations. Without the support of the most powerful country, the League of Nations was powerless to block Germany, Italy and Japan as they moved toward another world war. Wilson might just have gotten America to join, but in his condition, and with Edith’s limitations, there was no way. He died in 1924. The last word he uttered was, fittingly, “Edith.”

As for the present occupants of the White House: George W. Bush gets high points as being a better husband than Roosevelt, Johnson or Clinton. As for Laura Bush, Ms. Marton reckons she will be liked, “for she is truly just what she claims to be: a traditional wife and mother, a White House anomaly in this or any other time.”

My query: How many traditional wives and mothers in the White House find Doestoyesky’s “Brothers Karamazov” their favorite book? There’s some hidden depth in that lady.