IN 1968, DURING TEN days spent on the Nixon campaign plane as a political reporter for New York magazine (see the essay entitled “Campaigning”), I requested an interview with Richard Nixon, and was given Pat Nixon instead. Though the resulting article was a long one on Nixon and his staff, this brief section aroused more interest than the rest. My regret is that the impersonal style of the article didn’t allow me to say that I liked her much better after this interview than before: I thought I understood and empathized with her resentment. My deeper regret is that my attempts to make some personal and friendly connection with her just didn’t work.
From Denver, back into our three jets for a teenage rally (mostly private and parochial students) in St. Louis; then another flight to Louisville, Kentucky, for a ride on the last Mississippi riverboat in existence. The first leg of this flight yielded an interview with Pat Nixon.
She had worked her way through college, tried to be an actress, and finally become a teacher of shorthand and typing in a small California high school; married her husband with apparent reluctance after a two-year courtship at the age of twenty-eight (he had proposed on the first date), and been introduced by him during his famous Checkers speech as “a wonderful stenographer.” She had shared all the vilification and praise without ever emerging in public as an individual. I was eager to meet her, but all her other interviewers said Mrs. Nixon had put them straight to sleep.
She was sitting in the front of the plane, freckled hands neatly folded, ankles neatly crossed, and smiling a public smile as a sleek young staff man sat me next to her. I didn’t want to ask the questions she had answered so blandly and often about her husband (“I just think he’d make a wonderful president”) or politics (“You’ll have to ask Dick about that”), but to ask about herself.
Explaining my doubts about writing from clips, I asked if there were any persistent mistakes in the press that I should take care not to repeat. “No, no,” she said, smoothing her skirt. “You ladies of the press do a fine job. I think the stories have been very fine.” Did that mean she liked everything that had been written? “Well, actually, I haven’t had time to read a lot of them lately.” (Other “ladies of the press” had told me she read everything and had been annoyed by a Seattle story that made her seem a catatonic smiler.) But she liked all the stories from past campaigns? “Yes, of course; I don’t object to what’s been written. I know you do your best, and most of you have been very kind.” We went round with that a few more times. Then she was, I told her, the only person I’d ever met, including myself, who liked everything written about them. There was a flicker of annoyance behind the hazel eyes—the first sign of life.
But after painfully slow questioning, I learned only the following: No, she was never bored with campaigning, brought no books along, needed no distraction. (“I’m always interested in the rallies, they’re so different. Some are outside; some are inside. Some have old people; some have young people like the one today.”) There was nothing special she wanted to do with her influence as First Lady. (“I think a person has to just be herself.”) But she was glad she’d had so much “on-the-job training” for the entertaining she would have to do. Her only other interest was education. (“As a teacher, I agree with Dick’s education program one hundred percent. I’d like to work on job and educational opportunities for all. I don’t like this dropout system we have now.”) She was keeping a journal on her life as Mrs. Nixon for her daughters, but never used anecdotes, of course, because she might have to write down the names of real people. She liked the theater, especially My Fair Lady, and had seen Hello, Dolly! three times: twice with visitors, and once because their “family friend,” Ginger Rogers, was doing it. (“I feel there’s enough seriousness in the world without seeing it in the theater.”) She liked historical novels, especially the lives of Queen Victoria and Mary Todd Lincoln, also Thomas Wolfe’s novels, but seldom had time to read “just for entertainment,” or to go to fashion shows. (“I’m pretty selfless about things like that. I just keep busy with all our friends. Instead of a long lunch, I like to take them to a museum or the park. I find we all like that much better than just making social conversation.”) There is no Generation Gap at all in her family. (“Why only the other day, Tricia and Julie didn’t go to one of their parties. I said, ‘Aren’t you going out?’ And they said, ‘Oh, no, we’d much rather have dinner with you and Daddy.’”) The woman in history she most admires and would want to be like is Mrs. Eisenhower. Why? “Because she meant so much to young people.”
Each of these answers had required several questions. She wasn’t pleased at having to dredge around for such subjective information as what she identified with, other than daughters and husband. (She didn’t answer that one at all.) And I wasn’t overjoyed with so many bland answers. Mrs. Eisenhower was the last straw.
I was in college during the Eisenhower years, I told her, and I didn’t think Mrs. Eisenhower had any special influence on youth. “You didn’t?” Long pause. “Well, I do,” she said finally. “Young people looked up to her because she was so brave all the time her husband was away at war.” Longer pause. We eyed each other warily as I searched around for some fresh subject.
Then the dam broke. Not out of control, but low-voiced and resentful, like a long accusation, the words flowed out.
“I never had time to think about things like that—who I wanted to be, or who I admired, or to have ideas. I never had time to dream about being anyone else. I had to work. My parents died when I was a teenager, and I had to work my way through college. I drove people all the way cross-country so I could get to New York and take training as an X-ray technician so I could work my way through college. I worked in a bank while Dick was in the service. Oh, I could have sat for those months doing nothing like everybody else, but I worked in the bank and talked with people and learned about all their funny little customs. Now I have friends in all the countries of the world. I haven’t just sat back and thought of myself or my ideas or what I wanted to do. Oh, no, I’ve stayed interested in people. I’ve kept working. Right here in the plane I keep this case with me, and the minute I sit down, I write my thank-you notes. Nobody gets by without a personal note. I don’t have time to worry about who I admire or who I identify with. I’ve never had it easy. I’m not like all you … all those people who had it easy.”
The staff man had been signaling me vainly for some time. We had landed, stopped at the ramp, and I was interfering with routine. Mrs. Nixon fingered her old-fashioned diamond ring for a moment, then, public smile refixed firmly, she patted my arm. “Now I hope we see you again soon; I really do; bye now; take care,” she said, standard phrase upon standard phrase. “I’ve really enjoyed our talk. Take care!”
For the first time, I could see Mrs. Nixon’s connection with her husband: two people with great drive, and a deep suspicion that “other people had it easy”—in her phrase, “glamour boys,” “buddy-buddy boys” in his—would somehow pull gracefully ahead of them in spite of all their work. Like gate crashers at a party, they supported each other in a critical world. It must have been a very special hell for them, running against the Kennedys, as if all their deepest suspicions had been proved true.
—1968