>> c-span, created by america's cable companies 35 years ago and brought to you today as a public service by your television provider. >> booktv continues with historian will swift. mr. swift recounts the relationship between president richard nixon and his wife, pat. the author utilized recently-released correspondences between the nixons and interviewed trends and family members to examine the couple's marriage amidst richard nixon's political career and presidential tenure. this is about half an hour. >> first of all, thank you all for coming, and thank you so much to sandy and the foundation for inviting me. the book, "pat and dick," literally came out on tuesday, and this is the first talk i'm

giving on it. i wanted to say on a personal note that it is devoted and dedicated to my three wonderful grandchildren, emerson, piper and cole, and their very loving parents. and i also want to say that i'm delighted that my cousin, bill swift, and his family is here today to celebrate with us. i want to dedicate this talk to julie and trisha and ed and david who deserve to see their parents treated fairly. i think that sandy has told many me that the theme for this coming year is taking a new look at richard nixon. and that's a great context in which for me to tell you about this book, because by telling the story of richard nixon through the humanizing perspective of his wife and his marriage, his strengths are clarified, and his weaknesses are put many a new perspective. -- in a new perspective.

1948 when richard nixon was a member of the house, un-american activities committee, and he was investigating alger hiss for communism, he never dreamed that 24 years later he would be in china opening china to the west. it's extraordinary when you take a life journey, and you have a sense of adventure this your heart and curiosity and openness and follow what's emerging rather than keep to a rigid path what changes you can make. and i have a confession to make to you all today along that line. in 1969 i was a graduate student at the university of texas at austin, and what do you think i was doing? i was protesting the vietnam war and richard nixon. and on that day i had no idea that i would be here today celebrating richard nixon and his marriage. so things do change. [laughter]

you know, as a psychologist, i bring a unique perspective to this as well as a historian and a biographer because i've been working, believe it or not, i've been working doing marital therapy with couples since 1970. that's a long time. and one of the things i've always been fascinated by is long-term marriages and all that they shift and go throughment so you think of a couple in courtship they're like this, and over the period of a marriage, one person becomes interested in new, developing careers, and they move way apart. and then the other partner moves off to something else, and there's a dance and a rhythm and a relationship. and i think we see this in the nixon marriage. and i would like to maintain that too many people see the nixon marriage through the lens of watergate, and that's simply not a fair and accurate lens to see a 53-year relationship.

so i'm going to talk about three main myths that still crop up about the nixons and their marriage, and i'm going to tell you some of the things i've found. one of the things i'm not going to be able to have time to do, to tell you about the different -- the wonderful relationship with the eisenhowers which is much better than people say, but you can read that in the book. so one of the myths about richard nixon is that he was a cold or uncaring husband. and i think one of the things that i found is that he was very sentimental. in 1944 on the sixth anniversary of meeting pat, he wrote her a letter from the south pacific in which he said your birthday is today, and we are going -- i'm going to celebrate all your birthdays as a remembrance of our happiness and my love for you. and he always followed lu on that -- through on that. and i was told a wonderful story

by lucy winchester, the social secretary in the white house. in march 1969 when richard nixon was beseeminged by all the things -- besieged by all the things he had to do in the vietnam war, he called lucy into a meeting, and she had no idea what he was going to say. always a little nervous to meet the president and see what he's up to, and is he said we are going to throw a surprise birthday party for pat. and i am going to tell you in exact detail how i planned it. she is going to enter, and she's going to stand at the north end of east room, and he went through all the details, and he proceeded to get so excited that he began to sing happy birthday, and he sang the entire song, happy birthday, as if he were the band and conducting the birthday right then. ask that shows what concern and that shows what great enthusiasm he had for celebrating his wife. and interestingly enough, he didn't care much about celebrating his own birthday. is and so that was, i think, very interesting insight that i

got into him. and the other thing that i think is very important is to see some of the letters he wrote her during the war. i just want to quote a few of them, because there's a tender aspect to richard nixon's heart. and frank gannon interviewed him a number of years ago, and frank said what's written on your heart? in a split second he said, pat. there was no hesitation. this is what he wrote her at a couple points during the war. i'm certainly not the romeo type. i may not say much when i'm with you, but all of me loves all of you all the time. pat, whose nickname for her husband was plum, wrote back at 2:00 in the morning. i just had to write you to say how very much i love you. she had seen a movie, but told him i miss plum's hand very much. in 1943 he was in a quonset hut,

and he wrote her on their third anniversary, i am thinking of our years together and loving you every minute of the time. then he, thinking about his wife's wartime job in san francisco at the office of price administration, he wrote her: i'm really very proud, as i've always been. i like to tell the guys how smart you are as well as being the most attractive person they'll ever see. dearheart, you are the tops. small wonder that i have no other interest but you. and one other example. in early 1944 he wrote: dear one, what fun we could have on a farm. he wrote her, dogs, horses, snow and somebody to do work. whatever it is, whatever you do, it will be wonderful to be with you again. i love you so very, very much this minute. this is the tenderness that you don't often hear about. i want to take you back to the beginning of their courtship to give you another view on that.

and frank gannon, whose wonderful expressions, said that richard nixon was the man who thought he had no game but had won the hot girl. and that's, basically, how he thought of it all his life. so i want to read you just briefly from the book to give you a feel in january 1938 when they met where they were. the first year of their courtship was very uneven, and pat was much more grounded, and she really had a sense of happiness in her professional life. she was in her first year teaching at whittier high school, teaching business, and she really, she'd had a sense of priization and a lot of sacrifice in her family life after her parents died, and she wasn't ready to get married or involved with someone. ms. ryan was a sophisticated, modern woman, live and graceful. she wore fashionable skirts with bright blouses and sweaters that set off her luxury rant red/gold

hair and her high cheekbone withs. and she wore lavender perfume. student robert blake remembered that ms. ryan was quite a dish. you could kid around with her, virginia endicott rememberedded, but there was always that fine line you do not cross. beneath her accommodating demeanor lay a steely fortitude forged from years of hardship, toil and an unstinting effort to better herself. this is the part i love. suddenly, junior and senior boys were becoming interested in learning how to type. they were signing up for typing class. this was a first. many teenage boys in her class developed infatuations while female students developed school-girl crushes on her. young pat ryan was discovering the price of glamour in adult community. she was being wooed to the point

of harassment by her many admirers, including her students. some of the boys in her class placed a small query in the student paper asking where she lived and were able to locate her apartment. they followed her to the one stucco bungalow court where she lived on hadley street across from the bowling alley. summoning up their nerve, they knocked on her door, but they receive offed a mighty cool reception from ms. ryan who was not only intent on maintaining her professional demeanor, but prier the naturally guarded, even secretive. groups of girls staked out her apartment eager to flesh out the fantasies of her exhilarating life. one evening in the intention that would become common place in the public life of mr. richard nixon, pat returned home from a date and walked to her door in the glare of headlights fixed upon her from a car of young admirerrers. admirers. so this is what richard in nixon was competing with. and by contrast, at the

beginning of january 1939 -- '38, 25-year-old dick fix son found his native ambition blocked. he was living in a small room over his parents' garage, he did not have a girlfriend, and he was back home in the town he had tried to leave behind. after placing third in his graduating class at duke law school, he'd been disappointed with prominent east coast law firms that had turned could be his job applications. his mother, hannah, had pulled some strings to have her friend offer dick a job at whittier's most repute bl law firm. so here's nixon, and he's just beginning his career, and here's pat, and she's just having the best time. well, with his trademark persistence, he pursued her. but after six months pat, who really wanted to let him know she didn't want to get involved, what did she do? she went to michigan to buy a car, and she disappeared from his life for three months. well, he didn't like that.

so finally in september he heard she was back, and he wrote her a letter saying i'd like to see you if you could stand me. and i promise it will never be boring, and he was certainly right about that. it was never boring with his life with her. well, one of things that's a thrill for a biographer is when you have a moment where you can stand in the shoes of the person that you're writing about. and myra hilliard of the whittier historical society arranged for me to go up in the office where richard nixon worked as a young attorney. and what i was really impressed by was that he could look out window, and he could see whittier high school. and i could imagine him looking over there and dreaming of pat and yearning to see her. and i also found in looking through his daily diaries that toward the end of the year he began to make little notations at the bottom of pages that recorded her comments that were

beginning to show that she had interest. he recorded she said i'm lonesome for you one day in december. another day, i'm glad you came. and he was thrilled. and it was so important to him, he wrote these things down. richard nixon told frank gannon that he thinks he won her, finally, at the football game on new year's day at the rose bowl because their alma maters were playing. duke had been uncan defeated and unscored upon that year, and pat's usc came back at the last minute to beat them 7-3. well, this was the kind of thrilling moment that a reticent woman probably could reach over and take the hand of her determined date. and that was the moment when things began to shift. and there was a time in april a few months later when suddenly she began to write him romantic missives. she wrote to him and said why don't you come over wednesday at

six. i'll try to burn you a hamburger. [laughter] that comment, by the way, shows the wit that she has throughout her letters. have you seen the sunset? a new picture every moment. well, yes? pat. so she was beginning to have that wonderful feeling. and he pursued her, and one of the things he did -- and this is trademark richard if nixon -- he couldn't stand ice skating, he couldn't ice skate for his life, but what did he do? he practiced, and he bloodied himself falling down on the ice repeatedly, but he was determined he was going to be able to go out and ice skate with her and her friends. and he did. well, eventually, with this persistence she began to to see what a wonderful sense of adventure he had. she always admired his brilliant mind, and he transmitted to her that he had a high sense of purpose. and this was very important to her. and one of the things we don't really think about as much with pat is a sense of purpose as

important to her as it was to richard nixon and was one of the reasons they got together. so they were married in 1940 after he proposed on the most romantic cliff overlooking the pacific ocean, and it was right, like, literally the day before the nazis came up the champs-élysees and took over paris. so it was a very difficult time. so that's to give you a feel for the courtship. now, a second myth about pat is that she was a weak or passive person compared to her husband, and this is decidedly not true. one of my, the goals of my book is really to restore her to her full place as richard nixon's teammate and partner. ..

and until they won a primary and got endorsement of "los angeles times" they have no money. but they were absolutely determined. pat was the campaign manager. she went out, she ran doorbells, got volunteers and she was very cheery and she told the "saturday evening post," when people would come in and said we want to support you, we don't have any money but here's half a dollar, here's 1 dollar. so she was the backbone because there were many discouraging moments for richard nixon. you sometimes despair and she was always there with optimism. nixon of course performed brilliantly in the debates before, i think he said the

phrase was ready for me, but i was not ready for the fray. when they finally won the election on november 1946, richard nixon wrote in his memoir, we were happier on that day than we ever were at any other time in our political life. and once again i went to his state vote. what do they see scrawled in huge letters, victory. it meant so much to him. pat in 1948 backed off because she now had julie. while he was investigating, he went through a very difficult time trying to make these decisions. edith gelles time sleeping. by his own admission he was miserable to live with, but she supported him all the way and helped him through the. in 1950 when he ran for the senate, they drove all over california in a wood paneled station wagon. she passed out 65,000 symbols saying safeguard america.

and, of course, the most memorable which many of you probably know about is the fund scandal crisis, where eisenhower picked him as the vice presidential couple. they presidential couple. they're starting their campaign in pomona and they're going to take nixon's special train up the ghost and they were very excited. and as they went along and to train which had no outside communication they would stop at a particular town and only then could they go to the phone and find out and they began to hear that the "new york post" that charged them with having a wealthy slush fund and to be unethical and, of course, the main thing in his campaign was going against the corruption of the truman administration. this was devastating. it was such a jittery thing. is almost and oppressive think at every stop the news got worse, more and more newspapers were decrying nixon calling for him to resign and get off the

ticket. one night at 2 a.m. in medford, oregon, he woke pat up and said, i think i should resign. and she said to him, you cannot resign. eisenhower will lose. a few runaway you will be scarred for the rest of your life, and you will destroy yourself. he said, okay. i guess i'll continue to campaign. then there was a famous moment when, after he decided to address on national television the american audience to make his case, he had been preparing feverishly for 48 hours, completely exhausted, and just before he went up on stage at the theater to be filled, he said i don't think i can do it. what did pat say? yes, you can. she grabbed his hand and took him up to the stage. while she sat there listening, she said herself that she sat like a? like figure because she was so afraid that she would lose

control and be emotional. she knew the camera was on her. said this was the beginning of what this rigid control that she had to have during this time, the beginning of what people started to call plastic pat. nixon's response was, her plastic is tougher than the toughest stupidity always thought of her as the stronger partner and his backbone, and it meant so much to him. they went through that there is crises of their lives. the caracas winner almost killed in their limousines were turned over. in the last year in the white house, in the first years in the casa pacifica in retirement where they both had illnesses that almost killed him. she was always there for him. so this idea that she was not a strong partner, and there's one anecdote i love. they were in africa in 1957 representing eisenhower. she was in -- the temperature

was over 100 degrees. she was in a stinking market, almost intolerable conditions. and suddenly she was presented with this big, ugly fish i. attrition was that the guest ate it. so she just plopped it in her mouth, swallowed it down without even flinching and the general was with her for the first time said, what's going on? she said, this is just the way we do it. it was quite a bit of strength of there. the final met someone to talk about is the myth they had a miserable marriage. in fact, five years ago in boston i was going to switch agents and i said i would like to do the nixon marriage. she said that's a dreadful story. you shouldn't do that at all. that's the last thing you should do. but it didn't give up and i found a great agent who said it's a wonderful story. so in our american culture we really celebrate extroverts. we foster public displays of

affections and encourage the idea that if a relationship us go through difficult times you can give up on it. so in this context, of course the american public have a difficult time understanding the spacious, independent, private and committed relationship the nixon's have. i don't mean to glorify their relationship, they went through dark times like any other couple. they drove each other crazy at times. they had many times that were typical, 1948, 1960 when he lost the election to kennedy. 1962 when pat did not want the nixon to run for governor of california and, of course, the last period in watergate. so like any other marriage come into the long-term marriage there was ambivalence, resentment, but this was par for the course. one of the things you should all do to get a chance is read pat's letters to her dear friend. they are you get a distinct sense of her personality. she wrote once, i love your

letters. i just light up, i light up, sit back and devour. and like many women who would share with their friends, she would complain about richard nixon, about how he just didn't like to mow the lawn. she in fact said, he said he is going to do it next week. i'll telegraph you when it happens. she said, i got -- another letter. i got him to mow the lawn. guess what? he's been complaining of sore hands ever since. he didn't really like to do those chores. she said, if anyone has to be driven in this household, it's me that does the nail driving. there were times she was very lonely. he was off on the road a lot but she wrote, i am alone, saturday night and alone again, but i am accustomed to it now. the fact is that pat, by nature of her personality and upbringing, was a very independent woman. she was able to have that sense

of distance at times and tolerate it in a way that many otherwise would not have been able to. tolstoy said it is not so much a lack of compatibility that makes a good, a happy marriage, but it's the ability to deal with incompatibility. and i think that's a crucial fact that people miss when they talk about the nixon marriage. they were incompatibilities. we all know pat didn't love politics the way dick did but they found very creative ways of managing that. and i think one of the things that we don't give enough credit to and focus on is the extraordinary period in the vice presidency when they traveled the world representing eisenhower. the press called pat a phenomenon of our time, a diplomat in high heels. she found a way, and this is a get another very important

point, while he was accessing the communist influence in different parts of the far east and he was reporting eisenhower what was going on and connecting, she found a role in supporting women. this is a very important thing in life that i don't think has been acknowledged enough, where she would go. she was a like eleanor roosevelt who gave all these lectures about human rights and women's rights. she did it by personal example, by getting women invited to events they have never been invited to all over the far east. by meeting them and encouraging them, go into that there's places where they were and helping them. she did this all the time. this was her way of taking politics and making it hurts. richard and pat nixon believed for a much in the american mission, divinely ordained, to be examples of justice and freedom throughout the world, and help people to recognize that they can of liberty and democracy. this purpose was very, very

ingrained in them. finally, i would say that one of the myths is that richard nixon's public treatment of his wife in the white house years was reflection of their private relationship. people often comment on the fact that when they were out in public doing political events he would be off here, she would be off there. people wanted a couple to be holding hands and be like this. that's not how they operate. richard nixon saw the political arena as an arena, and he was not interested invulnerability or showing intimacy. he was interested, and pat was, too, in the publishing what they had to accomplish. there were times when the secret service agents wondered, why did they not talk to each other on the helicopter? why did they go for walks and seem not to talk? richard nixon debate very strongly that there was emotional, chemical, almost

mystical aspect to a relationship that could be felt deeply between the two partners, even if they weren't talking. i think that's a very important explanation of what's going on. people who are close to them saw them as playful with each other. they nag each other. they joked around. the president was given -- drove pat crazy because nixon and let the dog to get on the fringe and pat, just drove her crazy busy daughters on the furniture. on the other hand, pat was not always prompt. the famous incident at san clemente where nixon was releasing tapping his foot because pat was running late. so they were a normal couple in many ways. and we come to the white house years, and every presidential couple struggles because there's a battle between the west wing people who represent the president and the east wing women who represent the first lady.

that conflict is played out and it's amazing that none of our presidential couples have been divorced because the pressures are intense. and sometimes richard nixon drove pat crazy. she like to be involved in every aspect, including state dinner, putting tremendous got everything down to the entertainment and the menus and, of course, she under people wanted to do it themselves. the other thing that impressed me and i was very touched by is how protected richard nixon was of pat and the white house years. the articles in the papers claiming she was a failed as a first lady, a very traditional and even complaining that she was seen stuffing envelopes. he would gather in the personal and sick now we've got to put out press releases saying all the wonderful things she's done for underprivileged people. she had such an amazing career. 1969 when nixon's were about to go on a tour of europe, there was an article in "the new york

times," very famous article in which the columnist stated that the nixon marriage is dry as dust. well, pat and dick worked together to do documentaries to counter these kinds of accusations in the press and is a documentary that was made of this trip called mrs. nixon's journey, showing are going to orphanages and showing how coldhearted and engaged she was with other people. and when it was played on television, richard nixon stamped his fist on the table and said, that's right, that's right, that's who you are, that's how they have to see. and pat called nancy to tell her how thrilled he was to see her in that way. as the white coaches went on, pat developed her own independent role as first lady. nixon center to peru for the first time, first lady went on a humanitarian mission to of people who had an earthquake

there. she showed the first lady of the peru how to get -- comfort people. in 1972 she went out on her own trip to africa and she was the first first lady to represent a president at an official inauguration, the president of liberia. she discussed policy with a number of heads of state. so she was emerging. one of the tragedies of watergate is that pat nixon was emerging as high level diplomat. i think she could have been like jean kennedy smith, and ambassador to the country had not the watergate crisis happened. now i just want to talk a little bit about the end of their lives. pat came down with lung cancer in the 1990s. nixon was devastated. but monica, foreign policy assistant said, he wasn't able to finish sentences. he walked along aimlessly in