now, may the lord bless you and keep you the lord his face shine upon you and gracious to you, the lord lift up his countenance upon you and give peace. as we depart this place, but never from his presence. it is in jesus name that pray and let all god's children say amen and. we julius heatley in the brownish colored dress she has written the biography that is for sale tonight the mysterious mrs. nixon so that'll be a lot

of fun to hear. but we got lucky we also got in the dark blue black suit julia sweig, who has written a biography of lady bird johnson hiding in plain sight. and now for rebecca. rebecca been here before in spokane and. she's fantastic. she is an award winning educator, author and speaker and her latest book, which she spoke about at the club. and if y'all it. well, it's your fault because it was fantastic and the book is fantastic is power the fascinating and complex legacy. first lady lady. it is wilson. and with that, going to let rebecca the come up and she the moderator of today's tonight's and will be introducing the speakers in greater detail.

so thank you. thank you so much for being here and thank all of you for being here. i truly appreciate. thank you all so much for having me. you know, edith wilson, the leader of the board, governors of the women's national democratic at one time. so i feel right at home here. and in fact, my lindy boggs was chair of the club for a time and my parents had their rehearsal dinner here in 1966. so there you go. i am delighted number myself among these first lady ladies. we actually do often know each other or at least know of each other and support each other. heath was extraordinarily

generous when i was writing the book, edith. i have had such a wonderful to meet julia and. i adore her book and was happy to. feature it in a feature in the wall street journal about the best books about first ladies and the reason we support and like each other is because we find that have more in common than not. and regardless of what era or personality or political party we're writing about these women in the white house share a huge amount and looking these three different books. it's obvious why right? untold power hiding in plain sight. the mysterious mrs. nixon. right. we all write about stories that have either been obscured or downplayed or hidden forgotten often the women themselves.

and i don't think when any of us wrote these books, we expected that when we did gather here on stage together we would inside of two months of an election where we might actually elect the first woman president. but she. but regardless of how you vote, i think we all are happy to live in a time when women who wield political power don't have to spend quite so much time pretending they. and the pretending they don't part is much of pat nixon ladybird story to. but tonight is about heath and her brand new book, which i enjoyed immensely. and i know you all will too and i can't wait. hear julia sweig interview her because those are two awfully smart, accomplished women and i think we're all in for a treat. so, heath li and julia sweig, thank you so much.

hello, everyone. good evening and thank you very much for joining us. heath, congratulations. i'm so honored to be here with you and rebecca. what a beautifully eloquent way of weaving these three topics and our themes together. i am going to speak with heath for about. 30 minutes. if if we've run out of things to talk. i'll kick it open sooner for q&a and get all of your input and for heath, too. i going to start by by sharing with you heath and all of you

that often. and i'm sure you do this too. when get to read a new book. i kind of like to read it from back to front, meaning i'm. i'm an archive geek and i love digging the source material that a writer uses to weave her story. this became very much the case in my previous books, but for the ladybird book, my source material was ladybirds house diary, her own tips and that has me really interested to talk first with you. before we into the story of the mist the of pattern the mysterious and your attraction to this if you could just kind of zero in maybe heath on kind of the most surprising source material that you came to in in telling your story.

oh gosh yeah. like you i'm an archive psychic. i love being there. the gems and the treasures that you find or amazing. so source material that would surprise zing. i think one thing that people often your oral histories and unlike you miss julia i was so i got to say of this tape. pat was very careful not to leave too many of herself which is you know good for her to keep her privacy. not so good for biographers. so oral histories for me became really the first way in. and these are the people who knew her when she was a child. some of those were my favorite so let's it was csu fullerton had amazing ones whittier college and these were people knew pat before or all of her

tumultuous life and so they knew her character they knew what she was like as a child as a teenager and then as a college student. so those were were very helpful. and then probably favorite source material were letters between pat helene. yes. so mean helene is tell tell the audience who helene was. so drowned is pat's friend for a good deal of her life. they meet when they worked together on the whittier pep squad. that whittier high school pep squad. not as cheerleaders, by the way. but as the pep squad, sort of the teachers who are leading this. they become dear friends and helene is sort of the polar opposite of pat. she's very vivacious out there, very extroverted. but she brings out the real pat. you know, the unguarded moments. what what she thinking?

funny things say together and helene drowns daughter maureen nyhan told me those letters literally almost threw them away because she was cleaning her house out and was, oh, my gosh, she's going to want these. so thank god her has maureen's john said you've got save these you've got to give them to the nixon. and that was really my best window in because pat famously did not really keep a diary. other than some travel journals. she didn't keep a real diary. nothing like bird had. so there a lot of going peripheral i tend to do in all my books women's history. so often isn't written down as rebecca is hidden, is minimized is neglected. so i'm pretty to going peripheral. so that was too hard to do going peripheral and you know t shirt so let's say let's go 30,000 feet now that we've been in the granule and go up for a minute

why did you choose this as your topic? how did you get to pat nixon? tell a little bit about your your landing on this decision. what drew you to pat nixon, right. well, i was just talking with sheila judith a little bit earlier that same question. so i did my previous book at the league of wives was about the p.o.w. and my wives, who worked to get their husbands out of the hanoi hilton. so that happened under johnson administration. and then the nixon. excellent book, you barry untold. well. thank you. well, i loved doing that book and meeting these women and. those women after i met those women, got to know those women. i thought with pat nixon, i didn't know at all. didn't have any. i'm 54, so i didn't really remember the nixons or any of that. but i thought, know who this woman is, because i knew the

p.o.w. wives so well, their women of that same era, they're sort of caught between the fifties and that, the eisenhower era and then the burning, you know, sixties in the seventies. and mrs. nixon felt like somebody i could get to know and could understand because had had that experience with, the p.o.w. wives and then i saw her in all these photos with p.o.w. wives interacting, hugging them, being very warm with them. and i thought, well, why is plastic pat? that was the other i always had heard but didn't really understand. so i like a challenge and i like a mystery. so she was mysterious to me and enigmatic. and that always makes you want to know more plastic pat where what is the origin of that misnomer plus -- pat. well, that goes you know i think it goes way back to when mrs. nixon was always very much

worked with her husband as a team, the patent -- team there buttons that say this all their early career and she would go to every speech every rally in those early days really up until i would say about 1960 till the end of that election and she would look up at him and pay attention and you know, look really interested which really hard to do. and frankly should have gotten a lot of credit for that because heard the speeches are exactly wasn't interesting. i'm sure was fascinating. i mean, let's think about all our husbands when they give us speeches. i don't know if that happens to you, but happens to me and gazing adoringly up is very difficult. sometimes so. so nixon managed to do this consistently in all the time, but she gets dinged that, you know, she gets dinged for being too perfect. interesting because she comes out you know the 1970s is is the

peak of second wave feminism. yes the national organization of women had only come together a few earlier. so she's scrutinized through a very different lens than. ladybird was even a couple of years. yes, she could have been plastic ladybird. you know, if she had just been in the white a couple more years. so we didn't see an interest. yes. i mean, i think the filter through what she pat was was seen had shifted pretty substantially. just in a couple of years. completely. i mean. and that and to be dropped the middle of that, you know when you're born in 1912 but you were first lady in the seventh rose. i imagine having to between that. and then, of course, you know what you dealing with in the west wing which some of us like sheila have have dealt with some of that before or, you know, dealing with of the outdated

attitudes among the men that ran that, but wanting, you know, also being a more conservative, more conservative and traditional in some ways, she a feminist, but very right. and we're let well, you've you've the door so let's talk about the women thing but if i can put a pin on it the women thing we're in the national women's democratic club and i just thought it the women thing but we get forgive me i've know but i want to go to pat and -- and forgive me again for hearing this story a little bit through. the one that i just finished telling in the lady and lyndon one. talk to me a little about a little bit about their relationship. yes. because i guess it's important to understand or have. what is the feeling you come away with? what is the sense of where the tensions were, the collaboration was how did ebb and flow over

the course of their political career together. right. i think that's something that needs be discussed and understood better. the narrative, of course, is that the had a loveless marriage and they estranged, estranged various points. so when you really look at the archives and look at the letters, the world, two letters i looked at just me away and the courting -- nixon is so smitten with this. i mean, i felt sorry for him because she's like, oh, hi ho, i'm busy tonight, i can't see you. and i'm going away for three months. i'll see you when i get back. and he's just pursuing her. just you really pursuing her. and she will sort of ditch him, not be around, but over. she also falls in love with him. this is she sees something there. he's he's persistent and they both want to get out of this

small quaker town of whittier, where they're both really bored and would like to. i she might have wanted to get away from her like you know that whole thing hannah and his could you know, be a little overbearing. so i think they both wanted out. they wanted to be in a bigger world. they wanted to be doing important things. and they're both very patriarch. so they they eventually she becomes smitten with him. and when she is committed. she is committed for life and is very very loyal in the extreme. so, you know, stand by your man the entire time. so but i think that the idea marriage was loveless is incorrect. i've seen so many letters between them. i think all marriages it has its ups and downs. and remember, this is on a national, international scale. i mean, gosh, if all our marriages put on reality television all these years, i mean, imagine it's that's that's

pretty tough quiet. so now let's come back to the woman thing. you make a very strong case in book that while not saying she was a feminist, she had very clear views which she sought to project internally and publicly about women's rights. talk about, please. indeed, yes and she is is not a feminist and second wave since. but remember comes from out west women get the vote earlier than their eastern do. there's a diy frontier ethic where you just it and you get it done and was sort of her theory too i think women women's rights and women in all kinds of she fully supported the era she supported and by the way that was on the republican platform first before the democratic

platform starting in 1940 and all the way until 80. and i won't talk about what happened after that, but it does dream. yes. well, that's another president that we won't talk about today. but but yes, the era very strongly supportive of that women's reproductive rights. the first first lady to use the word abortion in public and supports a woman's right to choose. so that is before roe versus wade. that's that's pretty amazing. she didn't a lot publicly on policy but that was one area the area was supreme court so she really really wanted a woman for the supreme court and she pushed her husband very hard to do that and was very disappointed when it did not happen. now hope there are no lawyers in here if are i'm sorry in advance lawyers but the aba really messed that one up so that was

them being know of of the time being very sexist saying women were too emotional to be on the court things like so the white house vetting its potential nominees to the court with aba. yes the aba was coming back and rejecting not potential nominees who were vastly experienced exactly and they were women or were african american women and white. yes. yes. and that case is so interesting. julie lafont hunt, who was a black lawyer, first female lawyer to graduate from the university of chicago and was an amazing, amazing person. and nixon, 1969, wanted her for the supreme court. i dug up some papers again in the archival gems. everyone had forgotten about drew fontaine, who became his deputy solicitor. she was one of the highest ranking women in the nixon

administration. and again, these stories we forget or we never knew. i had never heard of her. so i thought that was amazing. so pat was supporting the scenes women of any color. we just want a woman on the court who is qualified as jewel. certainly as mildred lilly, certainly. but what happened with the aba is? the names were leaked and. so that is what happened. and they quashed mildred lilly before that got anywhere. and then with jewel did not progress for other reasons, but he later names her deputy solicitor general. so there's of that and then i can't neglect barbara franklin barbara franklin, who actually had dinner with night, who's an amazing person and later worked president bush, but started under president nixon as a staff assistant to the president. she was a harvard mba.

she tasked with getting more women in higher levels of government. and under johnson, you will probably know the exact number of women mid to high levels. i did some research and i think he had several hundred that were women in mid to high government positions. when nixon comes in with barbara franklin assisting he by 7080 there a thousand women in those positions that is a major data and that's a point that i don't anybody has ever ever really found or talked about since eleanor roosevelt chaired under jfk, the commission on women, and made recommendations. it was yes, it was. the report came out shortly, the assassination 61 year. so a little less a little before. so it's really the better course of a decade, right right, to filter in right. it was nixon's embrace, for lack of a better word, of women in

the workforce. women on the court era. where did that come from? right. well, i think a couple of i was talking about he and his mother, he was a very strong model. i'll mirror milhouse, his grandmother. he's a quaker. this is a quaker family in the quaker, women are completely equal men. and so are seen that way as teachers. you know, lead the sunday school classes are really community leaders always treated a lot more equally than in some other religion and so he had that role model these two strong women also women republican women were the backbone of the party did a lot of the what another scholar i love this phrase katherine ruth is her name calls the housekeeping of i think that's such a great phrase all the stuff the men don't want do we get to do right so it's the you

know door to door coffee is you know, all of these to get people to get out and food and so in that situation i think he saw that these women were the backbone of his voting bloc and he was smart mean that's how you appeal you okay so i'm going to do you know you're going to work for me then obviously i need to do something for you. it's partially political. i think it's also role models growing up. and then, of course, pat and the two daughters who he adores and i think he saw them and thought, okay i need to do something. let's you have an image behind you and the caption is clearly pat in peru. yes, 70,000 peruvians died in that earthquake and you make a case in your book that with her

diplomacy in peru and her diplomacy in and china that she was important to richard nixon's foreign policy. yes. has just been that out a little bit. want you all to buy the book and, read it. so don't give away the whole story. but if you could write it, you know, just kind of the picture a little bit to, why you you emphasize this in your story of pat. yes. well i mean, i think starting really as second lady, she goes all over the world with, her husband on these diplomatic trips, eisenhower, once nixon, his vp, to take the temperature of various countries, the world. and he says, take pat. he identifies her. actually, eisenhower is the talent scout that finds he sees her and. he's like, that woman gets it.

she's good with people. one on one. she can talk to anyone and she's warm. she's a track dev. she's kind of the whole package, highly intelligent, studied her briefing books like no one else. so it starts then and they go all the world on these missions. ike always says, take pat, then as first lady. as you see up here, we peru. and i think peru the beginning of this when she really starts to come into her own as diplomat and as a first as a solid diplomat. so this is may of 1970. there's horrible earthquake, as she mentioned, 70,000 peruvians died. it was a tragedy and it was one of the first televised global tragedies. so everyone watching this and, pat, saw that and said, --, i have to do something, need to go help wonder. awful humanitarian impulse. so he says, great.

and her as his solar global ambassador to peru two planeloads of medical supplies all kinds of things. and then she's here on the by the way, in fabulous heels, an aqua seer which i would really love the boots and the money and the boots. okay. i mean, the sunglasses are here and she's really skinny there. she well, she never ate much. we were talking that before. she didn't was lh banana julie her daughter told me it was baked potatoes bananas, chocolate and, the famous cottage cheese. my son was little so she had an interesting diet. but she goes to peru as a solo global ambassador. she next to africa and is in ghana is the first first lady to speak to a foreign which no one really knows and does a number of other global ambassador

trips. then to your other point, china in 1972, this is a huge deal. president nixon with the help henry kissinger, they kind of help reestablish relations between communist china and our country. pat, by the way, has to fight to go on this trip, she says, i'm putting my name on the list because haldeman, the chief of staff, who i'm sure we'll talk about, did not really want pat to go or anywhere in to go on this trip. and pat as she does forcefully with haldeman now and then says, i will be going on this trip. and she goes and she is a huge hit with her panda diplomacy. so we talked about this earlier. so in one of the many dinners, the 12 course dinners they have with sal and ly, the chinese premier, she sees a tin of a cylindrical painted tin cigarets that has pandas on it.

and she says, oh, i love meaning the pandas. and he says the premier says, well give you some. and she thought he meant just cigarets, but he means a pair of pandas. real pair of pandas smoke it. yes, she did like her cigarets. but she said i would love to the pandas. and then we give chinese musk oxen. that's not a very interesting choice. i would have said no to that. but anyway, that's what they so. and the pandas if you'll just came back to san diego in and i heard you're getting some here soon, right? we are hearing they're coming back needs those pandas mean that drives the visitors so they are profitable but they're a barometer of our and this is all pat nixon and also she is the face the nixon administration during that trip wearing that bright red some of you might

remember a symbol of good in china. but i think brought some good luck to the entourage as well. so i want to talk before we bring the audience in, kind of try to. so there's we're creeping up against the matter of and rebecca introduced us really which is how do you assess her power how did she exert it? did she i mean i'm i learned a lot about pat the person and the difficulty of being to him and being in the public. and i but i want you to just sort of say where you landed. is this woman a powerful? first lady? is whether her complexities were where do you land? and how much she did or didn't shape richard nixon and presidency. well, i think it's you soft

power for the most part as we've talked about. i think it's soft power can be very powerful. so the two big legacies i think of hers, which we've touched upon, are working for women behind scenes, not wanting credit and. then international diplomacy. then there are other things that are more traditionally female, such as bringing more art and antiques into white house than any other. jackie, of course, did such a good job. jacqueline kennedy starting that program. but mrs. nixon is a first lady. even now that did the most for that and renovate did all kinds of things made. the white house also accessible for the disabled. that's something else i talk about a lot in the book for. the blind and the deaf was way of her time in these areas. the supreme court, abortion, all things. but i think they did have a very

traditional marriage and there were sort of the spheres of influence and of there's the east wing and the west that we will talk about. and some of this is also due not just to richard nixon, who i think was very focused on. he was a very complex person, obviously complicated, but he was sequential. so he goes about someone, a good another historian had a good quote, pat and richard nixon. he went about winning her way. he went about winning election fights. so he's very single minded. right. he pursued views, these things. he goes for these things 100%. and then he goes to the next thing, which, you know, i think is true of some men, women, that's how they operate. so i think when they get to the white house he is thinking about china russia and these things he's going to do. mrs. nixon meanwhile is used to

running her own show. she's a western woman. she knows what she's doing. remember, been in politics for decades and she can really run circles around some of these little west wing aides that try to tell her what to do. let's talk about the east wing west wing dynamic. it's notable to me and you'll about it that you know when ladybird and lyndon came into the white house, what they did is the east wing really became part the west wing's political operation. those had liz carpenter as their liaison. she came from the texas crowd. they had known her for many years. she was ladybird chief of staff of before that worked for the vice president and she knit together pretty quickly at the end of the day because of her relationship with each of them a very tight knit political operation that spanned the east wing and the west nixon in and

blows up. how does that what does look like and does it ever does the east wing ever become part of the west wing's political operation? and i'm teeing up a discussion of watergate in case you didn't notice. yes, yes, no. and that's it's to you, liz carpenter. of course i will say lbj, of course was very supportive of lady bird and they had that good relationship. and i think carpenter did a lot to bring things together. so when nixon comes in so delegated this to haldeman, to bob haldeman, chief of staff, to john erlichman, who is his domestic counsel and domestic advisor, later, unfortunately, the germans as some of you might remember, them they were labeled in the media as huns, and france was another one i liked a lot. i mean there were so many the pretorian guard for saturday night live's horns and from oh yeah, that was before saturday

live. so yes, there's other saturday night live we need to talk about, but that is before that so they isolate, think and minimize and sideline and the women of the east. why did they do that? because -- wants them to know. i think again, he in my reading again, i think he is single. he has one track. he is on the presidency and details. he wants to leave to other people on the side. pat wants to do it herself. she's taking care of this forever. she never complains, and she never says anything to her husband about it now i think lyndon and ladybird for instance, as you know better than i, they talked a lot. there was a lot of back and forth. i don't think that was the case. they're very separate spheres. and pat was running her show and he was running his and unfortunately, the very people

were picked to try to then put the east wing under the west wing at certain points again, the archives are so beautiful because there was this report where erlichman tries to put the east wing correspondents, the west wing, and then they try to put a west wing person. mrs. nixon's chief of staff. now, at that time, she said, -- i will not have a male chief of staff. and that was the end of that. that was the whole conversation. so i it was you had two very strong people running on their tracks with, different staffs and the east and the west wings are often, you know, battle together of the attitudes in the west. but also there was also feeling in the west wing that if mrs. nixon had good publicity, it would not be good for the president. and pat was such a great asset that that was and these guys, so many are from madison avenue. so that makes no sense.

she really was one of his best political asset, perennially popular, even when watergate comes, she retains that popularity with people. so with watergate, you talked many times while writing this book and in preparing for tonight and the watergate is you know, it's it's it's unavoidable. so we're going to talk about, of course, and one of the things that i will talk about is the way in which during the watergate period, pat's reputation was sullied or. there was an attempt to sell it. you will come to that. that's media story. but i think it a deeper level. i'd like to ask because in reading your book, i have the strong impression that pat is

relentlessly me a true believer in nixon to the very that she does not really countenance the idea that he could have been involved in committing any crime right. right she's in denial. like where was she living how was it she shrouded that out. well and, that's a fair question. i think it yes. of course the media is, you know all around now. she is a true believer. she does not think he's done anything wrong and. remember, when the tapes come out, she says to burn the tapes burn the tapes much her source material right so i mean she thinks she thinks it's nonsense like the whole thing. and remember, though, all these battles they've been through, some of which are very unfair, the fund crisis in 53, the checkers speech where he's accused of having this secret slush fund and that is

completely not true. of course, he goes on television refutes it with help. and pat says, have to do it when he says, i can't do it, he says she says have to. for our you've got to do it. i think she was a true believer i think she thought this was just usual stuff that you know, she seen on both sides and 1960s. another example this when he loses to kennedy which i think you know there are some indications, some historians think maybe it was stalin, it was a very close race. so there's that and pat always thought that the had stolen that election so i think hurt while it may seem hard to understate and if you're looking at now you've got to look back and look at all these things she had seen all these different on both sides, dirty tricks going on and how completely done she was with

with all of it. add to that the fact she is completely isolated by the germans as are the girls, they literally know nothing about the extent this about how far this has gone. so they just are shocked and i think it is very legitimate and authentic because they've been so sort of shoved out of the way by these guys who have enabled some of these things to happen. so getting she's getting, on the one hand isolated and she already has this history of believing her husband's subject to unfair unfairness and dirty through his political career. right internally and then externally. what's happening with the press let's talk about. yes, the the the i remind me there's when is the article published. oh, the final days or oh so it's

in final days. yes. the story of woodward's treatment of pat nixon. yes. yes. she's still by the book. but tell the story. i will tell you the and also of your interview with, bob woodward. oh, yes. yes. that was that was fun. so yes. the final some of you might remember, it was published in 1976. so this is after the resignation. nixon resigns 74. so is published a couple of years later. and in the book there are the are things like and i'm speaking specifically about the reporting on pat nixon and not contesting or getting into their other reports, but specifically on pat nixon, they say that she was stumbling around the white house at night with a tumbler of bourbon know awkwardly hiding her tumbler of bourbon on the rocks from this and that she was and she was never seen.

so to break those two things down, i decided i interview literally every person possibly could. i mean, scores of people, of course, family and staff, but also people, air force pilots, nannies, babysitters, people who were outside, you know, that knew her later, that were, you know, in the white house as other staffers. i think you'll see from my footnotes very thorough. so i did interview everyone possible and not one person, not one said they had ever observed such behavior. i also asked the in law's again about all these years later and they both you can read in the book what they said the same thing. this is ridiculous. this is not true at all. now, in terms of being recluse the easy thing to look out is white house records against the archives are so great for these kinds things. you definitely did your homework.

i mean, you got to do you know, you did, too. i mean, it's not hard. facts are good things and there are facts and data that say she was out outward facing, doing outward facing until three weeks before he resigned. and the last three weeks, she in the white house every single day working on that white house renovation project with clem conger, who was the curator. that's easily refuted. i did ask carl bernstein for interview. i was put in touch with and he said i would be delighted to talk you and proceeded to ghost me for two years after that. so i deleted that email address. and then bob woodward did agree to talk to me. and the reason is, you might remember alexander butterfield told who revealed the existence the tapes. so mr. butterfield gave me some wonderful multiple wonderful interviews about, pat, because when haldeman was never able to

work successfully with her and, then dwight chapin, another aide, was not able to work with her as a liaison, the west and the east wing. so mr. butterfield took over and he adored and he's worked with mr. woodward on another book. and i told mr. butterfield about you know, he forgotten, i think, because has been so long ago about her characters nation as as a heavy drinker. he said, that is ridiculous. i call bob and have him call you and he did call me. but when i said, what are your names, what are your sources? he could not give me one source could not? would not. oh, some of these people are still alive. i can't give i could not give you any names. and i pointed out that i had interviewed scores of people. and how many you interview about mrs. nixon? did you really. oh, yeah. well you know, this wasn't an interview that went particularly well, but, you know, he really just couldn't answer. there were no answers and no

attributions and i'm a very database fact based person and and i would say the alcohol rumors are and i would say that the reclusive rumors are easily disproved by the records. so that was how we it. but alexander butterfield, who knew mrs. nixon and met with her several times a week, said that is ridiculous so, as did her social secretary, who saw her every morning from 7 a.m. until midnight. there was there's just no evidence for that. well, really did drill down. i looked extensively at all of the people you talked to and in disproving, i think it's time to bring all of you into the discussion and i said, i don't know if that is accurate or if we're on a tight clock, but let me please raise hand. and if a microphone that needs to go to you somebody will bring it to you. if anybody here would like to ask a question.

yes wait, will you wait for the microphone? thank you, pat. i think i ask you this, but i want to elaborate on did you get your the families? okay to do this? but then in my question is, did the daughters think that their father was innocent like their mother thought? well, so the first part of the question, of course i don't ever give anyone any editorial over what i write or them anything, but i was put in touch with the daughters and i wanted them to be involved. so could interview them. and they are lovely and were very cooperative and i think did want something else about their mother. but i think we were all the same page about that. but i you know, i work alone. there's no editorial control there at all. but yes, the daughters with

completely i think they see watergate, i think very much in the same way that their mother does for all those reasons i talked about. they also went through a lot of that. so they and i think that's felt all were kind of on the same about that. well, i'm going to in myself if nobody else has anything else to ask and that is i want to try to bring rebecca's book into this discussion. just briefly, there's a man standing right behind rebecca with the microphone. and so you're stuck, as rebecca said in her introduction that pat and edith and ladybird, they're all very skilled at concealing their power. and i, as you have read, heath's

book and listen to this, rebecca, if you can say a little bit, go back to my first question, but then the second larger one, talk about the source material that you found that really surprised you and drove your narrative. and the second is when you hear discussion about pat and compare them to your her to your subject, where do you come out in terms of the compare contrast discussion? it's so interesting. i mean, i'm with heath that the most interesting source material on edith and woodrow was their love letters in part because like richard nixon oddly. woodrow wilson was just all in from the beginning. so there's, you know, nerdy woodrow wilson, this man who has cult, this image of intellectual superiority by writing, you know, i want to kiss your eyelid and just gushing, gushing, gushing from the moment he meets her but more interestingly to

me, because edith maintained she was not political and that was mrs. woodrow wilson, not first lady. she's writing back to him. do you think jennings bryan is going to resign as secretary state? who do you think that's going to take his place? you know, when when he sends her a letter after the first time he proposed talking about what a perfect woman she is she writes back and says, you know, your last to the germans about sinking the lusitania is not your best work. and it's it was because she edith a memoir where she much curated her own story as memoirists do to have those letters and understand that she was savvy and curious and political from the very beginning. and this notion that she just mrs. woodrow wilson was absolute nonsense. i think what's interesting hearing pat and reading book about lady bird is these things

seem to ebb and flow because between them was. eleanor roosevelt. right. i mean, we had edith wilson pretend, you know, don't, don't look behind the curtain. i'm not doing anything important. i'm certainly not acting as the executive while he has a stroke. and then you've got, you know, pat not taking credit for anything and getting accused of being plastic pat lady had her own causes but was constantly giving lyndon credit for things that she should have taken the credit for and in between there was eleanor who very publicly political views and agendas that differed from her husband and in fact had use her as a trial balloon you know, to see if he could get little bit more extreme with things. so it's just how it it just underscores what a banana's job first lady is and how each woman has to define it for herself and figure out, you know, how to fill that and reflect american womanhood, which is a moving target.

and it's i wouldn't i wouldn't want to do it. one of the things one of the things i noticed your book and it it's it helps anticipate what might be the new first lady coming into office who would a gentleman is that edith disliked being called first lady lady bird said she found it distaste that she could never get used to it. i don't know about mrs. nixon. well, with her it was the white she went. it should be called the people's and hated like the whole that whole thing. so i think they shared that kind of feeling that was a little distasteful, you know, like royalty a little bit. we speak or maybe a little of demeaning to for me, royalty plus demeaning, can we just have a moment to speculate to to sort of do a round? yeah. what do we think doug emhoff

should do as the next lady? oh, cookie, possibly throw out the term and reinvent the the label and everyone the job. but i know i'll kick it to you and then to rebecca. what's the doug emhoff? you have to answer that. i will, but i'm going to think about it while you're talking. i mean, what's the doug emhoff that we'd like to see how do we want him to be part of kamala's operation? well, how are they going to share their power. well, one thing i think doug will do is get of these stupid names, you know, like, well, pad or jill, lady macbeth. i don't see doug putting up with that stuff. like, what would they call him? some demeaning name. just the dude. yes something like that. and i he'll be like, no, it just might take a little more forcefulness. so i would love to see that.

i would love. and wouldn't that be a fun book to or like sort of every day of his first year to follow and watch how he does how he navigates this. i, i predict that suddenly everyone's going to discover that a political spouse is a huge asset. yes yes. listening to what they have to say, giving them a microphone is actually good thing. yes. and that being aggressive on behalf of their spouses not distasteful, but it's actually sort of lovely and romantic. right it's going to be amazing. what we discover when there's a first serve up, well, i can't add to that. but i do want to say that lyndon and ladybird love letters are also completely beautiful and the the the johnson is coming out with a book just of their love letters that i'm going to write the foreword. and similarly, just really the way they formed a bond and it's

during war two also before and after and it's it continues throughout their life and it just a tremendous set of window into what drew these two people together and. so so i think the love letters i mean it's funny it's a little bit girly right to talk about the love letters but i think incredibly important to to understand how a first couple derives power, how a president derives power from their spouse spouse. last question to you. i think nobody else has questions here. we've gone of our time, although signaled to me, if you do, what's your next book? well, that is a good question. i would like to do something having to do with journalism. i've actually talked to some ladies in this room about that

women in journalism. i am, but also involving a male journalist. i might something a little different. there but it's for me it's still for so i won't say too much more but something something about journalism. so yeah, well, we'll we'll need to interview you for it and i'm edith over here. am i saying edith you've taken on the person? rebecca? well, congratulations, everybody. make sure that you think you'll be signing books. yes glad you did as you leave. so please stop and grab one and keith will sign it for you. and congratulations. q thank you to all of you. oh, my pleasure. let's give.

all right. thank all so much today for coming out today to celebrate joe