First Ladies

by Caroli, Betty

  The Carters’ work in their church and other local organizations led them into politics, but it was Jimmy who took the lead. On his thirty-eighth birthday, he announced his candidacy for the state Senate.47 Rosalynn had already taken over the bookkeeping at the family’s peanut warehouse, and she could evaluate, just by checking the accounts, which sections of the business made money and which lost. While Jimmy spent more time at legislative sessions in the state capital, she had to make more business decisions. Her own public service was very limited—the idea of delivering speeches made her physically ill, and when Jimmy first ran for governor in 1966, she and her sons did nothing more than pass out brochures and smile for photographs in front of a vehicle marked “Carter Family.”

  Jimmy Carter lost that election, but in his next try in 1970, the entire family resolved to work harder. For Rosalynn, that meant conquering her fear of public speaking. Jimmy encouraged her to stop memorizing her script so she could speak extemporaneously from notecards, and the results surprised even her: “It was easy. [People] were listening attentively, and when I got through they wanted to hear more…. It was a wonderful feeling and quite a breakthrough for me.”48

  Successful in that second gubernatorial race, the Carters moved into the spotlight of the state capital. It was a larger transition, she frequently said, than that she later made from Georgia to the White House.49 Other presidents’ wives (including Edith Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt in Albany and Ellen Wilson in Trenton) had pointed to their husbands’ governorship years as times of growth, and Rosalynn also reported that she used those years to gain confidence in her social and administrative abilities. Travels around the state exposed her to problems in mental health, education, and care for the aged, and she developed a new appreciation of what government could do to make individuals’ lives better. By the time Jimmy prepared to run for president in 1976, she showed almost none of her old reticence about taking a public role for herself. By January 20, 1977, when she strode down Pennsylvania Avenue toward Number 1600, little remained of the tentative teenager who had left Plains, Georgia, thirty years earlier.

  Much of the confidence developed during her fourteen months on the road before Jimmy won the 1976 nomination. It was a campaign unequaled among politicians’ wives. Victory must have seemed an impossible dream at the beginning when few Americans outside Georgia had heard of Jimmy Carter. Even Jimmy’s mother, the indefatigable Lillian Carter, was rumored to have responded to her son’s announcement that he was running for president with the question “President of what?” Rosalynn became accustomed to similar replies when she first went out to speak for Jimmy.

  The Carters had reasoned that in this difficult, uphill campaign, they could cover more ground if they traveled separately, and when she set out on her first out-of-state appearance to nearby Florida, she was accompanied only by one good friend. Guided by a Florida road map and a slightly outdated list of Democratic party officials, the two women stopped wherever they spotted a radio transmitter or found somebody willing to gather a few friends together. Rosalynn would make her speech about why Jimmy should be president, answer any questions, and then prepare to speed on to the next town.50

  Rosalynn later graduated to commercial airlines and then to her own private plane but her schedule never lightened. She described campaigning as “a job, a very demanding job, with pressures and deadlines … constant studying and cramming … being able to stay cool under fire.”51 From Monday to Friday, she was on the road, and then on the weekend she returned to Plains to rest up, eat “a square meal,” confer with her husband and see the rest of the family, including their daughter, Amy, who was not yet ten years old. “It was not a vocation I would want to pursue for a life,” Rosalynn wrote when it was all over, “but it was essential.”52

  Like all successful campaigners, Rosalynn Carter had to decide what to do with victory, and no woman ever entered the White House with a clearer agenda for herself. Nor a longer one. She ticked off her causes in order of importance: she would continue to be active in mental health, because that was what she knew best, and she would work for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment which still needed the approval of three states. She also expected to help the aging and to encourage volunteerism on the local level. To assist her, she appointed a staff of eighteen, headed by Press Secretary and East Wing coordinator, Mary Finch Hoyt, a veteran of the Muskie and McGovern races. Eventually Rosalynn had a staff of twenty-one, not so large as she would have liked but larger than any East Wing staff in history.53

  Even before the inauguration, Rosalynn Carter was off and running on her new job. In December 1976, she attended (although not in an official capacity) the inauguration of Mexico’s new President, and then she returned to preside over a mental health conference in Philadelphia. After Jimmy took office, she increased momentum and within months had announced a precedent-breaking trip to Central and South America.

  While other presidential wives had typically represented their husbands on ceremonial and fact-finding international missions, none had claimed to work out policy. Eleanor Roosevelt’s trips across both the Atlantic and the Pacific during the war and Lady Bird Johnson’s attendance at the funeral of Greece’s king had underlined the surrogate role some First Ladies took, but neither had claimed to make decisions. Rosalynn Carter’s trip to seven Central and South American countries in the spring of 1977 was billed by the president’s office as “substantive,”54 and she encouraged that interpretation by revealing that she had prepared by studying Spanish and by briefings with members of the State Department and the National Security Council.55 She planned to deliver in each country a “summary of the administration’s foreign policy approach,” and then go on to discuss more specific problems of local interest.

  In Costa Rica she listened to complaints that the United States was restricting that country’s trade, in Ecuador to objections that her husband should not have vetoed the sale of Israeli jets, and in Peru to an explanation for that country’s arms buildup. When she returned to Washington, she reported to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on what she had seen and heard.56

  The trip brought mixed returns. Heads of state who met with the American First Lady appeared uncertain as to how they should react, and while some Latins applauded her enthusiasm for learning their language, others expressed discomfort about receiving a United States representative who had been neither elected nor appointed. Reporters in Jamaica questioned whether she had the right to speak for her husband, and when she got home, the discussion continued. Meg Greenfield, in an article entitled, “Mrs. President,” explored the implications of the First Lady’s trip and concluded that if Rosalynn wanted a role in diplomacy, she should find a way to make herself accountable for her actions.57 A State Department official attempted to blunt some of the criticism by describing Rosalynn’s trip as “mainly questioning.”58

  The fact that all her later international travel fell within the older, more traditional bounds for presidents’ wives indicates that the Carters may have judged the South American venture not entirely successful, although Rosalynn explained the lack of additional trips by saying that Jimmy was “able to go himself.”59 She continued to signal her significant role in her husband’s administration but in other ways—in announcements that she met regularly with him for “working” lunches and that she attended meetings of his closest advisers, including the cabinet.

  Most of her energies were concentrated on the projects she had named early in the administration, especially mental health. Because she could not legally serve as actual chair of the President’s Council on Mental Health, she took an honorary (but working) title and then accepted invitations to speak on the subject in Canada and in Europe.60 On February 7, 1979, she went before the Senate Resource subcommittee to testify in favor of increased federal spending for mental health programs, and there she tangled with Chairman Edward Kennedy over what constituted a satisfactory federal health budget.

  As Rosalynn c
ontinued to follow her Mental Health Systems Act through the various committees, she made history of two kinds.61 Not only was she the first presidential wife to testify before a congressional committee since Eleanor Roosevelt appeared in the 1940s, but in this case the chairman of the Senate committee was a strong contender for her husband’s job.62 “I had to swallow some pride—for the cause,” she later wrote, because during the early stages of the 1980 campaign when it was not yet clear who would win the Democratic nomination, “Senator Kennedy one day would be on the stump making one of his statements, such as ‘President Carter is making the poor eat cat food’ and the next day would be saying to me, ‘Mrs. Carter, the committee is completing work on the Mental Health Systems Act.’ “63

  Although the act did not provide for a national health insurance program, it did outline three goals: to help move mental health patients with chronic problems to smaller community facilities, to incorporate mental health care into the nation’s health care system, and to increase services to the poor. The Act finally passed in September 1980, but the Carter celebration was brief because within weeks Ronald Reagan had won election. “The funding for our legislation was killed,” Rosalynn wrote, “by the philosophy of a new President. It was a bitter loss.”64

  Not all Rosalynn’s White House time went to revising the mental health program. In addition to the average of two meetings per month that she attended on that subject, she also met with groups concerned about women’s issues and with people working on problems of the elderly.65 In November 1979, she journeyed to Thailand to inspect refugee camps, and on her return to Washington, she added another cause to her agenda.

  Comparisons of Rosalynn Carter and Eleanor Roosevelt arose inevitably. Jimmy occasionally pointed out that Rosalynn’s long-forgotten first name was Eleanor and that he liked to call her his Eleanor.66 William Shannon, writing in the New York Times, judged her the “most influential First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt,”67 and Jimmy underlined this perception of Rosalynn’s importance by pronouncing her a “political partner” with whom he discussed domestic and foreign policy issues.68

  When President Carter invited Middle Eastern leaders to a meeting at Camp David in September 1978, he involved Rosalynn in a special way, thus demonstrating once more how the elasticity in the American presidency opens the way for including spouses in substantive decisions. Not since Theodore Roosevelt mediated between two foreign powers to end the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 had an American chief executive attempted quite what Jimmy Carter did. Theodore had absented himself, however, from much of the discussion while Jimmy insisted on participating in each segment of the bargaining process.69 His aim was not to settle all the disputes in the Middle East but to bring the two principal leaders of the opposing sides—Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat—to an agreement that could then be recommended to all parties in the conflict. It was a risky venture, not only for the American president, who stood to lose face if he failed, but also for Begin and Sadat who invited, by their participation, charges from home that they had given up too much. Terrorist attacks threatened to undermine the talks and Pravda denounced the meeting.

  In his invitations to both Middle Eastern leaders, Jimmy Carter had pointedly included their wives, telling Rosalynn: “There are going to be a lot of hard feelings and tough fights [and] the atmosphere will be more congenial if all of you are there.”70

  Rosalynn’s role at the Camp David summit extended, however, beyond providing a hospitable setting for the talks and companionship for the wives. Jimmy briefed Rosalynn, she later wrote, “[because] he wanted me to understand the issues as well as the nuances of certain words and phrases. What we called the West Bank, for example, was Judea and Samaria to Begin….”71 Although she lost her chance to sit in on the first meeting of the three leaders because the other two wives were delayed in arriving, she began immediately to keep a record of what she observed and what her husband told her. By the end of the twelve-day meeting, she had “almost 200 pages of typed notes” which eventually became the basis for one chapter in her autobiography.72

  Previous presidential wives had played down their influence—Helen Taft insisted her advice stopped when her husband became president; Edith Wilson maintained that she never made any decision; Eleanor Roosevelt patiently reiterated to dubious listeners that she never tried to steer Franklin to any particular course of action. Rosalynn Carter took no credit, of course, for conducting the Camp David talks but she did not minimize her role. It had been her enthusiastic support for the idea that had convinced Jimmy to try for the peace agreement, she wrote, and she went with him through a “seesaw” of emotions during the long negotiations.

  Rosalynn played more than one role at the Camp David talks. Partly, she served as the president’s cover, returning to the White House to substitute for him at events that had been previously scheduled. Nobody had expected the summit to continue so long, and the president had agreed to meet with leaders of the Italian-American and Hispanic communities and to host a concert for the world-famous cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich. “One of us had to be there,” Rosalynn explained, “and it was obviously going to be me,”73 so she helicoptered back to the White House, making every effort to give no premature indications of how the talks were going. Her subsequent description of the summit earned her high marks, and one reviewer wrote that Rosalynn was a better and franker writer “hands down” than her husband, and that in describing the Camp David summit and other events of the Carter administration, she had written “what may turn out to be the best human account … that we are likely to get.”74

  Such a prominent First Lady exposed herself to many judgments. Some critics declared her too programmed and disciplined, while others noted that she lacked the eloquence of Lady Bird Johnson and the zaniness and candor of Betty Ford. Jimmy’s aides frequently commented that her ambition exceeded his, but perhaps they would have found any evident ambition excessive in a woman. The New York Times reporter Judy Klemesrud had dubbed her a “steel magnolia blossom” early in the campaign and the term had stuck, rather to Rosalynn’s chagrin.75 She gamely pointed out that she did not mind being thought strong because she admired strength but she objected to the calculating connotation in the characterization because it obscured her compassion and caring.

  Although Rosalynn Carter has described as “considerable” the time she spent on ceremonial appearances,76 she gave the impression of being much more involved in the substantive aspects of her husband’s administration than in the hostess part. She never selected a china pattern for the White House collection and did not even spend the full amount of money allotted for refurbishing the family’s quarters in the mansion. The chapter in her autobiography entitled “People, Parties and Protocol” is one of the shortest in the book (twenty pages), and researchers who hope to find there descriptions of her clothing, menus, and flower arrangements will be disappointed. Julia Grant’s Memoirs, which were written (but not published) almost exactly one century before Rosalynn’s, contained little but social details on the White House years, but Rosalynn correctly realized that expectations for First Ladies had changed. “Cave dwellers” still influenced Washington’s social life, but they held little sway in the Carter White House.

  The preceding century had altered (among other things) women’s chances for education, employment, and political participation, and Rosalynn Carter followed Betty Ford’s example of using her influence to make further changes. She lobbied state legislators to vote for the Equal Rights Amendment and she attended the International Woman’s Year meeting in Houston in November 1977. But while Betty spoke of the need for women to “feel liberated whatever their jobs or family situation,” Rosalynn emphasized the justice of equal pay for equal work. That kind of feminism showed a “working class bias,” one writer pointed out,77 but it was a bias that many Americans shared. Rosalynn proudly listed her husband’s appointments of women to important positions: three cabinet secretaries (out of a tot
al of six in history) and forty-one federal judges. “It was always understood between us,” she wrote, “that a woman would be appointed if a vacancy occurred [on the Supreme Court.]”78

  Jimmy Carter’s record with feminists was hardly duplicated in other areas, and he had to defend that record in the 1980 election. This time the Carters could not present themselves as Washington outsiders ready to do battle for efficiency and integrity—they had to account for what they had done. Double-digit inflation, an oil crisis, and the holding of American hostages in Iran contributed to feelings of national helplessness and to a demand for change. When Republican Ronald Reagan talked in soothing tones about tax cuts and strong defense, he had a winning combination. Rosalynn Carter returned to Plains just a few hours before the voting began, but she already knew that the election was lost.79

  Rosalynn’s partnership with her husband combined competence with unquestioned loyalty, but it never won her the popularity enjoyed by several of her less risk-taking predecessors. She failed to dominate the lists of “most admired women” (as had Mamie Eisenhower and Pat Nixon) or to inspire a following equal to that of the glamorous Jackie Kennedy. A natural reticence restrained her from engaging in the kind of candid interchange that had endeared Betty Ford to reporters, and because she had never developed many friendships with other powerful women, as had Eleanor Roosevelt, she lacked a supportive network outside her family to advise and promote her. The First Lady’s staff, although large and competent, did not compensate for the lack of friendships with powerful women.

  Yet her four years in the White House helped extend the job of president’s wife beyond what it had ever been. Her husband was not physically disabled, as Eleanor Roosevelt’s had been, and she did not have three terms in the White House or the double calamity of a great depression and a major war to push her into prominence. On her own, and with her husband’s concurrence, she took a portion of his quest for her own—campaigning full-time and putting her best efforts into making the administration a success.