First Lady’s Job Called Toughest : Julie Nixon Eisenhower Says Family Members Illustrate Her Point

Some see the U.S. presidency as the hardest job in the world. But not Julie Nixon Eisenhower.

Eisenhower, daughter of former President Richard M. Nixon and daughter-in-law of the late President Dwight D. Eisenhower, told a standing-room-only audience here Monday that a President’s mate has the tougher job. And Eisenhower said her mother and grandmother-in-law are notable examples of First Ladies who have had very difficult lives.

“I really think the First Lady job is much harder than being President,” Eisenhower said. “I would much prefer to be a President than to be a First Lady, and I think all of you in the audience would also. The First Lady job: You can never please anyone. . . . You don’t really have a specific job description. . . . Being a First Lady is like being a minister, where you give and give and give. It takes great faith and courage to continue in that type of a role.”

Eisenhower, 44, spoke at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace here on the theme “The Lady of the House: Great Wives of Great Presidents.” She became the first of seven speaker-historians who in the next five months will lecture on memorable wives of American Presidents.

Speaking to an overflow audience of 300, Eisenhower told of two First Ladies--her mother, Pat Nixon, and her grandmother-in-law, the late Mamie Doud Eisenhower.

And Eisenhower surprised the audience with a brief tribute to the next first lady, Hillary Clinton.

Eisenhower noted that a Life magazine story on the White House earlier this year described many First Ladies as visionaries--women who married poor men because they saw greatness in them.

“It’s interesting to note that our new First Lady, a very modern woman, a woman of our times--Hillary Clinton--in the latter half of the presidential race (this year) conveyed to the public that sense of a visionary,” Eisenhower said.

“The sense (was) that she saw in her husband all the promise and hopes for the future. She conveyed that by putting aside her own impressive career--putting it on the back burner to campaign at her husband’s side, listening intently and rarely commenting publicly.”

Eisenhower said she believes her grandmother-in-law Mamie and her mother Pat were also visionaries.

“They recognized in their husbands, who were both from extremely humble backgrounds, that these were men out of the ordinary,” Eisenhower said. “In Mamie Eisenhower’s case particularly, people didn’t think that penniless 2nd Lt. Dwight Eisenhower was good enough for her. . . . When I asked her once why she was drawn to this young man, she told me: ‘He was a man! I was so sick of being courted by all these lounge lizards with patent leather hair.’ ”

Julie Eisenhower remembered Mamie as a strong woman. “Mamie Eisenhower never backed down from anything in her life,” Eisenhower said. “She was a tough personality. She had to be. She was married to an intense, four-pack-a-day-cigarette man, until he quit at the end of the war. A man with a temper.”

Mamie Eisenhower, as the wife of a career Army officer, had to move 33 times, her granddaughter-in-law said. But Mamie bore her burdens well. “In the end, Mamie Eisenhower’s marriage survived because she decided to adopt her husband’s credo of ‘duty, honor and country’ as her own,” said Julie Eisenhower.

Eisenhower said her mother, Pat Nixon, was also a courageous woman and a great First Lady. “Pat Nixon had to reflect and react to the incredibly turbulent late ‘60s and early ‘70s,” said her daughter.

“My mother felt that her role in this difficult time was to be a healing presence. She didn’t want to single out one project above another, telling reporters that ‘people are my project. . . .’ ”

Eisenhower called her mother a very active First Lady. “My mother traveled the globe. She became the most widely traveled First Lady in history, visiting over 80 nations. And in those travels she risked her life, (such as) in Caracas (Venezuela) in 1958 and when she flew in by helicopter into a combat area in Vietnam in 1969.”

The period of the Watergate investigations, which led to her husband’s resignation, showed Pat Nixon’s courage. “I don’t know how she did it,” said her daughter. “She was like the Rock of Gibraltar. She just never broke.”

The lecture series on American First Ladies is geared to the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace’s current exhibit of inaugural gowns worn by presidential wives.