Free First Women: The Grace and Power of America's Modern First Ladies by Kate Andersen Brower Page B

health-care proposal would reflect “a new commitment to the problems of substance abuse.”
    Hillary’s closest relationship was with Jackie Kennedy, but the stresses of the job make for unlikely allies. According to her White House press secretary, Neel Lattimore, Hillary, who does not have much in common with Nancy Reagan, told her staff that she thought it was unfair that Nancy had been criticized for spending $200,000 (in private donations) on a new set of china for the White House. Nancy’s image as an imperial first lady—she was referred to contemptuously in the press as “Queen Nancy”—was amplified by the purchase (and not helped by revelations that she spent $25,000 on her inaugural wardrobe and $10,000 on a single gown). But when the Clintons first came to the White House and Hillary had to decide what china to use for state dinners, the Reagan china was the only complete set available. (Nancy was unapologetic about her decision to purchase new china. “We haven’t got enough china to serve a state dinner so we got china. The White House had to have china for heaven’s sake.”) As a young lawyer Hillary had worked on the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment investigation of President Nixon, and she began tosympathize with the quiet suffering of Nixon’s wife, Pat, and the brave face she put on every day. Somebody on Hillary’s staff said something unkind about Pat when she passed away five months after the Clintons moved into the White House, and Hillary shot back, “That’s not true, you have to appreciate what Pat Nixon did in this White House.” (Neither Clinton, however, attended Pat’s funeral.) As first lady, Pat had created special tours for the blind and the disabled, so that blind visitors could touch some of the furniture, and she opened the White House to the public at night so that working people could visit more easily.
    Hillary could identify with Pat’s humble childhood and her stoicism during her husband’s humiliating resignation. In a 1979 interview, Hillary made it clear that she empathized with political spouses and said, “I think that people who are married to politicians are under a tremendous strain, because unless you have a pretty strong sense of your own self-identity, it becomes very easy to be buffeted about by all the people who are around your husband. People who are advising him, people who want favors from him, people who want to do things with him, for him, or to him, and very often those people are not anxious to have the politician’s wife or family members around because that’s then competition for their time.”
    Hillary’s friend and former speechwriter Lissa Muscatine says that Hillary believes strongly that women need to be given the freedom to make the right choices for their own lives, whether it’s working or staying home with their families. “She felt the same way about the first lady’s role, that the first ladies are different and they have different needs and interests and different experiences. They just need the freedom to be in that position in a way that works for them and their husbands and the presidency,” she said, adding, “This is not a defined job, solet people define it the way that they need to define it.” After the 2000 election, Hillary advised Laura Bush not to let the responsibilities of her new role cloud her decision making. Hillary had once turned down an invitation from Jackie Kennedy to go to the ballet in New York with Chelsea because she said she was too busy. She had always regretted it because Jackie passed away just a few months later.
    When Hillary gave Laura the customary tour of the residence, they stood together in the first lady’s dressing room and Hillary said, “Your mother-in-law stood right here and told me that from this window you can see straight down into the Rose Garden and also over to the Oval Office.” Eight years later, when Michelle Obama came for her first tour of the White House,