In the post-World War II era, the influence of first ladies has grown along with the prominence of the institution to the point where both scholars and journalists speak of the existence of a "co-presidency." However, the various political roles assumed by the presidential spouses present great risks for both the first lady and the president.

Consider what Hillary-the-Co-President came to be.

"She glowed as a cover girl for the Christmas issue of America's top fashion magazine.

Photographed in the Red Room, primly sitting beside a suitably imperial bouquet of roses, she was resplendent in a burgundy velvet Oscar de la Renta dress designed exclusively for her.

Her ears glittered with Cartier pearl-and-diamond-drop earrings. The Cristophe Salon had styled her dyed-blond hair impeccably. The breathless article about her "radiant peace" gushed about her American-as-apple-pie, properly feminine, and most First Lady-like campaign "to restore decaying historical treasures."1

A rather long way from cabinet meetings and policy making in the Oval Office. This was Hillary Clinton, however, at the height of her popularity––in December 1998, just as her husband faced impeachment.

Over a year later, in February 2000, Mrs. Clinton formally launched her Senate campaign. Now, however, Hillary chose a business-like look. Her tone was substantive. Her husband sat there, silently watching, in an historic role reversal.

What had happened to the Clinton co-presidency? What had happened to her 1992 cry: "two for the price of one?"2; or to her husband's reverie that "If I get elected president, it will be an unprecedented partnership, far more than Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor.

They were two great people, but on different tracks. If I get elected, we'll do things together like we always have." 3 How was it that Mrs. Clinton could only find popular affection by morphing into Mrs. Reagan––and only find fulfillment by moving away from her husband and abandoning her post?

Clearly, the story of the emergence of what Vogue called "The Extraordinary Hillary Clinton" reveals much about the idiosyncratic sagas of both Mr. and Mrs. Clinton. That the first lady's rise in popularity polls came as her profile as a policy mover-and-shaker declined is rooted in a deeper phenomenon that has occurred repeatedly over the last few decades––and illuminates the peculiar nature of the position Mrs. Clinton occupied.

The myth of the policymaker

It is an article of faith among those who have served as first lady that the job is what you make it. Although the mistress of the White House enjoys some latitude and no one has quite dictated a job-description, the first ladyship is nevertheless a well-defined position with powerful constraints.

Many women, including Hillary Rodham when she was the First Lady of Arkansas, have believed the myth that policy-making is a central part of the first lady's role. This perception comes from the first lady's centrality in America's celebrity-obsessed political culture––which confuses fame and power––as well as the deplorable paucity of women in powerful positions in America today––which feeds a thirst for role models. Yet most descriptions of a policymaking first lady reflect wishful thinking, not historical reasoning.

The fact is that despite the justifiable longings of many women for a powerful voice in Washington, despite the enduring public fascination with first ladies, and despite reporters' constant pressure on first ladies to plunge into policy-making, most Americans do not want the first couple sharing power in the White House. Moreover, the manner in which the job of first lady has evolved over the past few decades actually hinders a first lady's effectiveness in the policy-making role. Presidential couples are supposed to work together on joint image-making, not power-sharing. Presidents have learned that a popular first lady can provide cheap and easy political points and are an essential prop in defining the presidential image. Regardless of her prospective positives, a controversial first lady can do a great deal more in lasting damage.

During the 1996 campaign, Mrs. Clinton attributed the backlash against her to a sexist distaste for powerful women.4 Although traditional double-standards and enduring sexist assumptions about women and power have always tormented first ladies, the peculiarity of this position must also be considered. The longstanding fears of anyone getting too close to the President, combined with millions of Americans' cultural need for traditional icons in the White House makes activist first ladies controversial. Proof of this enduring need for the first couple to offer a traditional ballast also comes from the firestorm of criticism Betty Ford provoked with her candor, as well as the chorus of hosannas Barbara Bush elicited with her warm, nonthreatening, grandmotherly persona.

Before the 1930s, first ladies had much more freedom to define their own positions. Some first ladies were more famous or less famous (Dolley Madison versus Elizabeth Monroe); more controversial or less controversial (Mary Todd Lincoln versus Eliza Johnson); more influential or less influential (Edith Bolling Wilson vs. Edith Kermit Roosevelt). But they had no ongoing policy-making role. Thanks to the governmental and presidential revolution Franklin Roosevelt unleashed, along with the pioneering role Eleanor Roosevelt carved out for herself in the New Deal, the myth of the policy-making first lady was born.

By inserting himself and the federal government into the American home, the president became more familiar, as did his wife. Despite their complicated relationship, the Roosevelts were the dynamic duo of the 1930s and 1940s, fighting injustice nationwide. When liberals tried to free the wrongly accused Scottsboro Boys, they petitioned both Roosevelts. And in a backhanded tribute to the Roosevelts' teamwork, critical Southern handbills had a scheming Franklin saying to his busy-body spouse: "You kiss the Negroes and I'll kiss the Jews and we'll stay in the White House as long as we choose."5

Eleanor Roosevelt's legacy cast such a long shadow that even her most traditional successors have felt pressured to be more active than they wished. Again and again, Bess Truman, Mamie Eisenhower, Jackie Kennedy, and Pat Nixon––women who abhorred politics and shunned the spotlight––were dragged into the national arena. Reporters, voters, and White House advisers used Eleanor Roosevelt's example to force these women into activities and postures they would have preferred to avoid. Increasingly, Americans wanted to know Mrs. President as well as Mr. President.

This national obsession with the democratically elected king and queen of the moment is peculiarly American. Although the founding fathers valued republican simplicity, they expected the President of the United States to be a character "pre-eminent for ability and virtue."6 Since then, the country has acquired more nationalizing influences and more anchors, but Americans today still look to the presidential couple for reassurance, stability, political inspiration, and, often, moral instruction.

Ultimately, the focus on the presidential couple is a stepchild of the technological revolution. The rise of mass media spawned a new political culture.7 Without the image-driven politics of personality and celebrity, the current obsession with presidential couples is unfathomable.

The perils of the "co-presidency"Throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, whereas Bess Truman, Mamie Eisenhower, Jackie Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, and Pat Nixon often felt pressured to be more active, to champion high profile projects, hardly anyone spoke of a "co-presidency." Lady Bird and Lyndon Johnson enjoyed a vigorous and productive "working partnership."8 President Johnson praised his wife as "my dearest running-mate" 9 and a CBS report described Lady Bird as "a big political asset to Johnson." 10 Still, it was only after the feminist revolution of the 1960s and 1970s that the term co-presidency––which first had been used to describe the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt partnership––reappeared.

Betty Ford's emergence as a feminist heroine stoked the fires. The myth built up around Betty Ford told how a bored, frustrated, depressed housewife rose to the challenge of being First Lady and charmed a nation with her candor. At best, Mrs. Ford's tumultuous stay in the White House illustrated the potential of a first lady to strike out on her own, as Betty Ford plunged into all kinds of issues that Gerald Ford tried to avoid. At worst, as Mrs. Ford alienated Gerald Ford's conservative supporters with her bold pronouncements about abortion, drugs, and premarital sex, the Ford years offer a cautionary tale about the perils of first lady activism.11

Still, despite the many voters whom Betty Ford alienated, reporters were charmed and they demanded that Rosalynn Carter have an equally high and entertaining profile. Rosalynn Carter preferred working closely behind the scenes with her husband to crusading. Frustrated reporters wanted more independence and more controversy. Sally Quinn of the Washington Post blasted Mrs. Carter for seeing her role "as assisting the president, rather than just assuming the role of first lady."12 Quinn and her colleagues disapproved of Mrs. Carter's loyalty and selflessness. They missed Betty Ford.

Many leading feminists also criticized Mrs. Carter. They did not just want an influential first lady, they wanted a renegade. Gloria Steinem fumed: "More than any other president's spouse I have seen there is no independent thought or phrasing separate from him." Even East Wing staffers mimicked the first lady's tendency to preface her remarks by saying, "Jimmeh thinks" and "Jimmeh feels" and "Jimmeh says".13

Reporters grew restive. More and more began to write about the first lady's "fuzzy" image.14 Only after the Carter presidency became paralyzed during the spring and the summer of 1979, did reporters discover a new angle. As Jimmy's public stock sagged, Rosalynn's rose. In May, Hugh Sidey of Time called her "The second most powerful person in the United States." Sidey deemed Rosalynn Carter the "first woman in the club" of unelected presidential Rasputins such as Clark Clifford, John Foster Dulles, Robert Kennedy, and Henry Kissinger.15

Reporters pounced. They built up Mrs. Carter's influence, then attacked her for seizing power. Many Americans followed suit. "(with a profane oath the man declared) I voted for Carter, not his wife!" one businessman seethed.16 The buildup climaxed in the fall, when Jack Anderson's syndicated column declared, "The First Lady ... is now co-president, with a tremendous impact on U.S. policy." 17 By November, Newsweek's cover called Rosalynn Carter, "The President's Partner."18 Reporters had their hook; Rosalynn Carter now had an image.

This image was nothing but trouble, as it later would be for Hillary Clinton. It made Jimmy appear too weak, Rosalynn too aggressive. Americans were becoming used to strong women––if they were unmarried. Four of the top ten television shows from 1979 to 1980 featured sassy, independent, and very single women––"Three's Company," "Alice," "Flo," and "One Day at a Time."

Once again––as with Lady Bird Johnson during Lyndon's second term and Betty Ford in 1975 through 1976––a first lady blossomed as her husband withered. But public support for Rosalynn was restrained because like Lady Bird––as well as Eleanor Roosevelt––she ran into the enduring discomfort with unelected first ladies seizing power. Sharing power might help a first lady make history. But it did not help her––or the President––make many friends. America was not ready for a co-presidency.

Nancy Reagan set out to distinguish herself from Rosalynn Carter's example but she ended up replicating it. Despite Mrs. Reagan's suitably wifely rhetoric, many of her actions were revolutionary. Mrs. Reagan was not interested in the policy nuts-and-bolts of the Reagan revolution. She was, however, very interested in the personnel disputes that plagued the Reagan White House. Furthermore, as she became worried about the Reagan legacy, she also took an interest in peacemaking with the Soviets.

President Reagan's apparent distance from decision-making intensified the controversy about his overbearing spouse. Many of the attacks on Mrs. Reagan as a scheming and power-hungry first lady previewed the attacks on one of her most progressive successors: Hillary Rodham Clinton. The debate that ensued over Mrs. Reagan was often peculiar. Anti-Reagan feminists defended Mrs. Reagan against a pro-Reagan conservative columnist, William Safire. Joan Didion emphasized that she was "not one of Nancy Reagan's greatest admirers" while noting that critics were uncomfortable with a powerful woman in the White House.19 Ellen Goodman noticed that this "self-proclaimed traditional spouse," who had been pilloried for ignoring politics, was now attacked as power-hungry. 20 The unrealistic expectations imposed on the first lady reflected the unrealistic expectations imposed on all women.

To justify herself, Nancy Reagan became the great theorist of the first couple. She defined her role before the American Newspaper Publishers' Association in May 1987. Peddling old acting stories as shamelessly as her husband did, Mrs. Reagan remembered one walk-on role where she emerged from the attic and quickly returned. "There are those who think first ladies should be kept in attics, only to say our lines, pour our tea, and then be put away again." Nancy Reagan was not that kind of woman. She had discovered the first lady's "white glove pulpit," "more refined, more restricted, more ceremonial," than the president's "bully pulpit ... but it's a pulpit all the same."

Furthermore, Nancy Reagan noted that among "all" the President's advisers, "no one ... is there to look after him as an individual with human needs." She said, "I'm a woman who loves her husband, and I make no apologies for looking out for his personal and political welfare. We have a genuine, sharing marriage. I go to his aid. He comes to mine... . We don't always agree. But neither marriage nor politics denies a spouse the right to hold an opinion or the right to express it. And if you have anything less, it's not marriage, it's servitude."21

Subtly, coyly, and using the ladylike indirection feminists disavowed, Nancy Reagan had accepted her mandate. She had hoped to combine Jackie Kennedy's flair with Mamie Eisenhower's domesticity, but she ended up combining Mrs. Johnson's crusading with Mrs. Carter's insider status. Wifely devotion justified presidential power playing, within limits but this seemed to be what the American people wanted. The first lady offered America's middle-class women an energetic representative who understood that marital partnership did not mean total equality.

Americans began to recognize that the first lady was not co-president but was "part of the deal," as Senator Alan Simpson said.22 Americans stopped pretending that a President's spouse was irrelevant to this very personal office. The role of the first lady had been transformed, along with Americans' assumptions about their President's marriage.

The Reagans' approach was contradictory but not unclear. It suited a nation in transition. Americans were still defining how full a partner a modern, intelligent spouse was supposed to be, both in the White House and at home. Feminists like Betty Freidan implicitly recognized the problem and suggested "an official job title," a salary, and perhaps, "elect[ing] a president and his wife as a team."23 A Ms. editorial agreed that "If being the President's wife is seen as a full-time occupation, the woman in question has little choice but to become involved in her husband's policies."24

The unelected first lady had to recognize her limits. Americans did not want a zealot lobbying the president in bed. Mrs. Reagan appealed to moderate women who were more traditional than feminists, but more liberated than their mothers. Her advice to her successor and to all women: "Do your own thing," she said, speaking the lingo of the era she detested. "Just because you're married doesn't mean you've given up your right to have an opinion."25

Although Nancy Reagan had to become something of an activist to improve her reputation, Hillary Rodham Clinton had to eschew activism to salvage her national standing. Remarkably, Mrs. Clinton remained wildly popular among professional and progressive women even though she became more conventional to enhance her popularity. Hillary Clinton's journey from aspiring pioneer to conformist icon highlights the often unspoken but clear boundaries the public imposes on the first lady.

Without winning a single vote and simply by becoming the first First Lady ever to run for office, Mrs. Clinton imposed a happy ending on her stormy White House years. Win or lose, by ending on the bold note of running for Senate, Mrs. Clinton guaranteed that historians would compare her to Eleanor Roosevelt rather than to Barbara Bush; that they will view her compromises as small detours from her trail-blazing path.

Nevertheless, to run for the Senate, Mrs. Clinton had to move out of the White House and leave the office she had spent much of the decade championing. Furthermore, her Senate run only became viable because of the popularity she gained as the wronged spouse rather than as the co-president.

The 1992 campaign anticipated the central tensions of Mrs. Clinton's White House years. When she and her husband exulted "buy one, get one free!"26 her popularity plummeted. Only when she appeared more traditional did her popularity soar, emerging as a well-coiffed blond matron, writing a child-rearing how-to manual and standing by her man with quiet dignity amid the most humiliating of charges. Policy making and power wielding proved politically disastrous; mimicking Barbara Bush not Eleanor Roosevelt proved far more effective.

The comparison with Barbara Bush is apt because Mrs. Bush, unique among the last four first ladies, enjoyed consistently high public approval ratings. She, more so than Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Reagan, or Mrs. Clinton, understood the protocols of the modern first ladyship. She realized that most Americans want their first ladies to be seen on the hustings but not heard giving orders in the Oval Office. Her flagship project––a push for literacy––was safe. Her refusal to disagree with her husband or broadcast any advice occasionally frustrated reporters and often infuriated feminists, but it pleased much of the public.

Barbara Bush's ability to parlay fake pearls and gray hair into immortality raises fascinating questions about attitudes toward women, power, aging, and beauty.27 It also hints at one of the secrets to a first lady's success, and an oft-neglected explanatory device in modern political culture: that dirty five letter word that still defines much of American life, "class." It is no coincidence that the three most consistently popular first ladies in the postwar era––Mamie Eisenhower, Jackie Kennedy, and Barbara Bush––were the three most blue-blooded inhabitants of that post.

The first ladyship is an aristocratic throwback, an oddly patrician position in our robust, normally meritocratic, democracy. This anachronistic post remains rooted in the leadership models of late nineteenth-century America: the public role of the genteel matron.28 Many women who are to the manor born can often more easily assume these archaic postures. Mamie Eisenhower played the doddering dowager, Jackie Kennedy the glamorous jet-setter, Barbara Bush the sensible and authentic WASP. As a result, each of these women appeared to be more comfortable, more themselves, in this difficult position.

Alternatively, when trying to understand those moments when Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan, and Hillary Clinton, least appealed to the public, an unspoken perception emerges that each one was not quite lady enough for the White House. Mrs. Carter was too common, Mrs. Reagan too nouveau riche, Mrs. Clinton too careerist. These women's problems with the masses become clearer by looking down at them from the perspective of the upper crust.

Invoking Barbara Bush and her aristocratic model should make two things clear. First, this analysis is rooted in the "is" and not the "ought," in how first ladies have fared; not in what an ideal first lady should do. Even more important, this approach views popular approval as the central standard for a first lady's success. First ladies sometimes influenced strategy, as Rosalynn Carter did during Jimmy Carter's 1979 retreat to Camp David; or personnel, as Nancy Reagan did; or policy, as Hillary Clinton did with health care. Nevertheless, first ladies remain most defined by their public standing. The greatest and safest source of power for a first lady stems from her celebrity, which makes her popularity essential. Although there is no binding legislation, a reading of the continuing national conversation about first ladies suggests that popularity and celebrity remain the most legitimate forms of a first lady's power.

All modern first ladies have described that terrifying and exhilarating moment, early in their spouse's administration, when they realized just how famous and influential they were. None experienced that moment more dramatically than Betty Ford, when her emergency mastectomy––just weeks into the Ford presidency––became a milestone in the history of American public health. Thanks to Mrs. Ford's candor, a disease so scary that many whispered its name was partly destigmatized. Checkups increased by 300–400% after her open discussion of the issue.29 Overnight, Betty Ford became a national hero. But the power was educational not political. It stemmed from her fame among the public not her influence with her husband.

A new view of the First LadyOverall, academics prefer to analyze policy and politics, not images and icons. As a result, just as many women searching for role models try to impute power to first ladies, many scholars impute policy-making power so as to legitimize the first ladyship as a topic for study. Scholars have not analyzed the cultural dimensions of the American presidency effectively, nor have many examined the emergence of the President as celebrity-in-chief, one of the most dramatic developments in modern presidential history. Traditional presidential historians prefer more "meat and potato" matters, whereas cultural historians have too often shunned politics altogether.

To understand today's presidency, to understand the true importance of the first lady, we need to reconceptualize power. We need to explore how celebrity and popularity affect political efficacy. Arguing that first ladies have not been policy-players does not mean they have lacked power; they just have not exercised it in conventional ways. It also does not make them unimportant or unworthy of study.

This, after all, is the age of the poll-driven presidency, a presidency both aggrandized and destabilized by the president's celebrity and by most modern incumbents' obsessions with their daily popular approval ratings. In the future, when trying to understand how Bill Clinton saved his presidency in 1998, historians will have to assess his cultural standing, his star power. The first lady offers an extreme reflection of the modern president's predicament. Today's "imperial presidency" may be musclebound, but it is also at once more monarchical and more populist than ever before. Watching how Nancy Reagan and Hillary Clinton lived and died by the polls opens an interesting window on the various fluctuations endured by George Bush and by Bill Clinton. First ladies, of course, are more vulnerable to the shifting popular winds, as they lack most of the political, official, and partisan anchors and insulation presidents enjoy.

For all the instability incumbents experience, in what often seems to be the age of the Manic-Depressive presidency, two recent "Teflon" presidencies suggest the opposite as well. The popularity of both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton defied stresses and scandals that would have devastated other, mere mortal, pols. Both Reagan and Clinton were able to generate a story line about peace and prosperity that could withstand occasionally inconvenient facts. Their first ladies were essential characters in those stories. Sometimes the spouses served as lightening rods, sometimes as boosters, but always as central figures.

The first lady's centrality in developing this narrative, in creating a winning image, makes delving into politics riskier. The first lady's intrusion into politics unsettles many Americans. This unelected and seemingly unaccountable presidential agent makes both traditionalists and progressives uncomfortable: conservatives may want the "little lady" to mind her beeswax, while many feminists do not want women attaining power via their spouses. It is bad enough that, even though many modern marriages operate on dual-career tracks, the spouse of the president has to make her husband her career. By keeping some distance from politics and policy, the first lady contains the questions about her disproportionate and perhaps illegitimate power.

Just as popular swings buffet first ladies even more than presidents, first ladies experience the predicaments of modern women more intensely than most. This uniquely complicated post attracts many of the mixed messages bombarding today's women. Whatever resistance is faced by a woman wielding power, the constitutionally anomalous and culturally contradictory position of presidential spouse intensifies it. Whatever role-juggling any modern woman might endure, living in the White House makes it worse. A first lady is supposed to be a spouse, a mother, a queen, a campaigner, a movie star, a model, an author, a lobbyist, a hostess, a do-gooder, an orator, a cheerleader, a crusader, and a philosopher. She has to be loyal, genteel, sweet, upbeat, unflappable, savvy, eloquent, hip, glamorous, accessible, substantive, effective, independent yet deeply dependent, and traditional yet progressive. She has to avoid offending feminists and cultural conservatives, all the while playing to the great American middle.

This reading of the recent experiences of the first ladies suggests some sobering conclusions. First ladies remain caught in the cross-fire between traditional, aristocratic demands that they act like "ladies" and more modern demands that they take advantage of the opportunities offered to the most prominent woman in American politics. They not only have to cope with the continuing sexist fears of powerful women that could tar Nancy Reagan and Hillary Rodham Clinton with the same brush; they also have to contend with the peculiarities of their position and the continuing American fear of anyone getting too close to the President, male or female, aide or spouse.

It is understandable why this inability to wield power freely would frustrate many modern first ladies. But, as the therapist Virginia Satir teaches, "the unit of decision making is one." Ultimately, the president cannot share power with the first lady or anyone else. However, "the unit of intimacy is two": the first lady is uniquely positioned to help the president as no one else can, as an equal and familiar ally whose relationship transcends the insanity of White House life.30

In defending her role, Nancy Reagan noted that the first lady tends to the president's "human needs." Away from the hoopla, in the privacy of the executive mansion, spouses have kept presidents grounded, normal, and happy. After a lifetime of constant campaigning away from home, presidents often find themselves confined and isolated in the White House. Most presidential marriages have thus thrived while living in what Harry Truman called "the great White jail." Amid power-hungry aides and fawning visitors, presidents need their spouses as safe havens.

True, the nature of the job makes the relationship somewhat one-sided: the sensitive spouse provides what the president needs. Eleanor Roosevelt was her handicapped spouse's roving "eyes and ears." Mamie Eisenhower could not make her husband do the dishes, as she had when he led Columbia University. Still, her patter about her shopping and their grandchildren distracted her husband from Cold War tensions. Nancy Reagan saw that advisors often froze when meeting the leader of the free world so she functioned as a conduit, telling her passive spouse what no one else dared tell him.31 These women defined their primary task as supporting the president. Some were even lucky enough to have their spouses reciprocate: Dwight Eisenhower thanked his wife with extravagant renovations to their Gettysburg farmhouse; Harry Truman mollified Mrs. Truman by retiring to Missouri rather than running for the Senate.

First ladies are always on the run, and they cannot hide. For all the rhetoric during the Lewinsky scandal about keeping the president's private life private, even Bill Clinton could not resist interrupting his 1999 State of the Union speech to whisper a very public "I love you" to his long-suffering spouse. But again and again, first ladies have learned, either the easy way, like Barbara Bush, or the hard way, like Hillary Clinton, that they have a mandate for joint imagemaking but not powersharing, to be a first lady, not a co-president.

AcknowledgementsThis article was based on a paper presented to the Organization of American Historians annual meeting in Toronto, in April, 1999. Among the many people who helped in the preparation of this article, the author would like to thank Professors Allida Black, Alonzo Hamby, and Robert Watson.

1 Vogue, Dec. (1998). pp. 233, 231.

2 Glamour, Aug. (1992). p. 269.

3 Vanity Fair, May. (1992). p. 144.

4 Newsweek, 1 July. (1996). p. 23.

5 Goodwin, D.K. (1994). No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: the Home Front in World War II, p. 539. New York: Simon and Schuster.

6 Hamilton, A., et al. (1788). "No. 68," The Federalist, p. 444. New York: The Modern Library.

7 Troy, G. (1996). See How They Ran: The Changing Role of the Presidential Candidate. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Harvard

8 McCall's, February. (1964). p. 4.

9 Johnson, L. to Dubinsky, D. 28 Oct. (1964). Box 2, Ex TR1, Lyndon B. Johnson Library.

10 CBS. (1963). "The New President: Lyndon B. Johnson". New York: 23, Nov. 1963, MP 521, Audiovisual Collection, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, TX.

11 Troy, G. (2000). Mr. and Mrs. President: From the Trumans to the Clintons. 2nd ed. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, pp. 207–235.

12 Washington Post. (1978). 25 June. K1-K2.

13 Ibid.

14 Atlanta Constitution. (1978). 1 Aug. 6A.

15 Time, (1979). 7 May. p. 22.

16 Washington Star, (1979). 3 Aug. A11.

17 Washington Post. (1979). 4 Oct. p. 19.

18 Newsweek. (1979). 6 Nov. p. 36.

19 New York Times. (1987). 3 Mar. 4:5.

20 Atlanta Constitution. (1987). 12 Mar. A23.

21 Reagan, N. (1987). "Remarks for Associated Press Publisher's Luncheon. 4 May 1987, pp. 1, 6, 10, 14–16, WHORM: Staff Member Office Files, Office of the First Lady, F95–109, Ronald Reagan Library, Simi Valley, California.

22 Washington Post. (1988). 13 May, A22.

23 Ladies Home Journal. (1987). Aug. p. 66.

24 Ms. (1988). July, p. 66.

25 New York Times. (1989). 15 Jan. p. 20.

26 Vanity Fair. (1992). May p. 144.

27 Banner, L. (1992). In Full Flower. New York: Alfred A. Knopf; MacDonald, B. (1989). "Outside the Sisterhood: Ageism in Women's Studies", Women's Studies Quarterly, Spring/Summer, p. 6.

28 Bushman, R. L. (1992). The Refinement of America, pp. 440–446. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

29 Ford, B. (1978). The Times of My Life, p. 194. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.

30 Satir, V. (1996). Unpublished Remarks made at a Retreat, Val Morin, Quebec.

31 Reagan, N. (1989). My Turn. New York: Random House--------------------------------------------------------------

Presidents Wives! Fascinating Insight Into Recent Era First Ladies! is an annotated work based on the Mr. and Mrs. president? The rise and fall of the co-presidency

By Gil Troy

a McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada The Social Science Journal v. 37 no4 (2000) p. 591-600