Patricia Ryan Nixon has been repeatedly described as the most enigmatic of the post-World War II First Ladies. Preternaturally poised, attractively dressed and coiffed, relentlessly cheerful, and an indefatigable campaigner, she appears to have never put a foot wrong in her public life. For all these things, she earned the sobriquet “Plastic Pat.” Even as her heart must have been shattered, she stoically stood by as her husband endured the humiliation of being forced to resign the office of the President of the United States – an office she had been so instrumental in his winning twice. Since she was almost pathologically private, it’s good to see a modern biography of her.           

Pat Nixon was born Thelma Catherine Ryan, the third of three children, in 1912 in Ely, Montana, a small Nevada mining town. By the time she was seventeen, both her parents had died. Money was always tight in the Ryan family, and they struggled financially. Because of this situation, Pat Nixon was no stranger to hard work. She worked a variety of jobs to put her – and her two brothers – through college, graduating cum laude with a degree in merchandising from the University of Southern California in 1937. Pat also earned a certificate to teach at the high school level. At that time, the college recognized that as equivalent to a master’s degree, and she got a teaching job at Whittier Union High School in Whittier, California. After joining a theater group she met Richard Nixon, who was immediately smitten; but Pat was enjoying her life as a single, sought-after young woman. She continued to put him off. She eventually gave him permission to drive her to and from dates with other men, and damn if he didn’t do it. When they finally went out, Nixon proposed on their first date! After two years of dating, they married in June of 1940 and moved to Washington, D.C 

America was on the brink of war and Washington D.C. throbbed with activity. Both Pat and Dick obtained jobs with the federal government. The former president decided to enlist in the Navy and was stationed in San Francisco while Pat worked for the American Red Cross and the Office of Price Administration.           

After the war, Nixon was recruited by the local Republican Party to run for a seat in the House of Representatives in 1946, and while politics was not the life Pat would have chosen for herself, she gamely joined the campaign, writing campaign literature and conducting research. In 1949, Nixon won a seat in the United States Senate, and in 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower chose him as his running mate for his presidential campaign. In 1960 Nixon became the Republican candidate for the presidency, and both of them worked long and hard to ensure his success. While the margin in the popular vote was razor thin, the vote in the Electoral College was decisive, and Nixon lost to his friend and colleague, Senator John F. Kennedy. There were plenty of stories and rumors about campaign irregularities, yet Nixon refused to contest the election. Against the advice of his wife – she did, however, work very hard on his behalf – Nixon ran for the governorship of California and was handily defeated by the Democrat Edmund “Pat” Brown. In his speech, he was unable to hold back his bitter disappointment; he said in part, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” The press had a field day and predicted that Nixon would never again hold a high public office. Pat’s usual composure deserted her and face was streaked with tears           

After the 1962 defeat, Pat was finally able to be a full-time wife and mother to her husband and two daughters, Tricia and Julie, and she reveled in it. The family moved to New York, bought a new home, and Dick joined a private law firm where he made $250,000 a year. Pat busied herself decorating their new home and she and her teenaged daughters, along with family friends, spent six weeks in Europe. Indeed, the period between his 1962 defeat and his campaign for the presidency in 1968 could be said to be one of the happiest times in their marriage.           

Richard Nixon kept his hand in Republican politics, and the couple worked hard on behalf of the Republican Party and the Barry Goldwater ticket in 1964. Alas, Lyndon B. Johnson and the Democrats wiped out the Republican Party in that year’s presidential election and took firm control of both chambers of Congress. But Nixon continued to work on behalf of the party, and by the next year, had made up his mind to once again run for the presidency. Again, Pat sublimated her wishes to those of her husband and gamely joined the campaign.           

When Nixon won the 1968 election, Pat was certainly up to the task of being the nation’s First Lady. She was unfailingly described as a warm and gracious representative of her country. She especially shone abroad, traveling on behalf of the administration and was quietly successful as a diplomat in her own right. While it is a stretch to give her too much credit for advancing the causes of women, Pat did so in ways large and small. She promoted the idea of appointing a woman to the Supreme Court, and when Nixon named two men instead, it was said that she was furious. As First Lady, she visited the continent of Africa – the first to do so – and by presenting she and her husband as partners, opened up a role for the wives of Soviet leaders who were for the first time invited to a state banquet. Pat personally supported a women’s right to choose abortion, got the Equal Rights Amendment written into the 1972 Republican Party platform, and was a fierce defender of her husband. “No one crossed Pat Nixon lightly, nor did she forget a slight upon her husband – in her mind, an attack upon him was an attack upon her,” said Heath Hardage Lee.                   

She also battled mightily to keep from being sidelined by Nixon’s staff, and readers may be surprised to learn that she was especially wary of John Erlichman and H. R. Haldeman. Lee alleges that she worried about their influence on the President and the way they routinely ignored her and the East Wing team’s accomplishments on behalf of his administration. Living in the White House caused strains in their marriage that were exacerbated by Watergate. His resignation was, of course, the lowest point of their lives, and the flight back to California was excruciating and mostly silent, each member of the Nixon family lost in their own thoughts and feelings.           

When I mentioned to friends and colleagues that I was reviewing a new biography of Pat Nixon, talk invariably turned to the question, “Who would marry Richard Nixon?” Yet Lee writes that in private the Nixons were a close and loving couple. Richard Nixon wrote her romantic notes and letters – very few of which have survived – and changed protocol so that at state banquets she was served before him. Pat Nixon described her husband as smart and fun. Nixon acknowledged that it was Pat who kept his spirits up while they lived in exile.           

In 1976 Pat suffered a stroke and was paralyzed on the left side of her body. She undertook a grueling course of physical therapy and was able to recover. The Nixons moved to New York and she made it to the opening of the then Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. The Nixons moved again in 1979, settling in a townhouse in New York, and two years later moved to Saddle River, New Jersey, which allowed them to spend more time with their children and grandchildren. Her last public appearance was in 1991 when the Nixons attended the opening of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, where she looked gaunt and frail. She continued to battle serious health problems, including oral cancer – like Jacqueline Kennedy, she was a heavy smoker although she was never seen smoking in public – lung infections and another stroke. On June 22, 1993, Pat Nixon died in the company of her daughters and her devoted husband. I remember being shocked at how the former president broke down in tears at her service.

After he resigned the presidency, Richard Nixon lamented that his wife didn’t get “the praise she deserved.” She had, he said, “given so much to the nation and much to the world. Now she would have to share my exile. She deserved so much more.” In The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon, she is finally celebrated for her own accomplishments.