Steven E. Levingston on Mary C. Brennan's upcoming book on Pat Nixon:Chief among her adversaries was chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, who saw it as his job to build a wall around the president, leaving Pat Nixon and many others excluded. When the administration bought a new airplane for the president’s 1972 campaign, Haldeman put the first lady’s compartment at the back. To see her husband, Pat Nixon had to walk through the White House staff offices – until she intervened and had the plane redesigned.
Haldeman annoyed the first lady by inserting himself into staffing and other matters of her East Wing operations. “On more than one occasion,” Brennan writes, “she ‘blasted’ Haldeman for his interference in her domain.”
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It would be nice if she received belated recognition. To the extent she is remembered, she is recalled fondly. But US history tends to be popularly summarized today as "JFK, RR good; RN bad"; everyone else forgotten.
She should be posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom or have a small garden decicated in her honor in the National Mall. Heck, the panda enclosure at the DC Zoo should bear her name (no pun intended), if not anything else. I am surprised that no such effort seems to have been undertaken.
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