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Book Review
| The Presidential Companion: Readings on the First Ladies. Ed. by Robert P. Watson and Anthony J. Eksterowicz. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003. xvi, 349 pp. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 1-57003-461-3.)The Presidency and Women: Promise, Performance, and Illusion. By Janet M. Martin. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2003. xvi, 350 pp. $55.00, ISBN 1-58544-245-3.)
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| Two political histories reflect a recent scholarly interest in the presidency and gender. At the time of the twentieth century's greater acceptance of women's capabilities, careers, and contributions, the essays in The Presidential Companion react in various ways to the irresolvable conflict over the First Lady's position largely because of changing societal definitions of women and wives in juxtaposition to the traditional public expectations of the president's wife in an unelected, nonconstitutional position. Janet M. Martin's The Presidency and Women examines women's increased involvement in policy making and in pressures on presidents John F. Kennedy through Jimmy Carter for gender-related policies and appointments during the second wave of feminism. |
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First ladies, as The Presidential Companion points out, enter the public political sphere because of their private role of being wives; they rise to prominence, not because of their own accomplishments, but rather because of their marriage to a specific man. The editors, Robert P. Watson and Anthony J. Eksterowicz, both political scientists, argue that an understanding of presidential spouses is central to the study of the American presidency. The difficulty of a designated First Lady, as Kay Knickrehm and Robin Teske attest, is the absence of a clearly defined formal role (p. 247). In "Copresident or Codependent?," the historian Gil Troy explains that the clashes over the Clintons stood at the end of the century where three institutions clashed: "the presidency, the quintessential American institution; marriage, the quintessential human institution; the media, perhaps the most influential institution in America today" (p. 254). |
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Besides treating a variety of topics historically, from the establishment of the First Lady's social position through the behind-the-scenes advisory influences to the more open political and policy activism of Betty Ford and Hillary Clinton, the fourteen chapters in The Presidential Companion cover either singly or as a group the development of the position, its social influence, its political and policy influences, and the modern first ladies of the past two decades. Overall, The Presidential Companion gives mixed results for new insight and understanding. There are many rehashes and summations of previous studies, primarily because of a reliance on secondary sources. Yet there are also outstanding chapters, such as Colton Campbell and Sean McCluskie's on congressional testimony and the impact of Lady Bird Johnson and Hillary Clinton, and Glenn Hastedt's on foreign policy. In leading up to Hastedt's five-stage policy process for evaluating the foreign policy actions of Rosalynn Carter and Hillary Clinton, the political scientist skillfully builds on various theoretical frameworks to explain actions and results, such as Robert Watson's First Lady partnership types; various foreign policy frameworks as to influences and impacts; and Christine Sylvester's and Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones's feminist frameworks, such as the peace and the belligerent schools. |
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Noting how the First Lady influences gender policy and appointments is The Presidency and Women, part of the Presidency and Leadership series. Professor Martin fills a gap in the scholarship about the interactions of five presidents with the country's largest interest group, women, and with their organizations' pressures for change and inclusion. Beginning with the presidencies of Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon, small incremental improvements were made. By the middle 1970s, presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter made concerted political initiatives for women with efforts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), enforce affirmative action, and appoint more than one female in a high-level position. By the time of the presidency of Bill Clinton twenty years later, it was no longer unusual to include such policy issues as funding for women's health research, family leave, and child care. |
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