Swift has founded speaker's series, international organizations, writer's groups and has participated in many panels at conferences. Kennedy and Richard Nixon libraries on history. An influential leader and a speaker on effective leadership, he has lectured at Oxford University on psychology and at the Franklin D. He offers personal coaching about how to thrive in your career and your personal life. There are occasional enlightening moments, as when Pat, who very much did not want her husband to run for governor of California in 1962, finally acquiesced to the campaign, sighing to their famous dog, "Well, Checkers, here we go again." You can almost picture the woman rolling her eyes.Author and public speaker Will Swift offers a unique blend of skills: He is a historian, a biographer, and a practicing clinical psychologist, who specializes in cognitive and marital therapy. It relies for the most part on sympathetic sources such as Richard Nixon's autobiography and Julie Nixon Eisenhower's biography of her mother. When Nixon, after his humiliating loss in the California gubernatorial race in 1962 (which most people at the time thought ended his career in politics), lashed out drunkenly at the press in his so-called "last press conference," his wife, "still bitter about press coverage of her husband," rather than being appalled at Nixon's intemperate outburst, yelled "Bravo!" There is a very fine line between being supportive of one's spouse and being an enabler of his bad behavior if Nixon was, as Swift points out, "quick to feel victimized," his wife was even quicker to agree with him.īased on newly released letters and documents unavailable to previous Nixon biographers (most of whom Swift ignores, with the notable exception of the sycophantic Jonathan Aitken), "Pat and Dick" is very much a popular, not a scholarly biography. But as you get further into Swift's account of the Nixons' marriage and their journey though American politics, you start to wonder whether Pat Nixon was really suited to be a political wife, or if her chronic inability to let go of a grudge exacerbated her husband's worst instincts. It is hard to read about Pat Nixon's difficult if not traumatic childhood and not deeply admire the strength and determination that allowed her to overcome obstacles that would have crushed a lesser person. It was the first victory that made all his future victories possible.
Nixon overcame her initial indifference, wore down her resistance, and eventually made her his wife.
Nowadays we would consider Nixon's behavior during their courtship grounds for a restraining order (Pat later told a biographer that she thought her suitor was "nuts or something"), but it worked. When Richard Nixon (referred to by the author as "Dick") first met Pat Ryan, he was immediately smitten, and with his customary dogged determination was prepared to undergo any humiliation at her hands to win her.
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