Melania Trump v. John Kelly: First Ladies & West Wing Personnel, A Brief History

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and First Lady Melania Trump at the United Nations, October 2017. (Zimbio)

The news reports which broke yesterday caught even the most assiduous chroniclers of the man occupying the presidency and his wife by surprise.

It was the First Lady Melania Trump, regarded as functioning independently from the words and deeds of her husband, who was being credited in the mainstream media as the driving force seeking the ouster of Chief of Staff John Kelly.

Kelly greets the boss’s wife.

This was based on claims that he has long failed to make good on her promises to her staff for promotions, claiming the slots were unavailable – while awarding them to his staff.

Not until the First Lady raised the issue with her husband were the promotions, for her communications director and social secretary – from special presidential assistants to deputy presidential assistants – finally granted.

There were also reports that Kelly had failed to include the First Lady’s staff on Air Force One or Marine One, or reserve them hotel or motorcade spaces, which she “viewed as a slight.”

More overtly, with a startlingly frank official statement, the Office of the First Lady made clear its support for the move to fire Deputy National Security Advisor Mira Ricardel after the two women allegedly clashed over the First Lady’s recent trip to Africa.

The details and facts still remain unconfirmed, but if it proves to be true, Melania Trump is but the latest in a long line of First Ladies to exercise their formidable if unofficial prerogative.

Michelle Obama v. Rahmn Emanuel

Perhaps the nation has at least evolved to the point of not finding fault with First Ladies for clashing with senior West Wing personnel. The early conflicts between First Lady Michelle Obama and the President’s first Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel exposed in the book The Obamas by New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor offered new insights into the popular presidential wife’s political acumen, her ignored wisdom on the timing of her husband’s legislative agenda and ensuring problems as a result of it being offered as proof.

Criticism of Mrs. Obama for interceding on West Wing personnel never emerged during the 2012 election as some predicted it would. Perhaps the media had a longer memory for history than usual.

Had it made her an issue for “inappropriateness” outside the perception of a First Lady’s traditional scope it would have struck the same false notes heard twenty-five years before, when they were leveled against Nancy Reagan. 

Basing such attacks on the premise that voters do not elect a First Lady to become involved in managing the presidency is overridden by the fact that Presidents do.

And while the contention that if she hadn’t married him, she’d have no such power is obvious, far more rarely acknowledged is the fact that, if he hadn’t married her, he’d unlikely have obtained his power. In the climb to the White House, the men who would become Presidents found they thrived with a partner committed to managing the business of their lives. 

First Ladies are deeply imbedded into a President’s functioning long before Inauguration Day.

A Chief of Staff can seek access into a President’s thoughts, but only a First Lady holds the key to explore his soul. Based on that inexplicable alchemy of human relationship, a First Lady’s emotional influence on a President is the most elusive aspect of her political role and potentially the most important.

And while it may seem obvious that those involved in policy might challenge a Chief of Staff’s rule, those defined as “traditional wives” can more devastatingly challenge the staff’s competence, motives and indispensability by simply claiming the right to do so as a “concerned wife” seeking to “protect my husband.” 

Short of a Constitutional amendment requiring that Presidents be unmarried, there’s no getting around the “wild card” of the executive branch. In their “zone of privacy,” a First Lady faces the real person who suits up into a presidential persona.

She can forcefully contradict him, relay information nobody else dares to, suggest improvements on a speech he reads in bed, pose searching questions to help him reaffirm his mission, detect when he’s overscheduled or isolated and seek to rectify it.

Without having to make frequent appearances in the West Wing, a First Lady can also raise credibility questions about his Chief of Staff by asking why he isn’t doing some of this.  In fact, the more ephemeral her presence there, the more formidably her shadow is perceived, especially if a President arrives in the morning with an approach on a matter which differs from his thinking the night before.

If a First Lady’s influence can fuel a Chief of Staff’s jealousy and her contradicting his advice can lead to resentment, no Chief of Staff has been known to complain about a First Lady to a President.  Other undermining methods are used,  such as committing her to attend events without prior approval, limiting her staff budgets, denying them access to briefings, ignoring her requests or suggestions, or preventing her from joint appearances with the President. Some First Ladies react with passive resistance, others just acquiesce.

However, when a First Lady learns about an ineffective or dictatorial Chief of Staff placing his self-interests above those of the President, the battle begins. It usually ends the same way. Many a President has asked for the resignation of a Chief of Staff.

None have divorced their wives.

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Nellie Taft v. Fred Carpenter

The beleagured President’s Chief of Staff Fred Carpenter and the bane of his existence, First Lady Nellie Taft.

The first time whispers about conflict between a First Lady and a Chief of Staff went public was 108 years ago when the White House announced that Fred Carpenter, the President’s Secretary (a title then analogous to the contemporary term “Chief of Staff,” used here throughout for the sake of consistency) had been named Ambassador to Morocco.

The truth about Carpenter’s “promotion,” however, broke with a June 5, 1910 New York Times story headlined, “Pity the Sorrows of the President’s Secretary,” and revealed that:

When Mrs. Taft expressed disapproval of things in general or particular.…Carpenter’s teeth chattered…Had Secretary Carpenter possessed as strong a champion in Mrs. [Nellie] Taft as Mr. [William] Loeb [Secretary to President Theodore Roosevelt] had in Mrs. [Edith] Roosevelt, it is quite likely that he would have found his pathway smoother and would not have fled to Morocco.

Martha Washington v. Tobias Lear

Martha Washington and Tobias Lear.

Martha Washington never disclosed her true opinion of Tobias Lear, Chief of Staff to her husband, the first President George Washington.

When she arrived at the presidential mansion in May of 1789, a month after her husband’s inauguration, she found a list of protocol limitations and scheduled events which he’d drawn up and expected her to follow. She soon sniped in a family letter that it left her feeling like a “state prisoner.”

She and the President were outraged when they discovered Lear pocketed some of their money, collected on their behalf. He had a bit of an insurance policy on keeping Martha’s begrudging tolerance. When his first wife died, he married the President’s niece. When she died, he married the First Lady’s niece.

Abigail Adams v. Thomas Adams

Abigail Fillmore v. Powers Fillmore

Dolley Madison, Sarah Polk Jane Pierce

 

First Lady Abigail Adams and her son, the President’s Private Secretary Thomas Adams.

Sarah Polk fulfilled the duties of both First Lady and the President’s private Chief of Staff.

The early Presidents had to salary their own “Private Secretary,” and hired needy nephews and their own sons, a practice they continued even after discovering a way to have them federally-salaried, by requisitioning a federal Land Office clerk position to the White House.

As both First Lady and mother of the President’s Chief of Staff, Abigail Adams felt free to openly belittle the way her 26 year old son Thomas conducted his job during the last two years of the presidency.

Similarly, Abigail Fillmore always felt the need to tell her son Powers how to improve his work habits in the White House when he served as the President’s Secretary.

When her cousin Ned Coles, Chief of Staff to her husband James Madison was ill with a fever, First Lady Dolley Madison felt herself qualified to simply take on his job – in the midst of war.

Sarah Polk improved on this and avoided any family conflicts. The President’s nephew was assigned the more mundane secretarial duties while she took on both the First Lady and Chief of Staff roles, making herself more trusted a presidential adviser than any Cabinet member.

As the presidency grew, so too did the tasks and status of the Chief of Staff and the First Ladies. Without a staff of their own, First Ladies depended on those working for their husbands with often presumptuous demands.

Sidney Webster, President Franklin Pierce’s Chief of Staff, although sympathetic to the severe depression of religiously zealous Jane Pierce resented her directive that he and the executive clerks all attend church services on Sunday, their only day off. But they went.

Mary Lincoln v. John Hay and John Nicolay

First Lady Mary Lincoln and President Abraham Lincoln with his two primary aides and advisors, John Nicolay (l) and John Hay (r).

There was no more contentious relationship between a First Lady and the President’s chief aides than that of Mary Lincoln’s with John Hay and John Nicolay. She contradicted both of the young men whose loyalty to the Civil War president was as intense as his wife’s. She snapped at them for making any decision related to Abraham Lincoln’s personal life which she believed usurped her rights as his wife. She also demanded their time and attention in seeing to minor political appointments she wanted made.

Behind her back they circulated their derisive nicknames for her, “the Hellcat,” and “La Reine,” but neither Hay nor Nicolay ever approached the President about the problem of his wife. Mary Lincoln, in contrast, complained openly to him of those she considered as not serving him well.

The President neither fired Hay nor Nicolay – and never asked his wife to cease involving herself in his work.

Julia Grant v. Orville Babcock

Orville Babcock and Julia Grant.

Ignoring her own indirect role in one of her husband’s Administration scandals, Black Friday, in which she was accused of mightily profiting, Julia Grant’s persistent mistrust of the President’s third Chief of Staff, Orville Babcock, fell on deaf ears with the chief executive who was loyal to a fault.

Babcock was accused with no only bribery for jobs in the executive departments, but indicted in the Whiskey Ring scandal. Babcock was defended by President Grant in a historical deposition in 1876 that resulted in acquittal.

Julia Grant, however, long blamed Babcock for tainting the Grant Administration.

Edith Wilson v. Edward House

First Lady Edith Wilson came between her husband the President and his chief advisor Colonel Edward House – literally and figuratively.

Edith Wilson, who married the widowed incumbent President Woodrow Wilson in 1915 had both a long memory and a lot of patience. Learning of how vigorously the President’s primary adviser Colonel Edward House and Press Secretary Joseph Tumulty had urged Wilson not to marry her, for fear of how his doing so so shortly after his first wife’s death might affect his 1916 re-election, she harbored a deep resentment of not only their influence over him but fears that she would isolate him.

When the President suffered his massive stroke in 1918, and Edith Wilson began running the presidency as best she could, she got the chance to prove their worst fears.

She refused to let House have any further, direct contact with her husband ever again, and diminished Tumulty into nothing more than her own servant, to help prevent the truth of Wilson’s condition from the public.

Mamie Eisenhower v. Sherman Adams

Mamie Eisenhower at far left, and Sherman Adams (far rigt).

Mamie Eisenhower learned all she needed to know about Chief of Staff Sherman Adams during the 1952 campaign when she found that he had taken the suite connected to her husband and put her down the hall.

Finally, at one hotel, Adams found the room he reserved for himself already taken by an early-arriving Mamie. She never gave him the chance to presume unfettered access to the President, refusing to permit the Chief of Staff into the family quarters or to socialize with him.

When a Congressional investigation determined that Adams had inappropriately accepted personal gifts from a manufacturer in violation of Federal Trade Commission rules, Mamie urged Ike to get rid of him as soon as possible.

Unable to do so himself, the President asked Vice President Nixon to tells Adams he had to resign. It was a primary reason Mamie Eisenhower felt perpetual gratitude to Nixon and praised his loyalty to her husband.

Pat Nixon v. H.R. Haldeman

First Lady Pat Nixon and Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman.

Nixon was less successful in managing the conflict which arose between his wife First Lady Pat Nixon and Chief of Staff, H.R. “Bob” Haldeman. Not only did Haldeman determine to use her as a public relations venue, but he chose the first Chief of Staff to a First Lady to carry out his mission.

He hadn’t counted on the woman, Connie Stuart, looking out more for Mrs. Nixon’s interests than his own, nor her resistance to his orders. She was soon fired.

The conflict between a First Lady’s concerns for the President’s personal interests versus the Chief of Staff’s focus on the political agenda was dramatically illustrated during the Nixon presidency.

The deeper the President drew on Haldeman’s questionable advice, the further he drifted from his genuine wife’s wise sensibilities. One of her friends later claimed that Pat Nixon had urged the President to burn his secret Oval Office tape recordings while they were still legally considered personal property. Haldeman did not endorse or encourage the President to do any such thing, though it is unknown whether the President would have followed the advice if it had been given.

Regardless, the tapes were soon subpoenaed and incriminated Nixon in the Watergate scandal, forcing his resignation. When Haldeman had been forced to resign, it was not insignificant that Mrs. Nixon issued no well-wishing farewell message.

Jackie Kennedy v. Ted Sorenson

Jacqueline Kennedy with her husband; the President’s speechwriter and advisor Ted Sorensen, at right.

If Pat Nixon never voiced her concerns with the President, Jackie Kennedy tried to do so with her President. As suggested in her recently-opened oral history taped interview, Jackie Kennedy held a dim view of some of her husband’s senior staff, especially appalled at what she considered the self-serving unctuousness of advisor Ted Sorensen.

Feeling that the young speechwriter took far too much credit for his work in a way that belittled the President, she was also bewildered by how her husband shrugged off her concerns as part of the way politics worked.

Betty Ford v. Dick Cheney

Former First Lady Betty Ford and Former Presidential Chief of Staff Dick Cheney.

Betty Ford may have broken the old-school First Lady rule of avoiding hotly contentious public issues when she openly talked about the Supreme Court decision no longer making abortion illegal, marijuana use by young people, her own discovery and treatment of breast cancer and her advocacy of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Her husband’s Chief of Staff Dick Cheney, however, found her to be a threat to the President’s approval ratings and political capital. While he did not openly contest the First Lady, his colleague Don Rumsfeld refused to cooperate with the requests of her staff to be fully integrated into the Administration and its agenda.

Mrs. Ford’s Press Secretary later concluded that while Cheney and Rumsfeld thought the First Lady to be a sassy and colorful sidelight of the Ford Administration, to the end they resented her popularity and thought her role insignificant.

Nancy Reagan v. Don Regan

First Lady Nancy Reagan and President Reagan’s later Chief of Staff Don Regan.

Few First Ladies stood their ground against a Chief of Staff with more affirmative conviction in defense of her husband’s reputation than did Nancy Reagan. From the time former Treasury Secretary Don Regan was made Ronald Reagan’s Chief of Staff in 1985 until he was forced to resign in 1986, he displayed a smug rudeness which earned him the moniker of “Prime Minister.”

She first became concerned after learning that Regan ordered the presidential helicopter for his own use while the President was recovering from cancer surgery. The more arrogant and politically damaging of his actions were publicly disclosed in the Tower Report, blaming him for misleading the public in the wake of the Iran-Contra scandal. The First Lady’s efforts to speak with him and their disagreements over the President’s schedule led the Chief of Staff to famously slam the phone done on her. 

Urged and pressed by many in the Administration – including the Vice President – to convince the President to fire Regan, she made her case and the Chief of Staff was finally replaced.

The deposed Chief of Staff reacted by publishing a sensational memoir in which he disclosed her request that astrology be used in the president’s official scheduling; no such personal revelations had previously been cast against an incumbent First Lady before to the degree that they were by Regan.  Still, most in the Administration was relieved to see him go and  grateful to the First Lady. Years later, Mrs. Reagan completely forgave him.

(portions of this article were first published on this website).

 


Categories: First Families, First Ladies, The Trumps

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