Pat and Dick by Will Swift5/31/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() That effort included visits to colleges and to volunteer programs in which college students participated. ![]() Pat Nixon’s biggest involvement in her husband’s administration’s Vietnam War activities involved stepping “carefully out of the White House to try to smooth” the deep political divisions the war engendered among the American populace, especially among young people. “Haldeman disdained her preference for tackling her pile of correspondence over taking a more active public role in supporting the president’s programs. He dismissively called her Thelma (her middle name) behind her back.” ![]() “She was put off by arrogant manner and his desire to isolate the president,” Swift says. Haldeman, who all but ignored it as the two did not get along. The President often passed on his wife’s input to his chief of staff, H.R. Swift-the author of The Roosevelts and the Royals and T he Kennedys Amidst the Gathering Storm-says that Pat Nixon regularly discussed issues of importance, including the Vietnam War, with her husband from the beginning of his presidency in 1969. That situation has changed with the publication of Pat and Dick: The Nixons, An Intimate Portrait of a Marriage (Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster, 496 pp., $30), a dual biography in which author Will Swift chronicles the ups and downs of the 53-year marriage of Dick Nixon and Pat Ryan. It’s safe to say that the story of First Lady Pat Nixon’s influence on her husband’s Vietnam War policy making has not been addressed in any of the many books on the Nixon administration and the war. ![]()
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