Betty Ford: Candor and Courage in the White House

Because the current Republican first lady easily can double as an extra in a "Stepford Wives" film, we must not forget that she is only one, and certainly does not reflect all her predecessors within either the White House institution or the Republican Party. Betty Ford certainly proved that. John Robert Greene's biography of Betty Ford does justice to a woman who was so clearly ahead of her time, and certainly not afraid to admit it either. Whether people love or hate her, they ultimately admit that Betty Ford has ideas of her own. Greene, a historian, previously authored biographies on George H.W. Bush and (appropriately) Gerald Ford. After Spiro T. Agnew and Richard Nixon's resignations, Gerald Ford unexpectedly became the nation's president. Although he is relatively liberal by current Republican standards (which was issue of contention in the 1976 Republican primary) Ford was conservative when compared to his own wife. Even though she was from the World War II era generation---who weren't supposed to support women's liberation, Ford instead championed the Equal Rights Amendment and gave public thanks that abortion was `brought out of the back woods' in interviews which were undoubtedly path-breaking in their own day. In a time when the new right was preparing for the Reagan and Bush eras, Betty Ford was a true lightning rod. Effectively defusing an idea that only `radicals' or `wide eyed youth' wanted policy AND cultural changes, she helped to successfully infuse women's rights with a public `respectability' that several other public female supporters were not able to achieve in 1974-1976. Being First Lady gave Mrs. Ford the ability to draw middle America to the very social movements which they otherwise might have feared. For instance, after finding a lump in her own breast, Mrs. Ford encouraged other women to talk about breast cancer---and promoted the early detection which is now commonplace in America. Because then prevailing sentiment had been to `keep quiet' and attempt treating cancer in later and ultimately more difficult stages, Mrs. Ford has saved many women's lives. When compared against the Republican Party's subsequent and current `pro-family' ideology which actually attempts hiding frank discussions of human anatomy, her actions truly were `pro-life'. For all its celebration, the book does pointedly acknowledge that Ford had a substance abuse problem. Again turning personal experience into public enlightenment/growth, Ford lent her name to the Betty Ford treatment center in California. If the center has subsequently become the stuff of pop culture, it also has humanized first ladies; they experience problems AND also have opinions how to end those problems. Even if she was never actually a co-president and was generally content as First Lady, Betty Ford had ultimately opened the door for successors Rosalyn Carter and Hillary Rodham Clinton to increase the public role in ways which Eleanor Roosevelt had only drea