'First Women' peeks inside the White House

It's next to impossible to really know the women in such an exclusive sorority as first ladies of the United States. Impressions are made, images spun and icons created, and the real personalities of the women married to the most powerful men in the world are usually hidden or warped by partisan attitudes.

In First Women: The Grace and Power of America's Modern First Ladies (Harper, 380 pp., ***½ out of four stars), author Kate Andersen Brower lifts the curtain of secrecy that shields the women who have lived in the White House since Jacqueline Kennedy, and shows the bonds, tensions and personal tests that connect them. "What makes them so compelling is their shared humanity, their imperfection," Brower writes.

The role of a presidential spouse is difficult, hard to quantify and often viewed through a lens of sexism. Because they are so often involved in the softer sides of policy — mental health or beautification or fitness — first ladies seem fodder for the lifestyle sections of websites, newspapers or magazines. They don't really do anything, do they?

But their influence outweighs any government official's. They are usually the first and last people a president sees each day, and their support or scorn can boost a government initiative or doom it. Ronald Reagan's crusade to limit nuclear weapons may have failed if not for his wife's enthusiastic support.

And woe betide a staff member who gets on the wrong side of a first lady.

Nancy Reagan helped revive her husband's administration by urging the firing of his second chief of staff, Donald Regan, whom she disliked heartily. Regan had been an adept Treasury secretary but a clumsy staff man and a poor handler of the first lady. Removing Regan and replacing him with Howard Baker, a former senator wise in the ways of Washington, helped Ronald Reagan regain his momentum and reach extensive nuclear deals with the Soviets.

Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, the last two Democratic first ladies, have a cool relationship in part because of President Obama's defeat of Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination in 2008. But they are united in their distaste for former aide and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. "Hillary came to dislike Emanuel's abrasive style so much that she tried to have him fired from her husband's administration," Brower writes.

Some ties between first ladies are obvious, such as those of Barbara and Laura Bush, only the second mother-in-law and daughter-in-law duo to be first ladies (the others were Abigail and Louisa Adams). Other alliances transcend political ties, particularly the affection held for Republican Betty Ford and Democrat Lady Bird Johnson, who became talismans for the other women who shared their experiences.

A former White House reporter for Bloomberg News, Brower is a thorough researcher who weaves a highly readable story through original reporting and the thorough use of earlier memoirs and histories. The digging she did for her first book, The Residence, about the staffers such as maids and butlers who work on the upper floors of the White House, has been leveraged into more detail for First Women. It makes this new book a gossipy, but surprisingly deep, look at the women who help and sometimes overshadow their powerful husbands.

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Ray Locker, an editor in USA TODAY's Washington, D.C., bureau, is the author of Nixon's Gamble: How a President's Own Secret Government Destroyed His Administration.