A match made in heaven — or a quick path to electoral victory? Julie Nixon proved you really can have it both ways.
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00:00A match made in heaven, or a quick path to electoral victory?
00:05Julie Nixon proved you really can have it both ways.
00:09In a 2015 interview with CNN, then-Prince Charles recounted his past visits to the United
00:14States.
00:16His first in 1970 stood out for more reasons than one.
00:20Charles said,
00:21That was the time that they were trying to marry me off to Trisha Nixon.
00:25Trisha's father, Richard Nixon, might well have suffered from royal envy.
00:29At the time, the president tried harder than any of his recent predecessors to emulate
00:34the trappings of monarchy.
00:36If Nixon did harbor any hopes for a dynastic alliance with the House of Windsor, however,
00:41he was doomed to disappointment.
00:43Still, his younger daughter had found a match by then, one that could be called the American
00:48equivalent of a royal marriage.
00:50Nixon's relationship with Dwight D. Eisenhower was complicated.
00:54Eisenhower once tried to remove Nixon from the 1952 presidential ticket over a financial
00:59scandal, and later tried to offload him into the cabinet.
01:02Nevertheless, Nixon proved himself a loyal vice president over eight years, and Eisenhower
01:08gradually built up a respect for Nixon's political acumen.
01:12Then during Nixon's tenure as president-elect, his daughter Julie married Eisenhower's grandson
01:17David.
01:18By the time he left the White House in 1960, Dwight D. Eisenhower had come to appreciate
01:23Richard Nixon.
01:25Generally distrustful of career politicians, Eisenhower nevertheless needed his vice president's
01:30firebrand reputation to shore up support among segments of his own party.
01:35But respect didn't necessarily mean unequivocal support.
01:39During Nixon's run for the presidency in 1960, Charles Moore of Time magazine asked Eisenhower
01:44about any policies that Nixon had convinced him to adopt.
01:48The president replied,
01:54Eisenhower's feelings were similarly hedged when it came to their personal lives.
01:58David and Julie were the same age, and had known each other since 1956.
02:03Although not particularly close as children, they reconnected during college.
02:08But the news that they were dating didn't exactly thrill Eisenhower.
02:12Eisenhower worried that David's career would be hurt by marrying too soon, and he made
02:16his feelings quite plain.
02:18When David proposed to Julie, he couldn't even break the news to his grandfather one-on-one,
02:23forcing him to wait for a large family group to gather.
02:26Julie's charm eventually won Eisenhower over, and she may even have helped soften his attitude
02:31toward her father, as author Jeffrey Frank told U.S. News and World Report.
02:35That also changed the idea about Nixon, that anyone who had a daughter this charming can't
02:40be all that bad.
02:42David Eisenhower and Julie Nixon became engaged in March 1967.
02:47While both were attending college, the couple, both 19 at the time, had already faced pressure
02:52from David's grandfather to slow their relationship down.
02:55But as the 1968 presidential campaign got underway, they faced a different sort of pressure,
03:01this time from the bride-to-be's father.
03:04Richard Nixon counted on Julie and David during his run for the presidency.
03:08They presented the perfect image of a traditional, clean-cut couple during a time when that vision
03:12of American life was giving way to counterculture.
03:16But the timing of the wedding, Nixon felt, was crucial.
03:19When Julie and David discussed setting a date for June 1968, Nixon fretted that it would
03:24look too much like a publicity move.
03:26He also worried that Dwight Eisenhower would blame him for exactly that, a point on which
03:30David concurred.
03:32When Nixon became president-elect later that year, however, he changed his tune on making
03:37a show out of the wedding.
03:39Nixon lobbied his daughter to set a date after his inauguration and to hold the wedding in
03:43the White House.
03:45Against that pressure, David and Julie Eisenhower instead married on December 22, 1968 in New
03:51York City.
03:52After his wedding and his time at Amherst College, David Eisenhower caused a minor scandal
03:57by going into the Naval Reserve instead of the U.S. Army, a move Time rather cheekily
04:01likened to Ulysses S. Grant joining the Confederates.
04:05Meanwhile, Julie Nixon Eisenhower turned her attention to politics.
04:09While she has never sought office herself, she had acted as an enthusiastic surrogate
04:14for her father during his 1968 campaign.
04:17And it was all plain sailing until, well, you know.
04:21Still, after the Watergate scandal broke, Julie's support for Richard Nixon was so sincere
04:30and so fierce that reporters felt admiration and intimidation in equal measure.
04:35Neither David nor Julie became career politicians or government workers, citing their moderate
04:41views compared to the modern Republican Party.
04:44Julie once told CBS that they'd simply never be elected today.
04:47Instead, they have worked as authors, separately and as a team, and focused on philanthropic
04:53work.
04:54As of December 2023, they will have been married for 55 years.
04:58But don't expect a lavish celebration.
05:01This couple is happy to go unrecognized by the greater public.