Growing Up Republican: Christie Whitman
Beard, Patricia
BOOKS IN REVIEW - "Growing Up Republican: Christie Whitman" Still Growing: The Girl Governor From Pontefract latest book is The Florence King Reader (St. Martin's). She writes "Me Misanthrope's...
...I expect to shoot him any day...
...A farmer is a good farmer or a bad farmer...
...The other is someone who doesn't know that Tolstoy was anything besides a Russian count...
...when Colii, Powell called himselfa "Rockefeller Republican" last year, pundits found nothing odd about his use of such an antiquated tern, to claim membership in the liberal wing of the GOP...
...Nonetheless, she does all she can to help Christie tone down her patrician image, to the extent of ramming politically correct buzzwords into the most sacred aristocratic preserves, e.g., "Foxhunting is more cooperative than competitive...
...She graduated and enrolled at Wheaton College outside of Boston, majoring in political science and graduating in 1968...
...and Asia...
...Only two kinds of people would use the title with that name...
...The Republican Party has always been central to the ideal of public service held by both families: between them, they ran the New Jersey GOP...
...Farming gives you a perspective that no one is inherently better than anyone else, and you can work side by side with anybody...
...she's been telling us about it at show-and-tell...
...She finagled a leave of absence from Foxcroft and attended the Chapin School in Manhattan as a day student...
...The girls had to sleep in sleeping bags on cots on unheated screened porches-three to a porch, which, she believed, made her the odd-girl out...
...He certainly has the financial expertise to be the brains behind Christie's governorship, especially her famously successful 36-percent tax cut...
...hristie knew she wanted to get married and have children," writes Patricia Beard...
...First she issues a dis claimer, saying she doesn't really remember all that much about him from her early years, then nonchalantly adds, "for some reason he always seemed to be in an ill humor on Sunday morning, and he'd vacuum...
...She inadvertently reveals her condi tion in her intro duction when she describes finding a letter to one of her fore bears thank ing hin, for his help in relieving the 1892 Russian s famine...
...In one deal, John put in $78,211 and made $981,553...
...Now he heads Sycamore Partners, which concentrates on investments in the U.S...
...The girls wore dresses styled like uniforms and Civil War-era billed caps...
...Christine Todd Whitman is old blood and new money...
...The horse-struck Christie was now free to go to the races...
...The next day he went to Old John D., confessed what...
...Students were permitted to keep horses, which Christie liked, but she hated the living arrangements...
...An awkward word, but less awkward than wondering if Christie, in her zest for replicating her family, set out to find another "jocular" sadist like her father-and did...
...All of which means that when you come back you won't recognize the place...
...Add $1.00 S&H for each additional shirt...
...They were married the following year...
...Nelson, an art fancier, had been given the job of commissioning a mural for the main entrance...
...None of this sat well with Christie's father, Webster Todd, who was passed over for an ambassadorship when his man, Nixon, decided to punish him for the disloyalty of the rd'odd womenfolk...
...And the cartoons are hilarious...
...You can also be inspired by the insight and wit of such noted conservative thinkers as: Joseph Sobran, Mona Charen, James Kilpatrick, William F Buckley, George Will, Thomas Sowell, Robert Novak, and Cal Thomas...
...78 September 1996 •The American Spectator A Great One-Two-Three Punch...
...Christie's grandmother called her a "spoiled brat" because her parents indulged her hatred of school...
...Don't miss this great lineup...
...Web never hit Christie, but he did write her letters when she was away at boarding school...
...Biographer and subject were never better matched than in Growing Up Republican by Patricia Beard, an editor at Town 6 Country...
...They married the following year and produced their first three children within the standard time frame: Kate in 1934, John in 1936, and Dan in 1938...
...I love her...
...U Check enclosed U Bill Me Charge to:JJ Visa U MasterCard Card No...
...Get too analytical and they will simply diagnose you as being what they call "off your feed," and send you out to play field hockey or ride a horse until you stop thinking so hard...
...The indefatigable Beard also has an explanation for this, attributing it to "Protestant distantness...
...This is more like it, but just when we feel we are getting somewhere, Beard takes it all back with a tortured rationalization: "Yet the reason those who grew up with the Todds have so many of these stories to tell is that the children always brought their friends home, even when they were old enough-in college and after-to have avoided going home much themselves if they had wanted to...
...Both grandfathers started out poor and made "respectable, but not flashy, fortunes," the Todds in building and the Schleys in banking...
...Merle worked for us but he was the professional and we took direction from him...
...She writes "Me Misanthrope's Corner" column for National Review...
...She has a feminine dread of offending people and a jittery compulsion to make nice on all fronts...
...After the show-and-tell contretemps they enrolled her in a French school...
...Growing Up Republican: Christie Whitman: The Politics of Character Patricia Beard HarperCoIIins 1262 pages 1$25 R F V I E W E D B Y Florence King...
...Asked if Christie was scared when she faced an operation for an ovarian cyst, he replied, "How should I know...
...True, she's seen and heard a lot, but it emerges as a boiler-room, summer-intern kind of knowledge when filtered through her bland personality...
...Another crisis erupted when they sent her to summer camp in the French Alps...
...her maternal grandfather, Reeve Schley, was vice-president of Chase...
...When Grant subsequently attacked her, Christie decided to go on his show to explain why she wouldn't go on his show...
...MAIL PAYMENT AND COUPON TO: I I I :! ; WS I HI N I P.O...
...The couple's public statements about their marriage run the usual gamut in praise of independent women and the strong, secure men who love them...
...But to know the real Whitmans we must see them on the tennis courts, where they seethe and fume and curse each other sotto voce in eternal competition...
...Yet it was decidedly offkey...
...Then came a fallow period that ended with the birth of Christine Temple Todd in 1446, when Web was 47 and Eleanor 36...
...So she pulled me out...
...Here she is laboring to prove that Pontefract is not an estate but a hardscrabble farm and she but a simple milkmaid: One of the reasons I loved growing up on a farm is that there's no hierarchy...
...Conservatively Speaking, Of Course...
...o 75 TheAmerican Spectator . September x996 This election year...
...Next on the list will be the ducks because they are getting to be a nuisance also...
...He did extremely well, so well that if Christie seeks national office we can expect a marathon press conference a la Geraldine Ferraro...
...Did Christie and her mother become Rockefeller Republicans out of a subconscious wish to reward the gadfly Nelson for putting one over on their oppressive menfolk...
...When they were assembled, John R. Todd personally jackhammered the mural off the wall and had it dumped in the East River...
...My first model for that was the relationship my father had with our farmer, Merle Stiles...
...Christie's childhood memory of her father is a classic...
...He obviously expected the tycoon to admire hint for his honor, thank him for defending capitalism, and tell him to keep the stock, but Old John D., tight as a tick, took it back...
...This story is-apparently-a tin-eared attempt to-presumably-convince us 76 September 1996 •The American Spectator that there was absolutely nothing to it, just a relatively silly misunderstanding that we must not think too hard about lest it put us off our feed...
...She's a politician...
...It makes psychological sense, but making psychological sense cuts too close to the bone for this gang of hardy WASPs...
...he had done, and insisted that he take back the Rockefeller Center stock that had been his fee...
...She quickly became fluent in the language but complained that the other children refused to play with her, so the Todds withdrew her and sent her to the Marymount nuns...
...An inherent contradiction existed between the school's guiding principle, "Dare to be a Daniel"-i.e., an individual-and its paramilitary flavor...
...Christie's reaction was to hold on to the dashboard and scream until Eleanor and Dan pried her out of the car and delivered her to her bunk...
...At the moment the way is marked by teddy bears-one behind her desk at the state house and the others in the governor's mansiongifts from her grandmother's friend, A.A...
...it's not what his last name is...
...Date: Name: Address only City: State: Zip: Phone: Y 86¢ an issue HASH96...
...During their early married years while Christie wifed and mothered, John supported the family, first as a Citibank executive and later as a venture capitalist...
...Beard herself is a Democrat but otherwise she and Christie Todd Whitman are virtual clones...
...With the election nearing, it is more important than ever that you receive concise commentary, and news analysis, without a liberal bias...
...Indistinguishable from a starry-eyed liberal, she is heading into an abyss of tough love and task forces, pushing programs like "Second-Chance Homes" and "Work First" that spend a fortune on welfare to keep from spending a fortune on welfare, and a juvenile-detention center whose director proudly explained his innovative system of "norms" thus: "These kids break rules, so we have norms instead...
...Mother thought anyone who was dumb enough to believe a seven-year-old about stories like that was too dumb to educate me...
...They had a drill team, a color guard, a drum corps, and daily inspection wherein senior Daniels lifted the skirts of lesser Daniels to see if they were wearing slips...
...Once academically rigorous, it was now little more than a finishing school run by what one alumna called "a bizarre group of maiden ladies...
...He and Christie did not get along, but despite their personality clash she thought he was "a very studly guy...
...The growing assumption that this woman is a seasoned pro seems to be based more on her lifelong exposure to power politics than anything else...
...Asked 'C Despite their personality clash Christie thought John Whitman was a 'very studly guy.' 1 why he fell in love with her, he replied, "It doesn't sound romantic, but it was the right time...
...Call toll-free 1-800-888-3039...
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...He may well have picked it up from Christine Todd Whitman...
...Rockefeller...
...But the gentle sisters locked disobedient pupils in the dog run and made Christie eat fish eyes, and the other girls made fun of her father's name being Webster...
...Christie's friends found Eleanor cold and frightening, while Web was famous among his sons' friends for the beatings he gave the boys, taking them upstairs and whipping them so hard with his belt that guests heard the lashes...
...This is a family that seems to have read nothing but position papers, and there is no evidence that Christie ever let down the side by opening a book...
...Rivera's mural showed a parade of workers representing "the Proletariat" marching joyously toward Lenin...
...Next he started a consulting company whose clients included Ford Motor Company, the U. S. Agency for International Development, and the HungarianAmerican Enterprise Fund...
...The village happens to be named for the neighboring castle where Richard II was Murdered, but as unpleasant things are best put out of the mind, neither biographer nor subject brings this up...
...Price: $15.95* + $3.50 shipping & handling...
...It happened during the Depression, when Web and his father, John R.'Iodd, built Rockefeller Center for Nelson's grand father, John I7...
...Bob Grant endorsed her for governor, but after he was accused of racist remarks she issued a statement that she would not appear on his show again...
...The "jocular" reference to shooting Christie's mother is intriguing in view of something that had happened a few years earlier...
...It was while she was at Foxcroft that her father wrote her "jocular" letters about shooting her pets and her mother...
...I understand I can obtain a full refund on all unmailed copies at any time...
...Milne, author of Winnie the Pooh...
...Biographer Beard tactfully avoids the dilemma of the unwanted child, opting instead for interviews with the Todd children's friends, people now in their fifties, to paint a general picture of family life at Pontefract...
...her family was so close, she was looking forward to trying to replicate it...
...Christie's parents, Webster Todd and Eleanor Schley, met at the 1932 national convention when Web was 33 and Eleanor 21...
...FI.nRI':Nc1': KI1\Cs s latest book is The Florence King Reader (St...
...On to boarding school at Foxcroft in Virginia, where her mother had been Class of'29...
...John is known for his gruffness, especially with the media...
...But Steve Forbes and Lawrence Kudlow also attended the meeting that produced it so we can't be sure who her Pygmalion is, only that she needs one...
...John is Yale, Harvard Business School, and the grandson of a New York governor...
...Governor Christie, in the opinion of the late Malcolm Forbes, is "on her way to becoming the American Margaret Thatcher...
...How she will manage to keep on growing up Republican with this albatross around her neck is uncertain, to say the least, for little New Jersey contains Newark, Camden, Jersey City, and Trenton, the capital, whose per capita income is $ii,oi8...
...II SARKES TARZIAN INC Sarkes Tarzian Television Sarkes Tarzian Radio Broadcasters Making a Difference 77 The American Spectator • September 19 9 6 Two years later, needing a date for the Nixon inaugural ball, she invited John...
...Fax 515-4562587...
...same age (fiftyish), same background ("comfortable"), same number and type of children (one bay and one girl), and same good-sport feminism: "A woman can do it all provided she doesn't try to do it all at once...
...Losing out on the diplomatic post no doubt made Web remember the first time Nelson Rockefeller caused trouble for the Txld men...
...SHOW WHOSE SIDE YOU'RE ON with a TAS t-shirt...
...The horrified Todd told his son, "Bring a crew of men you can trust and meet me here at two o'clock in the morning...
...These people are more fun than a barrel, but the best line in the book belongs to Christie's daughter, Kate: "I don't think she should do vice president...
...Angel, if she keeps barking every morning, will also get shot...
...Unremarkable enough, if only Patricia Beard had let it pass, but she cannot resist an offhand explanation that arouses the very suspicions she tries to douse: "This is not unusual in the milieu in which they were both brought up, where emotions that are closely guarded are often expressed through sports...
...He chose the Mexican artist Diego Rivera...
...her another was chairman of Citizens for Rockefeller in 196o, 1964, and 1968, and Christie's first paid job was in Rocky's last campaign...
...I may decide to shoot both horses (but not Greyleg now that you want him) over the week-end, Angel I will save until you arrive home, and probably the old woman the week after...
...4.1il/I T-shirts are white, 100 percent cotton, with maroon TAS logo and the famous TAS turkey on the sleeve...
...It's quite possible that Christie doesn't know it...
...The farm is named "Pontefract," after the English village whence the first Todd emigrated to the colonies in the seventeenth century...
...Tony Snow, Linda Bowles, and Walter Williams are just a few of the outstanding conservative syndicated columnists featured each week in the Conservative Chronicle...
...Mother said, "Fine, as far as I know...
...After he left Citibank he became chairman and CEO of Prudential-Bache Interfunding, which successfully invested a pool of $8oo million in leveraged buyouts...
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...She and her mother were among the original Rockefeller Republicans...
...Given the short memory and abysmal ignorance of the American public, why did the savvy Powell latch onto a tag associated with a Republican nomination battle that took place three decades ago...
...After all, the only papers she refused to let Beard see are her old report cards...
...people are respected for the work they can do...
...In 1952 Web delivered the New Jersey vote for Eisenhower, who rewarded him with a NATO job...
...Christie also plays the leveling game, and shares Beard's propensity for making things worse...
...Ever since Ed Rollins boasted about bribing black ministers to "suppress" the inner-city vote in her gubernatorial election, her desperation to please Jesse Jackson & Company has been palpable...
...Exp...
...One is a status seeker, which Christie most definitely is not...
...Growing Up Republican is "emphatically not" a campaign biography, as Beard states emphatically on page one...
...Powell and New Jersey's first woman governor have become thick lately, and Nelson Rockefeller runs through her life like a trout line...
...It would have been natural enough had Web been absent during the war, but he wasn't...
...The snuggliness has spread to some of New Jersey's toll takers, who have been known to rush out of their booths at the sight of a state car, crying, "Got Christie with you...
...Both stayed home when their children were small and launched their careers later...
...Todd chases you around the house with a hatchet...
...In all likelihood Christie was what was tactfully known in those days as a "surprise...
...I mean, the house was immaculate...
...Box 549 Arlington, VA 22216-0549 "Nobody in the family knew that letter was there or remembered the reason," she marvels, but one day while poking around in the attic she found it and saw that it was from "Count Leo Tolstoy...
...She ran away several times, until finally her mother gave up and hired a full-time nanny...
...Here is one about her pet animals that Beard calls "jocular": Drummer Boy is fine...
...When the finished mural was delivered, Nelson had it installed and covered it with a curtain to await the official unveiling...
...Now, he has said, he's "through with her...
...It was a household of "dictatorial men and complicated women, flawed by the insularity, repression, and inflexibility that were the hallmarks of their class...
...The Todds moved to Paris and enrolled Christie, then seven, in a school for children of American diplomatic personnel: I did not like the school and-apparently in order to overcome, I presume, boredomI told some relatively outrageous stories at "show and tell" about the relationship between Mother and Dad, which caused the headmistress to call Mother in one day to ask how they got along...
...Returning to America, the Todds enrolled her in Far Hills Country Day School, where she received a conditional eighth-grade diploma due to an Incomplete in Latin...
...They hit it off so well that Christie gave Beard unrestricted access to the Todd papers stashed in the attic at the family farm in Oldwick, New Jersey...
...The headmistress said, 'Well, it disturbs Christie when Mr...
...When Christie met John Whitman in 1971 he was "playing the field"-i.e., dating lots of girls...
...Christie's will last even longer, because John Whitman has done much better than John Zacarro...
...it's too dangerous a sport for one rider to try to outdo the others...
...But John R. Todd pecked-and recoiled...
...When her parents tried to make her return to Foxcroft, she hid under the bed covers and cried until they agreed to let her go to Chapin...
...Tell her I love her...
Vol. 29 • September 1996 • No. 9
