In the first book I ever wrote, All the President’s Kin, I typed Rosalynn Carter an “Alter Ego.”* Alter Egos are one of seven different types of presidential kin that also include, for example, Decorations, Humanizers, and Helpmeets. Each of these – including spouses and siblings, parents, and children – was beginning at the time to emerge from behind the scenes. They were taking on public roles of visible importance. Not all these roles were substantively significant. But in different ways they all were, and are, politically significant.
Rosalynn Carter was one of two people I typed “Alter Egos.” (The other was Robert Kennedy.) I defined Alter Egos this way:
Alter Egos are those rarest of relatives: people to whom we are so close, on so many levels, that they and we are one. The interaction is in every area. It is constant. I would claim that when a president has an Alter Ego, he or she is the second most powerful political figure in America. And the benefit to a president lucky enough to have one is considerable.
Rosalynn Carter died yesterday at the age of 96. She was, in her own right, a leader. A path breaker in mental health. And a pathbreaker in claiming for the role of First Lady the right to make a political difference. Carter was not, of course, the first First Lady to have a major impact on American politics. Most famously Eleanor Roosevelt preceded her. But Carter can rightly be said to have picked up where Roosevelt left off. And she can similarly be said to have further paved the way for her least retiring successor, Hillary Clinton.
But it was her relationship to her husband, President Jimmy Carter, that stood out. It was so close and even then, of such long duration, that effectively they were one. In the book I wrote:
The power that Rosalynn Carter wielded was derived from … the nature of her finely tuned relationship with her husband. She had developed, over the course of a highly successful thirty-four-year marriage, a way of dealing with Jimmy Carter, of influencing him to see things her way, that was unrivaled by anyone else. Indeed, no one else even came close. The thirty-ninth president was a loner. He did not socialize easily, either with old pals from Plains or with new ones from Washington. He was most comfortable with family, and when he was not called on to do otherwise, he shared [himself] mainly with Rosalynn. She was his wife and the mother of his children. But she was also his best friend and closest, most constant counselor. It was through this [most intimate of] connections that she gained exceptional political power.
All the Presidents Kin was published in 1981. I cannot now paint her picture any better than I did then.