A feminist in the White House: Midge Costanza, the Carter years, and America's culture wars

326 Pages·2016·23.254 MB·English

by  Carter, Jimmy;Costanza, Midge;Mattingly, Doreen J

A Feminist in the
White house

A F e m i n i s t
i n t h e
W h i t e ho u s e
Midge Costanza, the Carter Years,
and aMeriCa’s Culture Wars
★
Doreen J. Mattingly
1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Mattingly, Doreen J., 1962–
Title: A feminist in the White House : Midge Costanza, the Carter years,
and America’s culture wars / Doreen Mattingly.
Description: Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015038528 | ISBN 9780190468606 (hardcover : acid-free paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Costanza, Midge, 1932–2010. | Political consultants—United
States—Biography. | Carter, Jimmy, 1924—Friends and associates. |
Feminists—United States—Biography. | Sex role—Political aspects—United
States—History—20th century. | Women—Political activity—United
States—History—20th century. | Culture conflict—United
States—History—20th century. | United States—Politics and
government—1977–1981. | United States—Social conditions—1960–1980. |
BISAC: POLITICAL SCIENCE / Government / Executive Branch. |
POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Process / Leadership. | POLITICAL SCIENCE / Civics & Citizenship.
Classification: LCC E840.8.C687 M28 2016 | DDC 305.42092—dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038528
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan, USA
For Midge, as promised

Contents
★
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xxi
1 introDuction 3
2 Making it in a Man’s WorlD 17
3 Vice Mayor of rochester 44
4 sex, PoWer, anD the caMP aign to elect
JiMMy carter 64
5 WinDoW to the nation:
MiDge costanza oPens uP the White house 89
6 abortion, controVersy, anD the liMits
of loyalty 118
7 international WoMen’s year anD
the equal rights aMenDMent 137
8 “it isn’t enough”:
fighting for feMinist Policy 162
viii • contents
9 the Decline anD fall of MiDge costanza 183
10 it neVer rains in california 198
Notes 225
Bibliography 269
Index 277
PreFACe
★
This book began with a deathbed promise. In the spring of 2010, Midge
Costanza lay in a San Diego hospital. In one of her last conscious acts she
emerged from the sedatives, grabbed her phone, and called me. The number
on my cell phone told me the call was from her, even though her breathing
tube made speech impossible. I said what I hoped would bring her peace:
I promised to turn her unfinished memoir into a book. That you are reading
this is evidence that I carried through on the promise, but the call haunts me
still. Was there something final she was desperate to say about the book?
Was there something she wanted to tell me to include or leave out? Had
I avoided visiting the hospital while she could still speak so I would not be
asked to promise more?
There was another book that came before this one, an unfinished memoir
she had been working on or talking about since she resigned from her job as
assistant to President Jimmy Carter in 1978. I was the most recent in a string
of writers she had recruited to help wrest a manuscript from her memories
and the hundreds of boxes of documents she had collected, many taken from
the White House in the righteous indignation of her resignation. I assume
that the other collaborators, all of them old enough to have voted in 1976,
had been attracted to the project because they remembered her dramatic
twenty months as the first female assistant to the president. I was a child of
fourteen when Costanza went to Washington, so I was recruited on the
strength of her persuasion. What can I say? She was a brilliant politician.
Midge Costanza first entered my life in 2004, when it was announced at a
San Diego State University Women’s Studies faculty meeting that she wanted
to coteach a class. A donor would pay her salary, but since she never went to
college herself and had no teaching experience, a tenured professor was