Pat Nixon

We never knew her. Not really. Not the people who once voted her the Most Admired Woman in America. And not the people who once named her Plastic Pat. She came to the White House after Jackie and Lady Bird. She came before Betty, Rosalynn, Nancy, and Hillary. But there is no cause, no recovery center, no career named after Pat Nixon. No court would ever have ruled - as one did of the current First Lady - that she was a "de facto government official. " The woman who died Tuesday was, rather, described by the obituary writers as "the quiet consort," "the loyal wife," "a private person.

Barbara Walters has pulled off another coup. With interviewers everywhere trying to nab new author Julie Eisenhower along with her famous subject, her mother, it took Walters to pull it off. On the advent of the book by Julie, "Pat Nixon: The Untold Story," we'll see the former first lady for the first time in a dozen years when Mrs. Nixon appears on "20-20" along with the ex-president, both her daughters, and Tricia Nixon Cox's young son. The...

With the Dems testing every Iran/Contra word for an echo of Watergate, there comes a book by Richard Nixon's daughter, Julie, to say stop - if just for a moment. Stop and listen to Watergate sounds which even the most partisan Dem would tiptoe away from; he would be constrained to close the door to the White House ever so gently and steal away from scenes no pol with any sense of decency would intrude on. Or try to exploit. Instead of the headlines which have dominated virtually every Watergate book to date, Julie Nixon's "Pat Nixon, The Untold Story," records the sounds of family grief, contained but barely.

WASHINGTON EX-N.Y. TOP COP TO BE DRUG CZAR Ex-New York City Police Commissioner Lee P. Brown will be named drug control director today with a Cabinet seat but lean staff, according to administration and congressional sources. President Clinton said early on that he would make the drug control director, known popularly as the "drug czar," a member of his Cabinet. But he also said he would reduce the size of the 146-person office to just 25 staffers. Clinton's budget seeks a 7 percent increase in drug control funding to $13 billion.

No recent opera has matched the measurable success of John Adams' Nixon in China. The contemporary, newsy subject; the pop-flavored music and cartoonlike flavor; the occasion of its premiere, and its broadcast on television cascaded into a torrent of reclame. The piece opened a new theater in Houston last year, won the implied approval of the avant-garde by moving into the Brooklyn Academy's New Wave Festival last fall, played the Kennedy Center in Washington in March and will hop from festival to festival in Europe beginning next month in Amsterdam.

A striking juxtaposition on the front page of yesterday's New York Times: A picture of Pat Nixon, referring to her obituary, directly above a headline reporting a court decision on the redefined role of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mrs. Clinton, the court held, is a de facto government official - a significant decision because, after health care, President Clinton surely will choose his wife for other high-profile tasks. Hillary Clinton has challenged the concept of the "political wife," an image once personified by Pat Nixon.

Julie Nixon Eisenhower is nothing if not a loving child. During Watergate, the President's younger daughter steadfastly and, to the extent possible, effectively defended her father, becoming known in the media as "the only credible Nixon. " Now, Julie Eisenhower, who since 1980 has lived with her husband, David, and their three children in the Main Line community of Berwyn, has come out with a biography of her mother, Pat Nixon: The Untold Story. Suffice it to say that the story - the triumphs and trials of the Nixons as seen through her mother's eyes - contains no smoking guns and little in the way of eye-opening surprises.

It's all over for Mary Lou Retton, the teenage gymnast whose bubbly persona and bounding body won the heart of a nation - at the same time she was winning five medals at the 1984 Olympics. During a news conference in New York yesterday, the perennially effervescent Retton announced her retirement from gymnastics, reluctantly abandoning her quest for further glory to return to school. Retton, 18, smiled as she announced her decision, although she admitted that there was sadness involved.

Directorial whiz kid Peter Sellars has had such a field day reinterpreting the classic operas, one expects something altogether more outrageous from his recent brainstorm, Nixon in China. But the work Sellars inspired composer John Adams and poet Alice Goodman to create is not outrageous or even mildly shocking. It is a serious - if sometimes unfortunately simplistic - look at the former U.S. president's biggest coup, the opening of relations with the People's Republic of China.

International relations is hardly foreign territory to Julie Nixon Eisenhower. But it was a literary interest, rather than a family history of diplomatic endeavors, that took her to a Bucks County benefit Sunday for Amerasian children living in a half-dozen foreign countries. For the fifth year in a row, Eisenhower hosted an afternoon tea and dramatic reading to benefit the Pearl S. Buck Foundation. This year, the events at the 60-acre Perkasie farm that was the author's home for 38 years attracted about 125 people.

Watergate By Thomas Mallon Pantheon. 436 pp. $26.95) Reviewed by Chris Foran   Even the biggest secrets have secrets lurking behind them. And, Thomas Mallon suggests in his absorbing new novel Watergate , America's biggest and dirtiest revealed secret was no exception. The 40th anniversary of the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel is in June, and for many Americans, the cover-up and scandal that followed have become both a time marker and trivia.

I may miss other holiday films, but I definitely won't miss My Week With Marilyn , starring gorgeous Michelle Williams, and focused on a week in the life of a young man determined to make his mark in filmdom in 1957. And the "Marilyn" in question, on the off-chance that you haven't seen the avalanche of ads for this week's opening, is Marilyn Monroe. Why such passionate determination? Because in ways that may seem frivolous and foolish, Marilyn Monroe changed my life.

NEW YORK - The Metropolitan Opera has always been more a point of arrival than origination for singers - or repertoire such as John Adams' Nixon in China . So let's not get soapbox-y about the fact that this groundbreaking 1987 opera - about Richard Nixon's even more groundbreaking opening of relations with Communist China - only made its Met debut on Wednesday, and be glad that it was heartily embraced rather than suffering the fate of Carlisle Floyd's...

The sting of the press. Federal agents on her honeymoon. Lessons learned from a mother who clung to humility by rinsing laundry in her White House sink. Julie Nixon Eisenhower, among the Main Line's more private yet well-known residents, held a Main Line Chamber of Commerce crowd of 300 in rapt attention yesterday with anecdotes culled from a life at history's edge. Eisenhower, 51, spoke at the chamber's annual inspirational breakfast in Valley Forge Military Academy and College's Eisenhower Hall, where portraits of generals line the walls.

The logic of inviting Julie Nixon Eisenhower to a birthday celebration of the nation's founding father seemed elementary. But Eisenhower, who moved from a celebrated White House childhood to a quiet domestic life in Berwyn, said yesterday she felt like a bit of a fraud. "Ten years ago, it was, 'Are you related to . . .?' she said, and now it is: 'Could you spell that please?' " The fame associated with political celebrity has faded for the former first daughter. Yesterday, Eisenhower and those gathered for a 268th Washington birthday bash in Bristol lamented a similar loss of lustre - the presidential kind.

When New York Times columnist William Safire labeled first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton a "congenital liar" earlier this month, whatever he gained in temporary name recognition was offset by a permanent disrespect among a sizable portion of the American public. Even those who have rightfully grown distrustful of government officials experienced a nagging feeling of discomfort in the wake of this startling and crass allegation. Safire's bombast spoke less about her veracity than his gall.

There sat Rep. Enid Greene Waldholtz (R., Utah) moon-faced, apple-cheeked and looking for all the world like a plump Sally Field in Forrest Gump. There she sat, dabbing her eyes with a tissue, head shaking, nose sniffling and voice breaking, as she described how her husband had fooled her, embezzled her campaign funds, absconded with her father's money, threatened her staff not to divulge his shenanigans, even lied about his religion. There she sat, baring her soul, if not her campaign finances, and putting herself at the mercy of her constituents.

Former President Richard M. Nixon's body will be flown to California on Tuesday and will lie in state in the lobby of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda. Public viewing begins at 3 p.m. Tuesday and will continue through the night until 11 a.m. Wednesday. Services are scheduled for 4 p.m. Wednesday at the Nixon Library, with the Rev. Billy Graham officiating. Graham also presided over the funeral last year of Nixon's wife, Pat. A private burial will follow at the library near Pat Nixon's grave.

We never knew her. Not really. Not the people who once voted her the Most Admired Woman in America. And not the people who once named her Plastic Pat. She came to the White House after Jackie and Lady Bird. She came before Betty, Rosalynn, Nancy, and Hillary. But there is no cause, no recovery center, no career named after Pat Nixon. No court would ever have ruled - as one did of the current First Lady - that she was a "de facto government official. " The woman who died Tuesday was, rather, described by the obituary writers as "the quiet consort," "the loyal wife," "a private person.

A striking juxtaposition on the front page of yesterday's New York Times: A picture of Pat Nixon, referring to her obituary, directly above a headline reporting a court decision on the redefined role of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mrs. Clinton, the court held, is a de facto government official - a significant decision because, after health care, President Clinton surely will choose his wife for other high-profile tasks. Hillary Clinton has challenged the concept of the "political wife," an image once personified by Pat Nixon.