FOR several months after Richard Nixon took office, the sly rumor went around Washington that, in fact, there were no Republicans in town. They certainly seemed invisible. Nixon himself appeared almost anxious to avoid the capital—weekending at Key Biscayne, summering at San Clemente. To some, his minions seemed scarcely distinguishable from one another, a solid, stolid bloc of Rotarians, Elks, safe Middle-American technicians. "Writing about the Nixon Administration," sighed Humorist Art Buchwald, "is about as exciting as covering the Prudential Life Insurance Co."
Of late, however, Washington has come to life with a special Nixonian flavor. Spiro Agnew has become a walking oratorical event, exhaling sulphurous prose on behalf of the Great Silent Majority. Attorney General John Mitchell's dour podsnappery as Southern strategist and antidissenter cheers the forces of law and order and dismays liberals. Mitchell himself has remained as invisible as before. But his wife Martha has emerged as one of the dominant figures on the Washington scene, and her tart tongue has enlivened a lot of cocktail parties (see box, page 37).
Mod Mesta. Socially, Nixon's Washington still has only slightly more panache than a San Clemente Chamber of Commerce meeting. But even on that front, a certain style is developing. Pat Nixon, who once had the catty Women's Wear Daily sniping because she refused to be a clotheshorse, has now had to protest that she did not, in fact, sink $19,000 into couture last year. Actually, says Pat, she came to Washington with some clothes "left over from before that people hadn't seen because we didn't live here."
In his account of the Republican Convention last year, Norman Mailer made a grudging observation: "A man who could produce daughters like that could not be all bad." David and Julie Eisenhower are still moving wholesomely in the background. But startlingly, Tricia, who once seemed shy and reticent, has emerged as a luminous blonde who turns up playing hostess at a White House Halloween party or holding hands at Manhattan's "21" with Eddie Cox, a young Eastern liberal lawyer who used to work for Ralph Nader's Raiders.
Emerging as the mod Mesta of Nixon's Washington is Barbara Howar, a 35 year-old divorcee who played the same game in the Johnson years. Lady Bird cashiered her after Barbara gave one interview too many about the Johnsons. Now Barbara appears all over Washington, often on the arm of White House Foreign Affairs Adviser Henry Kissinger, who rather improbably has become one of the liveliest figures of the new Washington society.
"There goes our foreign policy," clucked one somber presidential adviser as Kissinger left a recent cocktail party with Barbara, her striking blonde hair set off by purple pajamas. Kissinger, 46, is one of the few eligible bachelors in the Administration, having divorced his wife of 15 years in 1964. But Barbara says, perhaps unconvincingly, "The reason Henry goes out with me is that he knows I'm one woman who is not husband hunting."