A professor of political science at Georgetown University, Kirkpatrick entered government service. She wasn’t simply the first American woman named ambassador to the United Nations, she was also the only woman on President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council — and the only lifelong Democrat there.
“I was a Democrat once, you know,” Reagan told her. “When she put her feet under the desk of the Oval Office, the President listened,” said William P. Clark, Reagan’s national security advisor. The Soviets, especially, didn’t like Kirkpatrick, and spent a lot of effort trying to discredit her — even forging letters in her name. She shrugged it off. “I felt there was as much disinformation aimed at me from inside our own government, frankly, as from the Soviet Union,” she once said. “That’s a shocking thing to say, but it is no exaggeration.”
She left the U.N. after four years and returned to private life, though she briefly considered running for president herself. She died at home in her sleep on December 7. She was 80.