First Ladies

by Caroli, Betty

  When the First Lady’s schedule took her away from schools and book talk, she spoke confidently on other subjects. In November 2001, she made history when she took the president’s place on his regular weekly radio address and spoke out against the Taliban’s oppression of women and children in Afghanistan.99 Several of her predecessors, beginning with Lou Hoover in the 1930s, had used radio as a way to reach people, but this was the first time that a First Lady had stood in for the president in just this way.

  “I am Laura Bush,” she began, “and I’m delivering this week’s radio address to kick off a worldwide effort to focus on the brutality against women and children by the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the regime it supports in Afghanistan, the Taliban.” After noting that 70 percent of the Afghan people were malnourished and that one in four Afghan children would die before turning five, she listed the specifics of a repressive regime that did not permit children to fly kites or women to laugh out loud. To avoid charges that she misunderstood Afghan customs, she noted that “Muslims around the world” had already spoken out against the Taliban, and she encouraged listeners of all faiths to join them. “Fighting brutality against women and children is not the expression of a specific culture; it is the acceptance of our common humanity, a commitment shared by people of good will on every continent.”100

  This rousing call to action came less than a year after Laura Bush moved into the White House, but it foreshadowed an international bent that became clearer in the years that followed. In the next few months she gave five more speeches on Afghanistan, all of them urging help for that nation’s women.101 One communications scholar noted that the phrasing of her plea combined “maternal feminism” with “liberal feminism” by justifying women’s participation in the public sphere through their maternal duties—such as overseeing their children’s education and sewing school uniforms.102 Rather than argue that Afghan women had the same rights as men, the American First Lady insisted they had rights, too, and that if allowed to exercise these rights, their entire communities would gain.

  As for helping to motivate her to speak out about women’s rights in another country, Laura Bush cited friends, relatives, and people she happened to meet who told her of their concern for Afghan women. She also received encouragement from presidential advisers, especially Karen Hughes. According to the New York Times, Hughes had suggested the First Lady and the president do a joint radio address on the subject on November 17, 2001, and he had replied, “What do you need me for?”103

  In speaking out, Laura Bush illustrated once again how clearly the presidency had become a two-person career, one in which, as Karlyn Kohrs Campbell explained, the wife’s functions may include “public performance” as well as “status maintenance and intellectual contributions.”104 In this case, Laura Bush’s primary motive may have been to bolster morale in the war against terrorism, but in the process she brought up a feminist issue—equal rights for women.105

  In doing so, she made it more difficult for First Lady scholars to place her on the various scales they had developed. Myra Gutin, a communications professor and longtime student of America’s First Ladies, has argued that some presidents’ wives in the twentieth century moved beyond being ceremonial hostesses to acting as emerging spokeswomen for their husbands; other First Ladies went even further and became independent activists and political surrogates.106 In Gutin’s categorization, Laura Bush fell somewhere between the second and third roles—Bush was not entirely an independent voice of her own but was more than a ceremonial hostess like Pat Nixon. Laura’s immediate predecessor, Hillary Clinton, had also spoken up for Afghan women’s rights, but she did so as part of International Women’s Day at the UN.107

  Laura Bush’s ambitious travel schedule underscored her commitment to Afghan women and to other international causes. Visiting seventy-five nations in eight years, she did not match Pat Nixon’s record, but unlike Pat’s ceremonial tours, these appearances promoted substantive health improvements. Press releases from Laura Bush’s office noted that she visited ten of the fifteen countries identified by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief [PEPFAR] as focus countries in its fight against HIV/AIDS. She also called attention to the dangers of malaria by stopping in nations where it afflicted the population. To encourage women to take control of their health and get regular breast cancer screenings, she included this topic in speeches she gave in eight countries in Europe and the Middle East.108

  But it was in Afghanistan that Laura Bush’s efforts got the most attention. On her first visit in March 2005, she stayed only a few hours, visiting a teacher training institute at Kabul University where she spoke to several hundred women. Announcing a $20 million U.S. grant for new education projects, she performed a largely ceremonial role, albeit in a setting generally perceived as unsettled if not downright dangerous. But then she moved on to make observations that could not have pleased all that nation’s leaders. “We are only a few years removed from the rule of terrorists,” she reminded her audience, “when women were denied education and every basic human right.”109 Democracy was gaining in Afghanistan, she continued, but “the survival of a free society ultimately depends on the participation of all its citizens, both men and women” and this is possible only if women have “the most critical tool of all … education.” On her last trip to that part of the world, in June 2008, the American First Lady made a point of meeting with Afghanistan’s only female governor, Habiba Sarabi, of the Bamiyan province.110 Back home, Laura Bush accepted honorary chairmanship of the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council, a group formed to improve health and education in Afghanistan.

  Burma’s oppressive government also got the First Lady’s attention. On October 10, 2007, she published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, “Stop the Terror in Burma,” detailing the “shameful” abuses of that nation’s military dictatorship. A few days later, the New York Times ran a front-page article, “First Lady Raising Her Profile without Changing Her Image,” and dubbed her “the administration’s leading voice on [Burma].”111 A few months later, when a devastating cyclone put many of Burma’s people in jeopardy, Laura Bush called a press conference and asked Burma’s government to drop its entry restrictions so that international relief workers could distribute medical supplies and food to those in need.

  In August 2008 she traveled to the Mae La refugee camp, the largest of several camps along the Thai-Burma border, where she listened to people on the run for their lives.112 She visited a clinic and observed how its small staff tried to meet the medical needs of the thirty-five thousand men, women, and children camped there. Speaking out for Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese Nobel laureate who has been imprisoned for years, Laura Bush called on the ruling junta to release all political prisoners. She urged the international community to stop buying Burmese gemstones, because the profits went to the repressive leaders rather than to the people.

  Like most First Ladies who got the chance, Laura Bush showed increased confidence in her second term. With no more campaigns to worry about, she felt freer to do as she liked. The first hint of change came in the choice of her inaugural gown. Michael Faircloth, an obscure Texan, had produced the first.113 But in January 2005, Laura Bush appeared at the inaugural balls in a creation by the far more famous (and expensive) Oscar de la Renta. Then she caused a stir by firing Walter Scheb III, the White House chef for the previous eleven years, and replacing him with the first woman to hold that title—Cristeta Comerford.114 To underscore her determination to make her second term different, she made significant changes in her staff.115

  Signaling that she took her projects seriously, she turned for advice to experts, including some from the West Wing. Michael Green, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, counseled her on projects in Asia. Laura’s chief of staff during the second term, Anita McBride, boasted government experience reaching back to the Reagan years, including stints at the State Department and as Special Assistant to the President for White House Managemen
t. This impressive roster of skilled and experienced staff looked nothing like the string of social secretaries that had once worked for presidents’ wives and still managed governors’ mansions across the country.

  The First Lady’s commitment to literacy did not abate—and she continued to schedule book fairs to highlight that interest. She rescheduled her appearance in front of the Senate Education Committee, postponed by 9/11, so she could reiterate her enthusiasm for encouraging reading programs. But the author events at the White House, which had begun on such a promising note, succumbed to the growing criticism of her husband’s foreign policy.

  Just before the Iraq invasion, Laura Bush’s office had announced that the February 12, 2003, symposium would focus on “Poetry and the American Voice.” Almost as soon as invitations went out, word spread that some of the prospective guests meant to use the occasion to protest the administration’s plan to invade Iraq, showing once again how a First Lady’s initiatives are never viewed as entirely separate from her husband’s policies. One of the invitees, Sam Hamill, editor of Copper Canyon Press and author of more than a dozen books of verse, explained that he felt “overcome by a kind of nausea” on opening his invitation.116 Not only did he refuse to attend, he sent out e-mails urging other poets to join in putting together a book of antiwar poems to be presented to the First Lady.

  According to one report, about three thousand five hundred poets around the world responded to Hamill’s initiative. Some read their antiwar poems at rallies organized for that purpose; others sent their compositions to the website, www.poetsagainstthewar.org . Faced with this kind of publicity, the First Lady reiterated her view that everyone had a right to express an opinion but that there was nothing political about poetry; she then canceled the event without rescheduling it.

  Laura Bush shrewdly found other ways to sidestep controversy. Unlike her mother-in-law—who spoke at Wellesley’s commencement in 1990 despite student protests that a First Lady did not provide an acceptable role model—Laura pled “prior commitments” to avoid addressing Los Angeles graduates in 2002. When the protests first mounted, university officials stood by their invitation, insisting that Laura Bush’s long-standing advocacy for education made her an appropriate choice for the commencement speech. But the First Lady decided that declining to appear would serve her husband better—she would deprive his critics of a national stage.

  The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 multiplied prospects for protest. Public opinion often focuses on the White House in times of calamity, when citizens across the country look to the president’s wife to see what sacrifices and contributions she is making. Are her sons enlisting, as Eleanor Roosevelt’s four sons did in World War II? Is she curtailing consumption, as Edith Wilson did in 1917? Does she appear too friendly to the enemy, as rumors suggested about Mary Lincoln during the Civil War? If the war loses favor, if its entire purpose gets questioned and its execution criticized, venom can run as visibly to the distaff side of the White House as to the president’s office. While fleeing Washington in 1814, Dolley Madison was refused shelter by an irate boardinghouse keeper who blamed Dolley’s husband for starting the war. Lady Bird Johnson learned to go to sleep to the sound of chants outside her window: “LBJ, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”

  Antiwar sentiment never reached that intensity during the George W. Bush years, and Laura Bush’s international travel, especially her trips to Muslim countries and parts of Africa where huge health problems existed, may have helped mute criticism. By putting humanitarian concerns alongside military intervention, she earned grudging respect from people who abhorred her husband’s Iraq policy. Presidents’ wives had been traveling outside the United States for more than a century, sometimes for pleasure (Edith Roosevelt in Cuba), as a ceremonial gesture (Edith Wilson at the Paris Peace talks), to represent the nation (Lady Bird Johnson at the funeral of King Paul of Greece), or to discuss substantive matters with foreign leaders (Rosalynn Carter in Central and South America). But some of Laura Bush’s trips fell outside any of these categories—she sought to put a more humane face on U.S. foreign policy.

  The length of the Iraq war increased objections to it and complicated her task. Although Saddam Hussein’s statue crashed to the ground on April 10, 2003, and President Bush later declared the war won, Americans watched in dismay the continuing destruction and rising death toll in Iraq. When Iraq’s new government failed to establish order as quickly as some had predicted, debates in the U.S. Congress grew louder about how to proceed. A majority of Americans had supported the president in the early stages of the war, but now they changed their minds, sending his popularity plummeting. By June 2005, one poll showed that 53 percent of Americans disapproved of the job the president was doing, the highest disapproval rating since he took office.117 By May 2008, both CNN and the New York Times reported new polls showed the incumbent to be “the most unpopular president in history.”118

  Presidents’ wives typically avoid low ratings by staying away from divisive issues such as war, sluggish economies, and universal health insurance to concentrate instead on such matters as White House restoration and education. An intelligent, voracious reader like Laura Bush knew this, and throughout her second term in the White House she stuck to an agenda unlikely to attract her husband’s critics. Literacy continued to figure prominently in her schedule, but she avoided situations where she might meet protestors. Her office announced her visits to schools and libraries after they had occurred, and she scheduled few book events at the White House. She spoke up for the Preserve America and America’s Treasures Act, a popular project and a favorite of legislators who wanted to bring funds to their home districts to restore art, buildings, and public records. Health issues continued to concern her, and she traveled around the country as ambassador for The Heart Truth, encouraging women to improve their chances for a long life by making healthier choices.

  While tending her own image, she gave no hint of disagreeing with her husband’s policies. Whenever asked about his legacy, she insisted he would be vindicated. This stance won her fans among those who prized a woman who “stood by her man.” She already had proven a particularly effective money-raiser in her husband’s reelection campaign, raising more than $5 million by the end of February 2004.119

  In 2006, midway through her second term, CNN/USA/Gallup reported that Laura Bush enjoyed one of the highest approval ratings of any president’s wife they had measured.120 Nevertheless, while 82 percent of Americans liked what she was doing, only 43 percent felt the same way about her husband.

  Some of her husband’s harshest critics admitted they found little to fault in her, and they puzzled how husband and wife could appeal to such different camps. Novelist Curtis Sittenfeld, perhaps struck by reports that Laura had voted for Eugene McCarthy in 1968,121 popularized the view that Laura held more liberal views than her husband did, and that, given the chance, she might reveal this. Sittenfeld’s best-selling novel American Wife, which she admitted was “loosely inspired by the life of an American first lady,” describes a thoughtful, spirited woman of liberal views who marries the fun-loving son of a politically connected Republican family and ends up living in the White House.122 Even she seems puzzled by how it all happened. The fictional First Lady admits to voting for her husband’s opponent in both 2000 and 2004 because she “believed sincerely that his opponent would do a better job.” On the very last page of Sittenfeld’s novel, as the First Lady considers the problems facing the nation and the president’s role in them, she reminds the reader, “All I did is marry him. You are the ones who gave him power.”

  In various interviews, Sittenfeld revealed she admired Laura Bush for her down-to-earth attitudes, her work for so many good causes, and her seriousness and caring.123 Partisan identification did not appear on the list. Indeed, Laura frequently reached across party lines. She explained away one of Michelle Obama’s missteps during the 2008 campaign by saying Michelle was a newcomer to national politics and would soon learn to
watch what she said. When asked about Hillary Clinton’s strong run for the Democratic nomination that same year, the Republican First Lady had only praise for how Hillary had widened possibilities for all women.

  By the time she left the White House, with a reported contract of $1.6 million for her memoir about living there, scholars viewed Laura Bush’s record much less favorably than had Curtis Sittenfeld. In a poll released by the Siena Research Institute in December 2008, historians ranked Laura Bush #17 among post-1900 First Ladies, just above Pat Nixon, Ida McKinley, and Florence Harding.124 In the longer list of thirty-eight women who had held the job since 1789, Laura did little better, coming in #23, well below Barbara Bush (#12) and Hillary Clinton (#4). Although above average in “background,” “integrity” and “intelligence,” she came out at the very bottom in the “own woman” category.

  Eight years earlier, when asked which of her two predecessors—her traditional mother-in-law or the activist-feminist Clinton—Laura meant to emulate, she had refused to choose, saying she wanted to be “just me.” In some ways she did that. By putting enormous effort into international travel and initiatives that sought to help women and others suffering from malaria and AIDS, she exposed the role of First Lady to an international spotlight. Standing by an unpopular president without looking weak or manipulated, she won fans in quarters unfriendly to her husband. All the while, she maintained her image of a caring, intelligent, down-to-earth person. But she realized she left the job of First Lady without doing all that she could have. In an interview with People magazine, she admitted, “Maybe if I have a regret, it’s just that I didn’t do more.”125

  11

  Turning Points

  THE YEAR 2008—WHEN HILLARY CLINTON came close to winning the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination—marked a political watershed moment for women. But signs of change reached beyond one woman and one party. When the Republicans picked little-known Alaska governor Sarah Palin for the vice presidential spot on their ticket, they achieved a historic first for the GOP. In Washington, Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, had already made headlines in 2007 when she became the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, a title that put her next in line for the Oval Office if anything happened to the president or vice president. With so many women at the top echelon of national politics, could a female president be far in the future?