As early as 1789 one New Yorker, calling himself “Pro Republica,” grumbled about newspapers paying so much attention to the president’s wife. If they did not mend their ways, he wrote to the New York Gazette, something like the following might appear about Mrs. Washington: “Her Serenity who was much indisposed last week by a pain in the third joint of the fourth finger of her left hand … is in a fair way of recovery [after catching a cold when she went out in] the Siberian fur lately delivered to her by the Russian Ambassador as a present from the Princess.”74
Remove the quaint language and Pro Republica had it right—First Ladies gradually became accustomed to having every detail of their private lives put out for public scrutiny. By 2009, Michelle Obama faced an extremely intrusive public—one intent on knowing how much she paid for her clothes and how she “worked out” those “bare” arms. In an interview with Oprah, she cheerfully answered a query about whether she was pregnant, using different language (“Not pregnant. Not planning on it”) than that employed about Mary Lincoln nearly a century and a half earlier when a national magazine informed readers: “The reports that Mrs. Lincoln was in an interesting condition are untrue.”75
Complaints against such invasions of privacy have never worked—as Abigail Adams learned. Thoroughly disgusted with newspapers revealing just how much her son earned and other family matters, she wrote her sister that she saw in the articles “the true spirit of Satan…. Lies, falshoods [ sic ], calumny [ sic ] and bitterness.”76
Nor did the threat of fines scare people off. In 1888, after President Grover Cleveland’s young bride found her face gracing advertisements for perfumes and household products, a bill was introduced in the House of Representatives making the unauthorized use of the “likeness or representation of any female living or dead, who is or was the wife, mother, daughter or sister of any citizen of the United States” a crime subject to a fine up to $5,000.77 But the bill failed to pass, and White House families had to come up with their own remedies. The Kennedy White House used pressure to keep their young children and Jackie out of ads,78 just as the Obamas in 2009 appealed to a manufacturer to stop producing “Marvelous Malia” and “Sweet Sasha” dolls.
The Obama daughters were bound to attract attention, and their parents had to consider carefully how to deal with that. A look back at other young White House occupants is instructive. When tourists started prowling White House grounds with cameras in the late nineteenth century, safety concerns led presidential families to call for restrictions. That led to angry outbursts from irate reporters and disappointed voters. Julia Grant (1869–1877) ordered the gates of the residence closed to protect her young children, then heard herself chastised as “exclusive,” a costly pejorative for an elected official’s spouse. When Frances Cleveland (1886–1889, 1893–1897) decided to keep her very young children indoors and out of sight, retaliation came via rumors that they were “sick” and “deformed.” Caroline Harrison (1893–1897) gave reporters fuller rein, allowing her young grandson, “Baby McKee,” to appear in what later came to be called “photo opportunities,” and it was generally agreed that he became “the most photographed” child in America.
Edith Roosevelt (1901–1909) deserves credit for initiating more successful controls over what went out about her and her family, although her efforts seem positively quaint when compared to methods routinely used a century later. She employed a social secretary, a first for a president’s wife, and then instructed her about what to tell reporters about the color of her dress or the menu for a state dinner. In those pre-television days, reporters and readers had little chance to check on the accuracy of what they were told, and the frugal Edith admitted she fibbed a bit, saying the same dress was blue on one night and green on another. She also arranged for the distribution of posed, formal pictures of her children so reporters did not have to camp out on the White House lawn waiting for their chance.
Michelle Obama faced a curious public far more ubiquitous and better equipped than that encountered by her predecessors. Large dailies like the New York Times and the Washington Post assigned reporters full time to the First Lady, and dozens of blogs, some independent, some affiliated with mainstream publications, reported on her every move. The Internet made possible the nearly instant global sharing of images and words so that anyone from Maine to Honolulu could compare thoughts on the price of Michelle’s sneakers and how she ate her hamburgers.
As annoying as such intrusions could be, they presented a more serious problem if the presidential family’s image on the Internet did not mesh with West Wing objectives. Michelle Obama had already encountered considerable negative publicity during the campaign: critics charged she sounded angry in her Princeton thesis; she looked combative on the New Yorker cover; and she seemed disrespectful describing her husband’s stinky morning breath. Now a diligent press could shape an image of her as sweeter, more traditional, and less threatening.
Although the Ledbetter reception had been her first public event at the White House, Michelle’s next few months featured a bipartisan First Lady far more attuned to fashion, family, and good works than to any substantive matter that might divide voters. The few interviews she did grant went to periodicals that underlined this image of a contented, traditional First Lady. She even tempered comments about her job, and after earlier complaining that it “doesn’t pay much” she started describing it as the “best job in the world.” Her closest brush with controversy occurred when she was photographed with one arm casually looped around the Queen of England’s waist. Whether this constituted a breach of royal etiquette remained unclear—some bloggers weighed in to say she might just have extended a supporting arm to a fragile, aging monarch in danger of falling.
Simply by taking her place in the White House private quarters, Michelle Obama signaled an important shift in American history. Her portrait would now join the dozens of white faces that made up the portrait gallery on the ground floor. What clearer sign could there be that the color of one’s skin no longer disqualifies a person for occupancy of the White House? But the same election that took Michelle Obama to the executive mansion carried another equally powerful message—gender does not disqualify either.
That the first real contender to break this last glass ceiling came out of the ranks of First Ladies may seem remarkable to some. But it was unsurprising to those who had already seen presidential material in many of Hillary Clinton’s predecessors—keen intelligence, enormous ambition, and a pronounced political streak.
Notes
Introduction
1. Edward T. James et al., Notable American Women, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1971).
2. Popular volumes on First Ladies include Laura Holloway, Ladies of the White House (Philadelphia, 1881); Margaret Bassett, Profiles and Portraits of American Presidents and Their Wives (Freeport, 1969); Sol Barzman, The First Ladies (New York, 1970); Amy La Follette Jensen, The White House (New York, 1962); Bess Furman, White House Profile (New York, 1951); Esther Singleton, The Story of the White House, 2 vols. (New York, 1907); and Mary Ormsbee Whitton, First First Ladies (Freeport, 1948).
3. Mary Clemmer Ames, “A Woman’s Letter form Washington,” The Independent, March 15, 1877, p. 2.
4. Marianne Means, The Woman in the White House (New York, 1963), p. 7.
5. Emily Edson Briggs, The Olivia Letters (New York, 1906), p. 173, reprints an 1870 column by Briggs.
6. William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston, 1863), p. 177.
7. Merriam Webster’s New International Dictionary did not include the term until the second edition (1934) when it meant the “wife of the President of the United States, [or … ] the woman he chooses to act as his official hostess.” By the 1960s, the phrase had taken on some weight of its own and moved outside government. “Hostess” did not entirely disappear from the definition in Webster’s Third (1961) or in The American Heritage Dictionary (1969), but now there was a second meaning: “the leading woman representative or practitioner o
f any art or profession [as in … ] the first lady of the dance.” The Random House Dictionary (1966) avoided “hostess” entirely, defining “first lady” as either the wife of an important government official or a woman who had achieved “foremost” status on her own, as in “first lady of the American theater.”
Uncapitalized in the beginning, “first lady” had made its way slowly into the nation’s lexicon. In the 1880s, Laura Holloway’s book Ladies of the White House helped focus attention on the subjects, and in 1911, a hit play began to popularize the title. Charles Nirdlinger’s “First Lady of the Land” took considerable liberty with history and had nothing to do with the wife of a president, but anyone unfamiliar with its plot could easily make the mistake of thinking it did. Subtitled, “When Mrs. Todd Kept a Boarding House,” the play has as its heroine, Dolley Todd, who consents to marry James Madison only at the end of the fourth act—when Thomas Jefferson is still president. Ironically, it is not presiding over the White House that wins Dolley her “first lady” appellation but rather her down-to-earth casualness and her success in outwitting the snobbish wife of the British minister.
Another play, “First Lady,” by Katharine Dayton and George S. Kaufman, appeared in 1935, and its plot involved competition among Washington women to make their husbands president. In exposing an unsavory side of the political process, this play (later movie) dealt more with human foibles than with life in the White House, but it helped move “first lady” into common usage.
8. George Reedy, New York Times Book Review, January 20, 1985, p. 1.
9. Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Kennedys: An American Drama (New York, 1984), p. 353, report that Jackie Kennedy pronounced the title more appropriate to a “saddle horse.” Collier and Horowitz gave no source for this comment, and Jackie Kennedy did not grant interviews. Her White House social secretary, Letitia Baldrige, told the author that after a few months, Jackie Kennedy “gave up” on trying to stop her staff from using the term.
10. Hunter College Conference on Eleanor Roosevelt, New York, December 4, 1982, hereafter referred to as Hunter College Conference.
11. Hunter College Conference.
12. New York Times, December 12, 1974, section vi, p. 36.
13. New York Times, November 22, 1985, p. A14. Raisa Gorbachev also received considerable attention from foreign reporters covering the summit but, unlike Nancy Reagan, she remained a “photo opportunity” for “export only.” Reporters in Moscow ignored her appearance at the summit.
14. Briggs, Olivia Letters, p. 211.
15. Donald Young, American Roulette: The History and Dilemma of the Vice Presidency (New York, 1965), p. 5. Unless the president dies, resigns, or is unable to carry on the duties of his office, the vice president remains a distant second in power, and political scientists continue to debate just what the job includes. Except for presiding over the Senate (and casting a vote in case of a tie), the vice president is assigned no other duties in the Constitution, and although he stands “one heart beat away from the presidency,” by tradition he is not likely to be one of those who monitors the beating. During James Garfield’s slow death in the summer of 1881, Vice President Chester Arthur was reluctant to show his face near the sickroom. He feared his concern might be interpreted as premature seizing of power, especially since the assassin had boasted of acting in the vice president’s cause. A century later, George Bush, cognizant of the fact that taking an activist role could be interpreted in various ways, kept a low visibility during Ronald Reagan’s surgery for wounds sustained in the attempted assassination in March 1981 and during the president’s cancer surgery in July 1985.
Responsibility for defining the vice president’s role lies partly with the chief executives, many of whom were reluctant to act, often for obvious reasons. In the nineteenth century, not every vice president established a year-round Washington residence, and most, therefore, were not on hand to participate in important discussions. Some lacked experience and ability, having acquired their jobs because of party efforts to balance the ticket. Others were very old and showed little vitality. Potential for rivalry between the chief executive and his second-in-command dictated prudence in assigning tasks.
The vice presidency became the subject of renewed discussion after the death of Franklin Roosevelt in 1945 just as the United States was preparing to conclude World War II by using the atomic bomb. Harry S. Truman, having served as vice president for only a few weeks, had not been privy to all the discussions of the power of the bomb or to other relevant information, and his predicament led to new efforts to define the job of presidential understudy. Eventually each president worked out his own arrangements, often—but not always—putting in writing just what he expected of his vice president if he himself had to undergo surgery or temporarily remove himself from the decision-making process. The twenty-fifth amendment to the Constitution (which became effective in February 1967) further clarified just how the vice president could become acting president.
16. Young, American Roulette, p. 5. Paul C. Light, Vice Presidential Power (Baltimore, 1984), shows how some vice presidents emphasized the potential power in the office.
17. Young, American Roulette, p. 134.
18. New York Times, July 13, 1986, p. E7.
19. Rufus Wilmot Griswold, The Republican Court (New York, 1854), p. 178.
20. New York Times, July 16, 1985, p. A11.
21. Allan Nevins, ed., The Diary of John Quincy Adams (New York, 1951), p. 337.
22. Time (August 28, 1964), p. 20.
23. At the 1986 convention of the Organization of American Historians, an entire session centered on a discussion of what is being called “women’s political culture.” Readers interested in following the arguments should consider the work of Kathryn Kish Sklar, Susan Ware, Mary Beth Norton, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, J. Stanley Lemons, Mary Ryan, and Mari Jo Buhle, among others. They have considered the wide variety of women’s political participation, whether separate from men’s or not. The same historians have also looked at the American political process and American attitudes to see how they set the stage for women’s leadership and effectiveness.
24. Mary Hoyt, speaking at conference, “Modern First Ladies: Private Lives and Public Duties,” Gerald R. Ford Museum, Grand Rapids, Michigan, April 18–20, 1984, hereafter referred to as the Grand Rapids Conference.
Chapter 1
1. Stephen Decatur, Private Affairs of George Washington (Boston, 1933), p. 2.
2. New York Times, February 28, 1982, section 3, p. 19.
3. John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., Writings of George Washington, 39 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1939–1944), vol. 30, p. 363.
4. Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington, 7 vols. (New York, 1948–1957), vol. 6. p. 186.
5. Freeman, George Washington, vol. 6, p. 398.
6. Doris Kearns, speaking at 92nd Street Y, New York, October 16, 1984.
7. For a full discussion of the problem, see chapter 11, “Presidential Wives and the Press,” within earlier editions of this book.
8. Henry Cabot Lodge, ed., The Works of Alexander Hamilton, 9 vols. (New York, 1885–1886), vol. 8, pp. 83–95.
9. Freeman, George Washington, vol. 6, p. 207.
10. Freeman, George Washington, vol. 6, p. 187.
11. Freeman, George Washington, vol. 6, p. 207.
12. Decatur, Private Affairs, p. 44.
13. For reports of Martha Washington’s first days in New York, see Gazette of the United States, May 30, 1789, p. 3; Daily Advertiser, June 15, 1789, p. 2.
14. Rufus Wilmot Griswold, The Republican Court (New York, 1854), p. 164.
15. Anne Hollingsworth Wharton, Martha Washington (New York, 1897), p. 197.
16. A major controversy has developed among historians concerning the fluidity of sex roles in colonial America. Mary Beth Norton argues forcefully in Liberty’s Daughters (Boston, 1980) that earlier historians had exaggerated in describing an overlap between men’s and women’s tasks. George Washington’s
interest in household management is one example, however, that had led Norton’s predecessors to emphasize how much men and women exchanged tasks in the eighteenth century. See George Washington as a Housekeeper, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick (New York, 1924).
17. Gazette of the United States, May 6, 1789, p. 3, cited in Freeman, George Washington, vol. 6, p. 199.
18. Decatur, Private Affairs, p. 194.
19. Stewart Mitchell, ed., New Letters of Abigail Adams (Boston, 1947), pp. 19–20.
20. Mitchell, New Letters, p. 20.
21. Decatur, Private Affairs, p. 117.
22. Freeman, George Washington, vol. 7, ed. John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth, p. 106.
23. James Thomas Flexner, George Washington and the New Nation (Boston, 1969), p. 208.
24. L. H. Butterfield, ed., Book of Abigail and John (Cambridge, 1975), p. 17.
25. Henry Adams, Life of Albert Gallatin (Philadelphia, 1879), p. 185.
26. Page Smith, John Adams, 2 vols. (Garden City, 1962–1963), vol. 2, p. 908.
27. Mitchell, New Letters, p. 161.
28. Smith, John Adams, vol. 2, p. 937.
29. Janet Whitney, Abigail Adams (Boston, 1947), p. 289.
30. Bradford Perkins, “A Diplomat’s Wife in Philadelphia: Letters of Henrietta Liston, 1796–1800,” William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 11 (October 1954), p. 593.
31. See Mitchell, New Letters, pp. 118–119, on Darby and Joan ballad. The text of the ballad is in Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 5 (1735), p. 153:
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