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July 18, 2008

Exclusive: Do First Ladies Make a Difference in Presidential Policy?

Ruth King

What a dreary political season. Obama moves a tad to the right and McCain just moves and that makes news all around. They both disappoint. So, in frustration, I turn to their wives for a hint about their judgment. All I get is silly sniffing at Michelle Obama's college thesis 23 years ago and sly asides about the Barbiesque Cindy McCain's addiction to pain pills.

Pillow talk with the Commander in Chief is mighty influential and we live in interesting times.

Hillary Clinton's election to the United States Senate and her recently "suspended" - but very credible campaign for the presidency - should have made candidates' spouses much more interesting.I'd like to know what the ladies think about terrorism, homeland security, education, immigration, energy and other issues of major national debate.

First Ladies have come a long way from the tradition set by our very first First Lady.

Martha Dandridge Custis, was a young and functionally illiterate widow when she married George Washington. She gamely followed her husband through the battles of the Revolutionary War and to the temporary capitals of New York and Philadelphia where she entertained the founding fathers.Before her death she burned all their correspondence and papers, but this appraisal of her role as First Lady, written to her niece survives: "I think I am more like a state prisoner than anything else, there is (sic) certain bounds set for me which I must not depart from..."

Poor Martha. At least she was spared the humiliations and scandals that plagued later First Ladies and the critical nastiness of the media, which described Ulysses Grant's wife Julia Dent as "cross-eyed and powerfully ugly."

Abigail Adams, wife of our second President John Adams and mother of our fifth President John Quincy Adams, was an astonishing woman. She was an autodidact who believed in equal education and voting rights for women and the abolition of slavery.Her letters reveal an articulate and brilliant woman whose influence on all her husband's decisions led her to be called "Mme. President" by envious wags.

Thomas Jefferson was a widower by the time he assumed the role, but his White House

was greatly enlivened by the presence of Dolley Madison, wife of his Secretary of State James Madison, who became President in 1809. Dolley (she preferred this spelling) was married in 1794 when Madison, 17 years her senior, was a congressman already famous for introducing the Bill of Rights. She is best known as presidential spouse for having rescued the original drafts of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and a Stuart portrait of George Washington just before the invading British torched the White House during the war of 1812.

Sarah Polk, an ascetic, was the first presidential wife who took an openly public role as presidential adviser. She was educated at a Moravian "female academy" and she helped write Polk's speeches, advised him on nominations and gave historical perspective to much of her political advice. Although she always prefaced her political remarks with "Mr. Polk says," she contributed her original, intelligent and cogent opinions to the political debates of the day. One can only wonder at the advice she gave to the President who led the successful Mexican-American War which concluded with the purchase of 525,000 square miles of territory and split the Northwest Regions with Britain securing Washington, Idaho and Oregon.

Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, second wife of Woodrow Wilson, was First Lady from 1915 to 1921. The media was always unkind to Edith. Her courtship with Wilson was so short that Washington nasties joked that when Woodrow proposed marriage, she was so thrilled that she fell out of bed. Edith Wilson accompanied her husband to all important and historic meetings in Europe and attended most top level meetings with respect to peace with Germany.

She was, in fact, labeled "the Secret President" for the role she played when her husband suffered a stroke in 1919 which left him partly paralyzed.Edith took over the reins of the daily schedules, the routine duties and major details of government. She was rumored to have commuted a death sentence to life imprisonment and openly deterred efforts by Vice President Thomas Riley to assume powers of presidency. Newspapers derisively referred to her as "the first woman President" and described her as narrow minded and imperious. In her own memoir she states that she only acted under direction from her husband but other journalists and authors blamed her directly for many diplomatic blunders.

The gold standard was Eleanor Roosevelt who became First Lady in 1933 after decades of political life as wife of a senator, a governor, and Secretary of the Navy.She thoroughly transcended the established role of First Ladies, by giving speeches, traveling throughout the country, giving lectures on important social conditions, and acting as her husband's protagonist and reporter. She published a regular column called "My Day" expressing myriad opinions on policies. She was an active and concerned and valuable helpmate to her husband during the tumultuous years of World War II.

Mrs. Roosevelt was a co-founder of Freedom House and after her husband's death she was appointed delegate to the United Nations by his successor Harry Truman. It is an interesting aside that many Democrats urged Truman to nominate her as his vice presidential candidate in 1948, but both declined. Truman did continue to refer to her as the "First Lady of the World." We have not seen any First Lady of that caliber since.

While Truman's wife Bess was assumed to be a "traditional" First Lady, the book Dear Bess: The Letters from Harry to Bess Truman, 1910-1959 reveals how much classified material the President revealed to his beloved wife. From Berlin, at the Potsdam Conference on July31, 1945:

"We have been going great guns the last day or two and while the conference was at a standstill because of Uncle Joe's indispostion, the able Mr. Byrnes, Molotov and Attlee and Bevin all worked and accomplished a great deal. I rather think Mr. Stalin is stallin' because he is not so happy over the English elections. He doesn't know it but I have an ace in the hole and another one showin - so unless he has threes or two pair (and I know he has not) we are sitting all right.

"The whole difficulty is reparations. Of course the Russians are naturally looters and they have been thoroughly looted by the Germans over and over again and you can hardly blame them for their attitude. The thing I have to watch is to keep our skirts clean and make no commitments.

"The Poles are the other headache. They have moved into East Prussia and to the Oder in Prussia and unless we are willing to go to war again they can stay and they will stay with Bolsheviki backing - so you see in comes old man reparations again and a completely German-looted Poland."

And, after adding "Kiss my baby. Lots and lots of love," he ends with "I've got to lunch with the Limey king when I get to Plymouth"

Mamie Eisenhower, Pat Nixon, Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter,Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush left no real policy footprints.Jacqueline Kennedy was very popular and famous for her elegance, her style and her skills in writing and painting - as well as for elevating the rather low brow culture of the White House by inviting poets, artists and classical musicians to all presidential functions.

Jackie was reputed to be the youngest First Lady, but, in fact, the youngest was Grover Cleveland's 22-year-old bride Frances.Frances, a young orphan, was actually a ward of Grover's from the time she was 11 years old. But his fancy turned to love and they were married in the White House.

And then there is Hillary Clinton, probably the most talked and written about First Lady in history.Her tenure as First Lady was riddled with scandal which she survived to become New York's Senator with a protracted primary run for the Presidency. On her way out of the White House, burning with ambition and greed, Hillary, like Dolley Madison, also "rescued" some important documents and furniture from the invading Bushites.

By the way, Hillary was not the first lady to be investigated by a federal commission. That dubious honor goes to Mary Todd Lincoln, whose involvement with a gardener named John Watt in padding expenses and other financial irregularities led to an investigation by a congressional committee, led by Congressman John F. Potter (R-WI). Mrs. Lincoln and Watt were accused of misuse of money meant to buy organic fertilizer. Watt had been hired as a "steward" to replace a man who Mrs. Lincoln wanted to remove. Mary wanted "our people in and those people out." Sound familiar?

So, what do we know about Michelle Obama or the less voluble Cindy McCain and what advice they might give?

Both women have been exceptionally active in public life. Michelle Obama was educated at Princeton and Harvard Law School. After a job in the private sector, she pursued public service in Chicago politics, at the University of Chicago, as director of program that prepared young adults for a future in public service. She is clearly ambitious and would likely seek a high profile role as First Lady.

Cindy McCain inherited and successfully runs a huge brewery business. She too has been involved in public service as an opponent of land mines, proponent for children's needs including education and medical care, and fighter of global poverty. She has traveled extensively throughout the world and seems focused and intelligent.

They sound like fine women, leaving aside Michelle's occasional episodes of foot in mouth. But, again, what do they think or do they think about national security or terrorism or North Korea's nukes or Islamic Jihad? Those are among the issues that will plague whoever becomes the next president.

Stay tuned.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Ruth S. King is a freelance writer who writes a monthly column in OUTPOST, the publication of Americans for a Safe Israel. Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.

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