July 18, 2008
Exclusive: Do First Ladies Make a Difference in Presidential Policy?
Ruth KingWhat 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.
No matter what Obama says, First Lady contenders ARE open to scrutiny. Read the rest of this one here.
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