Jackie Kennedy was attacked for being a clothes horse, Nancy Reagan for being materialistic and indifferent to the needs of the poor (and her "Just say No" anti-drug campaign was treated as a joke), Hillary Clinton for her remarks about having her career and not staying home and "baking cookies", and dare one even mention the name Eleanor Roosevelt when discussing attacks on outspoken First Wives?
Even Laura Bush, who seems to be a genuinely sweet and pleasant woman, and one who has tried to maintain a non-controversial profile, has been criticized for not speaking out more and not using her position to promote more meaningful causes.
I'm not sure we really know what we do want in a First Lady these days. And, honestly, I'm not sure it really matters. The primary "job" of the First Lady is simply to be a source of security and support for her husband, to be a good wife. Anything else she publicly chooses to do or say is fine with me. She is a free citizen, she is not the one we have elected, and she is free to speak her opinions and pursue her own interests. It is tough being the First Lady these days. Any way these women choose to handle the position is fine with me. No matter how they do it, someone will find fault with it.
The topic of this thread referred to comments made by Michelle Obama in her undergraduate senior thesis at Princeton--something she wrote over 20 years ago, which specifically focused on issues of Black racial identity on the Princeton campus. It was a scholarly work and not a social tract. It grew out of her experience as a Black student at an overwhelmingly White elite university in the 1980's. It would have been impossible for her not to be aware of some "outsider" staus because of the color of her skin. Given the challenges she faced in that situation, she focused her attention and energy on constructive projects and was neither an angry radical or a particularly outspoken critic.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/06/15/learning_to_be_michelle_obama/?page=full
I think, rather sadly, that race will be an undercurrent in the Presidential election. And I think Michelle Obama may wind up being the target to incite negative racial feelings. Her formative life experience has been, in many ways, more authentically African American than that of her husband, and she has had to chart different waters as an extremely intelligent Black woman. She is now wading into relatively unexplored territory for a Black woman in America. The sharks are already circling, waiting for fresh meat.
As she appears to have done at every other major juncture in her life, I believe she will make the most of the opportunity she has now been given and will see it as a stepping stone toward achievement. If she didn't have the "right stuff" as part of her makeup, she wouldn't be where she is now.
This next Presidential election is too important to be thrown off track by distractions and irrelevant side issues. It is the voters who must insist that the candidate's wives do not become the focus of any significant attention. They will not be the ones occupying the Oval Office. If their husbands are happy with them, we should be too.
