Senator Obama: Remember the (First) Ladies

Reports indicate that, in light of recent attacks by Senator Clinton, Senator Obama and his supporters are about to sharpen their critique. If so, there is one line of attack which I urge them to drop for it flies in the face of what historians tell us as well as Clinton's record as first lady.

"She wasn't treasury secretary in the Clinton administration," Obama has pointed out in the past to make his point that being first lady does not count as political experience. Continuing to deny Hillary Clinton's role in her husband's presidency will not sit well with many women, especially older women, who understand only too well the essential and often unacknowledged roles many women have played in their husband's careers.

When it comes to the presidency, starting with John Adams, wives have to varying degrees played significant political roles in their husband's administrations. As long as it was unthinkable to have a woman president (and for some it is still unthinkable), the closest a woman could get to the presidency was being first lady.

First ladies were often as intelligent, knowledgeable, and shrewd as their president husbands, and so it is not surprising that from Abigail Adams to Hillary Clinton some have played important roles in their husband's presidencies.

According to historian Joseph Ellis, author of Founding Fathers, Abigail Adams' "political instincts... rivaled Madison's legendary skills..."

When her husband John was elected president, Abigail who was not even allowed to vote (her well known 1776 plea that the gentlemen "remember the ladies" when drafting the Declaration of Independence had been laughed off) was home earning the family's living by tending their Massachusetts farm. President Adams wrote to her: "I never wanted your advice and assistance more in my life....The times are critical and dangerous and I must have you here to assist me... You must leave the farm to the mercy of the winds. I can do nothing without you." Ellis tells us: "With her at his side, he [President Adams] had no real need for a cabinet."

When Adams contemplated sending a delegation to France to negotiate a treaty to avert war with other great European powers, Ellis writes, "Abigail endorsed the initiative. Again the idea might have originated with her, though the communication with the Adams marriage was so seamless and overlapping that primacy is impossible to fix."

President Woodrow Wilson was known to consult often with his wife Edith on political issues. When he suffered a stroke and was unable to speak or move, Mrs. Wilson forbade doctors to make public the seriousness of his condition.

She demanded that documents be delivered to her; that she would give them to the president. She did apparently discuss the papers with her husband, but it is not at all clear that was he able to comprehend them. Instead, Mrs. Wilson consulted with her husband's most trusted advisors, but she made the decisions and signed the papers for her husband. President Wilson's opponents in Congress and the press complained that the United States had become a "petticoat government" run by an "acting ruler."

When it comes to Eleanor Roosevelt, there are few who would dispute the essential role she played in her husband's administration, especially with respect to the New Deal. According to historian Blanche Wiesen Cook author of a three volume biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, "The best of the New Deal was because of Eleanor Roosevelt's activities." She always said: "Government exists for one purpose: to make things better for all people." In the 1920's, Cook tells us, Eleanor was the leading woman politician in the Democratic Party. In the 1930's, she brought the vision of the 1880s social-reform feminists such as Florence Kelly, Jane Addams, Lillian Wald, directly into the White House.

I have highlighted a few of the best known cases; numerous other first ladies undoubtedly played important roles as their husbands' advisors.

So when Bill Clinton boasted that in electing him, the country would be getting two for the price of one, he was for the first time giving official voice to a tradition that has been around since the first days of our nation.

Can there be any serious doubt that Clinton was involved in policy issues for most of her husband's eight years in office? Her key role in developing a health care plan is well known, and while the plan turned out to be highly unsuccessful and led to a period of political withdrawal on her part, biographers note that it played a major role in facilitating her future effectiveness. She moved away from her uncompromising and arrogant rigidity captured by her early assertion that, "Bill and I didn't come to Washington to play the game as usual," and learned how to build consensus and pass legislation.

On the international level, her representation of the United States at the United Nations World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen; her five-nation trip to South Asia to improve relations in particular with India and Pakistan; her moving and forceful speech on democratic and universal ideals of human freedom at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing -- she was Honorary Chairwoman of the U.S. delegation -- turned her into a figure of enormous respect and influence around the world.

In Clinton's case, her role in government started even earlier. For example, after the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that public education was inequitably funded and therefore unconstitutional, she took a leave from her work at the Rose Law Firm, became chairwoman of the governor's Education Standards Committee, and succeeded in introducing significant reforms. Biographer Carl Bernstein commenting on these reforms, states that "her substantive legacy in Arkansas was real."

There is enough to criticize in Hillary Clinton without demonstrating what might be perceived as both a lack of historical awareness and lack of sensitivity to many women's life experiences. Senator Obama, please don't go there.

Comments

[editrix66]

Obama is criticizing Clinton's contention that her experience is so much better than his. Her implication is that she has already been co-president, the assertion of which is absurd. Obama must explore what her role really was. It isn't an attack on First Ladies. It's an attack on Clinton's rhetoric of incumbency. She assumes that because of her role as First Lady, she is entitled to the Presidency without question. Well, questioning Clinton's actual role, duties, and accomplishments is exactly what Obama should be doing. For what it's worth, I would have voted for Eleanor Roosevelt in a heartbeat.

[anonhuffpostcommentator]

First, Obama is not winning the old woman vote anyways, so why should he pander to them? Second, everyone else is beginning to realize that the more you examine Clinton's alleged experience, the less there is. Some might conclude that it has stretched beyond absurd resume padding into the realm of utter BS.

I'm sure Obama is thankful for your advice. The only problem, apart from it being of little value, is that he is winning, including last week, where the net results of the March 4 through 7 primaries was a net gain of 7 delegates. So, I hardly think he has to do anything different other than take the high road and let his surrogates put a spotlight on Clinton's exaggerations and distortions.

[efranklin]

Obama has repeatedly and publicly stated that he does not diminish Hillary Clinton's role as First Lady, but all the while Hillary has unapologetically put down his courageous stance on the Iraq War in 2002 to "just a speech". If she does not want to be belittled, she should not herself be an unabashed belittler. It's as honest a critique as any to ask what her accomplishments were as First Lady. Those years do, after all, partially comprise her boasted "35 years of experience".

[NYS4OBAMA]

I feel Obama criticizes Hillary's First Ladies duties because of the way she has framed them.

While there is little documentation, other than her failed Health Care push, about her official role in Bill's White House. She claims that she took an active roll in all good things out of her Husband's administration, but anything controversial, she didn't support (NAFTA, MFN for China) or didn't know about (pardons)... Her roles in the various scandals (White-Water, Travel-Gate, Trooper-Gate, etc.) haven't been investigated during this election cycle either.

It is this attempt to have it both ways that invites criticism, especially, since she will not release the documents detailing her schedule and role within Bill's Administration. Since Hillary uses her experience as First Lady as her primary reason for her Candidacy and yet refuses to actually detail what she did, Obama is required to ask these questions in an attempt to understand her actual experience.

It is not an attempt to discredit her accomplishments; it"s an attempt to actually see what her accomplishments were?

[Argoth]

Look, I understand your point, but I think you are way off the mark.

Assuming that you would apply this to most any job, since the Presidency is a job, we all at times ask our significant others for advise on some aspects of work. However, that still does not qualify them to immediately step into our role. I am an engineer and I will occasionally ask my girlfriend for advice on some asects of my work, but no employer in their right mind would hire her for an engineering job based on that. Further, I would not be so arrogant as to assume that I could do my girlfriend's job just because she asks me what I think about something.

A doctor's husband/wife can not step in for them when they are sick. Heck, even the fast food worker's husband/wife can't just assume that they will do an amazing job just because their partner came home and told them about their day and they have been to other fast food resteraunts. If that were the case, I could go be a doctor since I have seen every episode of House MD.

[KaAp]

I am 52 years old and I guess that makes me an older woman, or at least someone approaching the same age cohort as Senator Clinton. I say this because I find your analysis a bit anemic, generalizing your particular analysis to an entire demographic. I supported the Clinton's twice, I defended them when in a room with Republican's in my family and among Republican colleagues and friends. However, as I look back at the articles and chapters and books I wrote during the Clinton administration how angry I was at them and now I am passed the point of anger.
Her history working against women and unions has been documented on these pages for months (everything from devising the plan to through Monica Lewinsky and other women under the bus, to the rape trial, to her work on Wal-Mart ... to her spin about the Watergate committee and her padding of her work with the children's defense fund, let alone Lani Guinier and Joceyln Elders) ... She did not bring about peace in Northern Ireland, nor did she do much of anything except appear at a USO show in 'Bosnia ... and her speech in China was JUST a speech (she cannot deride speeches and rhetoric while pointing to her own accomplishment of speech and rhetoric) ... and what did she really do for women's rights in China? Did she change the one child rule which precipitated massive abortions of female fetuses so that the one child could be male? What did she accomplish? In 1994 China was granted most favored nation status by Clinton despite both their protestations surrounding Bush's 1992 handling of Tienemann square ... which is parallel to the weak and disappointing stand the Clinton's have both taken on human rights issues both in his administration and throughout her voting record as a Senator .... this includes in East Timor (where they supplied arms and f-16's making genocide seem like commerce) and on and on including sweatshops in the US, NAFTA etc ...
If, she does want to take credit for her husband's administration she has to account for the genocide in Rwanda, the Cole incident, the first world trade center bombing, Somalia etc etc ... she also has to
take credit for the reprehensible actions against women and children and the elderly as the Clinton administration did away with AFDC expanded the prison industrial complex (and all of these were done with an Orwellian language that would be comical if so many people were not hurt by this) ...
I could go on and on ... but she also must take credit for her husband's blunders which precipitated George Bush coming to office and not Al Gore ...
She was no Eleanor Roosevelt her commitment to poverty to issues important to women and children only extend as far as it falls in line with her overwhelming ambitions

[AnninCA]

I agree that Obama's attack on her experience by jeering at her accomplishments during these years is particularly sexist.

After all.......women are good for just one thing, he seems to be saying.

How he gets by with this type of sexism from his own supporters is beyond me. I know Hillary's supporters hold her more accountable.

[PenguinInBondage]

Riiiiiiihgt......I remember Clinton's supporters being all up in arms when Hillary stated that Obama isn't a muslim "as far as I know"
LOL

[KaAp]

He seems to be saying? No, he has not said that nor is there an implication present ... He is jeering at her accomplishments? Show me the "jeer?"
Your tenuous grasp on reality is rather remarkable ... She was the person who commented on his ability ...
Are Hillary Clinton's supporters accountable for sexism ... why is she praying for Spitzer?
Accountable for sexism? How about all the women the Clintons' collectively through under the bus? Can you say Guinier, and Elders as professionals and can you say Lewinsky, Flowers etc ... as paramours? How many high level officials are women on the Clinton campaign?
I will be the first person to hold someone to the flames for any human rights inequity but lying and implying just does not cut it

[KSH]

If she wants to take credit for things that is okay with me but she must answer for things that went wrong in that administration also. Like the Rwandan genocide, Somalia, 3 Strikes rule, the Don't Ask Don't Tell - I want to know what was her part in those policies.

[UppityNegress]

Have you seen the Amazing Mrs. Prichard? Well, Hillary Clinton is not even of the caliber of character and honorability of the inexperienced BBC-character. Hillary Clinton is an over-achiever that lacks the character to balance the said and factual experience she bestows. Her trademark personality and character is what cancels out any and for some, all, validation of her experience.

This is not a coronation of the most popular and toughest, Mean Girl. We, citizens, and we, female citizens have a right to deny what she represents and has represented to us since she came into the national spotlight.

White Feminists can look past who Hillary is but most other Americans, besides Hispanics, can look objectively at realizing Hillary being elected as symbolism to exorcise and reinvigorate White Feminism is not our personal campaign to wage.

Even if Hillary wins, White Feminism will not be reinvigorated. Just as it has been on the decline, it will only continue because you choose such a dishonorable woman to use as your poster-child. You've proven that White Feminism means White Female demonition over all, including White Males. I just can't justify transferring symbolic supremacy from White Males to the hands of some group that supports the ideologies of a triangulating woman. There is no honor is lobbying for Hillary as I see White Feminists do in this campaign.

Please remember that not all White Males are bad...and they are your sons. There is a new generation of younger Whites who are trying to seek redemption of the sins of their parents. You are pushing to not change this idea of White Supremacy. You just want a transfer of who inflicts it.

[mesuki]

The first ladies you mentioned could very well have been honorable and decent, We know only what historians have written. As for Hillary we know exactly what she's done and will continue to do if we allow her to get back to the whitehouse. So please don't compare this" monster" to other first ladies,cause as far as I know none of them have bought such scandal to our whitehouse. Im a woman and I refuse to vote for Hillary just because she's a woman. She hasn't earned my respect.I respect strong honest women of intergrity and she falls far from that catagory!

[aceofbasebaby]

I'm looking forward to your "sons" overturning your right to have children, vote and hold on to a job. If she is as bad a "monster" as you say - perhaps you'd be better off choosing McCain and the Republican agenda. I'm a man and your silly reasoning is just the reason why I'm voting for Hillary - because she is a woman. She has earned my respect simply for the fact that she has survived the pure hatred men and other women have for her. There's nothing more admirable than a survivor. It builds strength and integrity.

[Ides]

Eleanor Roosevelt was a fighter and a revolutionary, a crusader for social justice. Hillary Clinton drank tea. Don't make me laugh.

[qwr]

Hillary Clinton points to two accomplishments as First Lady: Northern Ireland and Bosnia. As Olbermann pointed out, Lord Trimble, the Nobel Prize winner, said that it was a "wee bit silly" of Clinton to say that she had any role in the peace process. She accompanied Bill and had photos taken. And, as has been pointed out many times, Clinton went to Bosnia with Sinbad and Sheryl Crow as part of a USO show. Hillary Clinton is doing more than playing up her role as First Lady--she is misleading the public about that role.

[vernonbc]

Excellent comments from everyone, well thought out and very unbiased. They're not anti-Hillary, just honest statements refuting the puff piece written by Myriam Miedzian. I hope you read them all carefully Myriam and gain some understanding why a 'lack of sensitivity to many women's life experiences' is absolutely not the reason why so many women do not support Hillary's run just because she's a woman.

[FreedomLoverX]

Let's all pretend Hillary was another Roosevelt! Let's now rewrite history, after all, we had so much fun making it up to begin with!

There are some incredible women in this world. Women who, assuming they had principles, etchics and morals, would not sell them as cheaply as Hillary would. You are trying, I suppose, to sell the idea that experience as a first lady qualifies someone to run the government.

If you want to see some actual work on policy, skip Hillary's term in the senate. The only bills she was able to author was to name buildings.

[Silpat]

Will Hillary reject the support of Gov. Spizer in light of the unfolding "Prostitution Scandel"? If not, wouldn't this be considered disrespectful to women? After all, Gov. Spizer has admitted to using women (in this case, prostitutes) as mere sex objects.

[Ides]

She already removed all mention of him off her website.

[JohnnySorrow]

So, is she denouncing and rejecting Gov. Spitzer? Just want to be consistent.