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The Enabler.
by BARBARA KELLERMAN When the Free Press published my book, All the President's Kin, in 1981, I very much doubt that the majority of my colleagues in political science were sympathetic to its basic argument. It was a time when, rare exceptions notwithstanding, the president's family was considered a subject for lightweights. Articles on, say, Lady Bird Johnson or Billy Carter were in magazines aimed at women McCall's and Ladies Home Journal, for example--which confirmed that the presidents' wives, parents, children, and siblings were still being perceived as a somewhat frivolous subject for a somewhat frivolous audience. In the above-mentioned book, I claimed quite the opposite: that since the campaign of 1960, virtually all close relatives of the president had played significant political roles; that these roles were various and multifaceted; that contemporaneous first families met the needs of no less than four different constituencies (the president, the public, the press, and themselves); and that the president's kin were now a permanent part of presidential government.(1) Since the book was published, three subsequent presidencies--Reagan's, Bush's, and Clinton's--have supported the proposition that in the last four decades of the twentieth century, first families are more politically consequential than they ever were before. But, as Hillary Rodham Clinton's tenure in the White House demonstrates, what has been less clear and consistent is the precise nature of their significance. Certainly, the first lady we have in the beleaguered second Clinton term is very different from the one we had in the halcyon days, the early days, of the first Clinton term. Hillary in History In 1993, when Bill Clinton was inaugurated president, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as she asked to be referred to from that point on, assumed a particular political role. The role of first lady had, of course, evolved over time. Nevertheless, it was still characterized by certain traditions, expectations, and informal rules. In fact, although the seven women--Jacqueline Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon, Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan, and Barbara Bush--who were Mrs. Clinton's immediate predecessors were not much alike, so far as their performances in the White House were concerned, they were much more similar than different. As a group, they created change during the thirty-year period under review, but it was gradual, at the margins, and more likely to be effected in private than in public. What set Bill and Hillary Clinton apart from the outset is that to all appearances both were equally intent on breaking the mold. Their message was clear and consistent: First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton would be something qualitatively different. We knew, of course, that Mrs. Clinton had for years been a successful lawyer in Little Rock. And we also knew that this was one formidable woman--every bit as smart, tough, competent, and composed as her smart, tough, competent, and composed husband. What we did not immediately grasp were the implications of Bill Clinton's promise to, in the words of Time magazine, "reinvent First Ladydom."(2) Nor did we realize that when he insisted in 1992 that if he was elected president it would be an "unprecedented partnership, far more than Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor,"(3) he meant what he said in more ways than one. Breaking the Rules As Gil Troy has observed, for all the mixed messages the American people sent first ladies in the past couple of decades, the fact remains that they "are not elected, and the public does not want them to act as if they were."(4) In other words, despite the many sociopolitical changes in recent years, particularly with regard to the role of women, the first lady still operates under certain constraints. These constraints divide roughly into two categories: public and private. So far as public behaviors are concerned, first ladies are expected to be essentially nonpolitical. This does not mean, of course, that they are politically neutral. What it does imply is that the activities in which first ladies choose primarily to participate are supposed to be in the general realm of good works. For example, Hillary Clinton's immediate predecessors--Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Bush, and Mrs. Reagan--were widely known for their interests in the areas of, respectively, mental health, illiteracy, and drug use. Even Mrs. Clinton's erstwhile role model, Eleanor Roosevelt, did not deviate as dramatically from this norm as is generally supposed. She served as the eyes and ears of her deskbound husband; but most Americans perceived her as acting in the public interest, and she certainly never assumed direct responsibility for public policy. ...
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