Rolled oats propelled Hillary Clinton to victory in 1992. They were the game-changing ingredient in her recipe for
chocolate chip cookies, which she submitted to Family Circle magazine
in a bake-off against then-incumbent first lady Barbara Bush.The
bake-off was an attempt to appeal to stay at home moms following her
controversial response to California governor Jerry Brown’s criticism
that she owed her professional success to her husband, Bill. “I could
have stayed home and baked cookies and had tea,” she told a reporter
in a soundbite that was reported around the world. “But what I decided
to do was fulfill my profession.” Many women responded with outrage, and
perhaps that’s why, shortly thereafter, Clinton participated in the
traditional Family Circle first lady bake-off. And won.
Clinton’s
cookies are good: my best friend’s mom used to make them for her school
lunches. No doubt Hillary could have won any number of bake-offs with
her recipe, but politics have paid off far more for her: in less than a
year, she may be the first female president of the United States. But if
that happens, she won’t be the only one breaking a gender barrier: her
husband Bill will step into a role no man has ever held before. So what
kind of first lady will Bill Clinton be? (Besides, of course, a manly
one).
The role of first lady
is officially unofficial: there’s no constitutional requirement that the
president have a partner, and the person occupying the role has never
received a salary. The job has evolved over the years. In the 18th and
19th century, the first lady was primarily expected to be a lovely and
capable hostess, just like any wife of a distinguished, wealthy American
man. These women were expected to bake cookies, host teas, select china
patterns, manage household staff and smile graciously at fancy dinners.
In the twentieth century, however, things began to shift, and some
first ladies began to dig in to more substantial issues than menus and
flower arrangements.
Different women leveraged the
position in different ways: some argue that Lady Bird Johnson was the
first to modernize the job when she campaigned on behalf of her husband
Lyndon B Johnson in the mid 60s, but others wielded significant
political clout before her. Eleanor Roosevelt’s work as a writer,
activist, public speaker and social reformer is perhaps most famous. But
other notably hard-working first ladies include Florence Harding, wife
of Warren G, a passionate suffragette who edited all of her husband’s
important speeches and pushed hard to influence his appointments.
But
when Hillary Clinton moved into the White House in 1993, she was not
granted the same flexibility. As the chair of the Task Force on National
Health Care reform, she was slammed in the press for stepping beyond
the reaches of her role, in spite of her clear qualifications to work on
policy: the implication was that she was being unladylike. To many
Americans, the revelations about her husband’s extramarital sexual
proclivities confirmed their belief that Hillary was failing to fulfill
the remit of the first lady: to be a pleasant and decorative hostess who
represents a “traditional” and anachronistic family: a man in charge, a
faithful and helpful woman by his side (even though a number of other presidents and First Ladies have also had notable affairs). Indeed, Clinton blamed the affair in part on herself for failing as a wife.
Michelle
Obama – also a highly-qualified lawyer, and an expert in health care –
has, by contrast, taken a less policy-oriented approach to the role.
She’s championed family-oriented causes like healthy eating,
and kept her distance from Capitol Hill. (In this, she followed more
closely the model set by her predecessor Laura Bush, who campaigned for
literacy and rarely expressed an opinion.) But Obama has nevertheless
been the subject of gendered and racist criticism: of her clothes, of
her hair, for being “scary”, for giving Queen Elizabeth a hug and for needing to “drop a few pounds”. That’s a lot to take for a volunteer job.
Ultimately,
the base state of the job of first lady is gendered, a model of
wifeliness. The women who have given the role breadth and depth have
done so by reimagining or extending the role of a wife – a role that
only exists because of a relationship to a husband. What, then, will
happen to this anachronistic role if it’s filled by man?
The idea of a former president championing America’s dental health, giving tours of White House Christmas decorations or pledging to “take care of the President” as Jacqueline Kennedy did,
seems preposterous. It’s notable, but not surprising, that the male
partners of female world leaders aren’t burdened with the same kind of
responsibilities that women are. Though he’d be smashing the glass floor
for men in America by becoming the first gentleman (or whatever they
will call him), Bill Clinton would be far from the world’s first first
man. In Germany, Angela Merkel’s husband, Joachim Sauer, has continued
his work as a chemistry professor, although he does attend state
occasions alongside her. Earlier, Margaret Thatcher’s husband, Denis
Thatcher, was known for his total devotion to his wife, his remove from
politics, and his expression of hard-right views in private. No one ever
cared about what he wore.
The Clintons have alluded to some possible routes that Bill could take: in September, Hillary even said appointing him as her vice-president had crossed her mind. More recently, at the Democratic debate in South Carolina, she stated
that he’d be one of her key advisors: “I’m going to ask for his ideas,
I’m going ask for his advice, and I’m going to use him as a goodwill
emissary to go around the country to find the best ideas we’ve got,
because I do believe, as he said, everything that’s wrong with America
has been solved somewhere in America,” she said. What he’ll be called in
that role remains unclear: Bill himself has suggested Adam, after the Biblical first man.
American
women are increasingly taking the breadwinning roles in their
households, but is the model of the dominant wife and supportive husband
one that we’re ready to find palatable in the White House? Since the
conclusion of his presidency, much of his time has been taken up with
his eponymous foundation, which is run out of an office in New York:
it’s raised nearly $2bn. Would propriety and tradition really require
him to step aside from his work during his wife’s term in office, as
Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton gave up their jobs to move to
Washington with their partners? In an America that had achieved gender
equality, one might hope that this would happen. But that’s not an
America in which we live. It seems unlikely that anyone is going to ask
Bill Clinton for his best cookie recipe, and not just because he’s a vegan.
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