 |
||||||||
 |
|
|||||||
|
||||||||
|
 |
Our new first lady: seen, but not heard
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 25, 2001 Betty Ford's husband was a zero. But she was a hero. When she was first lady and was diagnosed with breast cancer, she talked about it publicly to an astonished nation. She smashed the taboo of what had been a doubly secret subject, involving not just death but the loss of a part of a woman's body that represented her sexuality. After she left the White House, Ford did it again. She admitted she was hooked on alcohol and pills. Her courage defanged the word addiction and created a new meaning for another word, recovery. Betty Ford was for the Equal Rights Amendment and said so. She was for abortion rights and said so. This was 25 years ago. The only first lady who has outdone her for forthrightness is Hillary Clinton. Yet hating her became a national sport. Now she's Sen. Clinton. Now the trash tabloids have claimed she's a lesbian. This is the only explanation for women who wield power without apology, who wield it with as much ruthlessness as men. It was not always so. At the start of the 19th century, Abigal Adams actively advised her husband. Dolley Madison, wife of President James Madison, was sometimes called "The Presidentress," according to research by the Smithsonian Institution. John Quincy Adams' wife lobbied congressmen personally on her husband's behalf. Mary Todd Lincoln was so ambitious and crazy for politics she dated Daniel Webster before she signed up for life with Abraham Lincoln. Warren Harding was a cartoon, but his wife, Florence, openly declared herself a suffragist. And when Eleanor Roosevelt died, her passing was treated with as much grief and dignity as the death of a president. Now the Republicans are back. What miracles they have wrought. They have managed already to make those first ladies of a hundred years ago look like downright wild women. Bra burners almost. "I have the best wife for the kind of work I'm in," George W. Bush recently told People magazine. "She doesn't try to steal the limelight." No siree. The entire Texas Convention of Southern Baptists withdrew from the National Convention over absurdities like telling women to "submit graciously" to their husbands. Laura Bush appears not to have heard about that. "I don't know that I'll get involved in specific controversial issues," America's new first lady told CNN last week. "I'll give him my opinions. I will, sometimes. I think wives have to be just a little bit careful about giving their husbands all of their opinions." She said this even though she, like her mother-in-law, had identical disagreements with her husband. Barbara and Laura Bush both opposed the overturning of Roe v. Wade. They had no luck convincing their husbands. Their husbands' rise to the top of American politics was built on taking a stand sure to draw a certain bedrock constituency to the polls. Morality had nothing to do with it. Winning did. It's hard to know how much of Laura Bush's aura is a carefully chosen stance. But the way first ladies act speaks loudly about the expectations we have about the way women live. Hillary Clinton may have scared people, but this second Mrs. Bush is, at 54, a throwback. She gave up her career to raise her children. Most women don't have the choice. She intends to campaign for literacy. Great idea. And most inoffensive. What, do you think, would happen if this Mrs. Bush asked her husband and his party to look hard at the one-paycheck-from-the-street lives of single moms? If she asked them to do something about the thousands of children who don't go to the doctor because there is no money and no insurance? Just a guess, of course, but somewhere I hear a man's voice calling, directing her gently back to the kitchen, to whip up some chili.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
|
Times columns today From the Times Metro desk |
