Competing Conceptions of the First Ladyship: Public Responses to Betty Ford's 60 Minutes Interview

In recent decades, we have witnessed the rise of a women's rights movement and its contested development into a feminist movement. We have also experienced a conservative backlash, which has reinvigorated traditionalist conceptions of women as best suited to the private sphere. The first ladies have found themselves in the midst of these debates, their roles and responsibilities subjected to constant comment. Feminists argue that the first lady should manifest independence and individuality, acting on her personal convictions to achieve her own career goals. Meanwhile, more traditional thinkers maintain that the first lady should conform to historical standards of respectability in appearance and conduct (Burrell 1997, 5). This vibrant disagreement might seem to grant a first lady the latitude to select the role(s) that she will perform. The lack of generally shared criteria for evaluating her actions could give the first lady the freedom to set her own priorities and standards. But is this an accurate expectation? Does a first lady actually have a significant degree of latitude and freedom in defining her roles and responsibilities? These are important questions. First ladies have been essential to the working of the presidency. Numerous memoirs and biographies indicate that these women have exercised various kinds of political influence. In their survey of the first ladies, Karen O'Connor, Bernadette Nye, and Laura van Assendelft (1996) found that at least thirty-one have discussed politics with the president, twenty-six have been confidants or advisers to the president ("screening correspondence, highlighting news articles, and editing speeches"), and fourteen have "influenced" the appointment process (p. 846). How a first lady performs her role(s), therefore, affects the substantive content of White House decision making. The first lady's influence has also been felt outside the East and West Wings. Each first lady's presentation of herself and of her relationship with the president has routinely been magnified into a commentary on U.S. womanhood (Muir and Benitez 1996; Templin 1999). As a result, first ladies have often become lightning rods for societal debates about women's gender roles. This was much in evidence throughout the Clinton administration, during which the decisions and actions of the first lady were routinely evaluated (Burrell 1997). Yet, these assessments were not unique to the tenure of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Time and again, first ladies have "engendered a national discussion about the power and influence of women, especially political wives, on the political life of the nation" (Burrell 1997, 3). It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the presidential and the gender roles of the first lady can be neatly distinguished. Both the presidency and gender are political institutions, which is to say that both are engaged in the authoritative allocation of values (Easton 1953). Furthermore, the presidency is highly gendered; Clinton Rossiter (1960, 5) noted that The framers of the Constitution took a momentous step when they fused the dignity of a king and the power of a prime minister in one elective office. And, if they did nothing else, they gave us a "father image" that should satisfy even the most demanding political Freudians. In no less measure are the political behaviors of the first lady reflective of American traditions of gender and power. Yet, the gendered character of the first ladyship and its association with public opinion have seldom been systematically analyzed. This article seeks to understand how the public perceives the first lady, focusing on the intersection of gender and presidential power in its assessments. It may be that ongoing changes in women's societal circumstances allow the first lady greater flexibility and latitude in choosing between her roles. Alternatively, the debates generated by the women's movement may constrain the first lady, obliging her to emphasize her more traditional private sphere roles and to limit her public sphere activism. …