April 20, 2009 • 14 mins
The position of first lady is one of the most unique and complex jobs in the United States. Tune in as Molly and Cristen take a close look at the first lady's intricate balance between innovation and protocol in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stop? Mom? Never told you?
From houstuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly. I'm Kristen, and today Kristin and I
(00:20):
are going to start off with a shout out to
one of our sister house stuff Works podcasts, that ever
popular stuff you missed in History Class, starring Candice and
Jane True. And they did a podcast that was really
interesting called uh to Political Parties Influenced the First Lady's Duties,
and they went over you know, they sort of made
(00:41):
a generalization that Democratic first ladies are more political partners
with their presidential spouse, whereas Republican first ladies in general
are more like marriage partners. They have more of a
traditional role. Well, that was recorded during during the election,
before we knew who our first lady was going to be,
and now that Shelle Obama is our official first lady,
(01:02):
Molly and I thought that we would take a look at, um,
how that has UH stood up so far. We're almost
to the one hundred day mark of President Obama's term,
and so we thought we'd look at the duties the
first Lady and how Michelle Obama has taken that on right,
because you can interpret the first lady duties anyway you want.
The roles are not defined, right. They really started out
(01:22):
as just sort of a social hostess, say, did white
house redecoration, sort of like overseer of the house, very
traditional feminine household roles. Yeah, and that's part of what
Candice and Jane cover. It's really interesting she looks from
that podcast. But before she became First Lady, Michelle Obama
was pretty adamant that she was going to be one
(01:42):
of those more traditional first ladies. Her role was basically
going to be mom in chief. She's going to take
care of Malie and Sasha. And you know she's done
that to some extent, but she's done a whole lot
more in the past few months as well. Right, and Molly,
it's interesting you bring up the mom and chief part um.
According to The New York Times, MSUs Obama has the
highest favorability rate of any incoming First Lady since nineteen
(02:06):
eighty and they said that her approval rating really soared
after she sort of shifted the focus of her potential
first Lady rolls to that of wife and mother first
and foremost, which I thought was kind of interesting. Yeah,
it's sort of a statement on the fact that we
do kind of want a homemaker in chief. You know,
during elections, we always uh, you know, want to know
(02:27):
what the potential first ladies cookie recipe is, you know,
what dishes they make for their husband, despite the fact
that once they get into the White House, they don't
do any cooking at all. Right, Um, and Michelle Obama
comes into the White House with a pretty impressive list
of credentials. Um, she was educated at Harvard Law School.
She was the president of Community and External Affairs for
(02:50):
the University of Chicago Medical Center. I mean, this woman
was very busy, had a very impressive career, and now
that's sort of you know, she kind of left it
behind a little bit to become first, right, sort of certain, right,
it sort of seems like that's something she had to
make a very clear statement that she was doing that
during the election for people to almost accept her. Um.
(03:11):
And while she's sort of still maintained that role in
the White House, she's doing a lot more. I mean,
she has started this garden in the White House lawn
to you know, promote healthy eating. She's been visiting military families,
she's been visiting school children. So all the people who
are buzz about a first Ladies role are just watching
her trying to figure out how all these various activities
are going to come together to form a platform, because,
(03:33):
as Candis and Jane were saying, these democratic first layers
are more likely to have kind of this policy platform
that they promote and at the same time balanced with
that policy platform. I think one of the most challenging
aspects of being first ladies that you have to do
all these things in the public sphere, supporting the military, families,
middle class women, etcetera. But Michelle Obama is also on
(03:55):
the cover of Vogue, and she is being at her
every start coo. Real choice is being documented, and I
have to say, I hate to have to bring it
up again, but we are nationally obsessed with her arms.
Her arms are beautiful, yeah, I mean their tone, Yeah,
that's awesome. But I mean you're right, there's all this
constant speculation about whether she's pregnant. I mean, she's very
(04:16):
much a tabloid figure now, which has led Christian and
I had a sort of ponder the question is First
Lady the hardest job in the world because in addition
to all these people watching your every personal choice, you know,
evaluating your marriage, looking at your arms, you're also sort
of required now in this modern age, to have this
policy platform, right, And I would say that even more
than the president, we look to the First Lady as
(04:39):
the barometer for the health of you know, the First
family and how that kind of reflects on the entire
national tone because right now things are really difficult with
the economy, and we have these ongoing conflicts in Iraq
and Afghanistan, and I think that, you know, one of
Michelle Obama's kind of unspoken duties is to re lead, uh,
(05:01):
keep the First family healthy, something something positive for the
nation to be able to look to and kind of
get us through this storm. Right. So, with the situation
in the world, in combination with the fact that she's
one of the you know, the most recent first lads
to deal with young children in the White House, she's
got a pretty tricky role to navigate, which is why
you know, people are obsessed with her every move. But
she's really coming in um as part of a generation
(05:25):
of First ladies. There was a political science professor named
Robert Watson, who defined different generations of First ladies and
whether each was sort of you know, activists, the ones
that were more quiet, and how you know, from Martha
Washington on, we've had to deal with this evolution of
a role since no one really knows what it means. Right,
the first lady has really come to be more of
(05:47):
the president's partner rather than just his at home spouse
who hosts dignitaries and sets up social events and decorates
for Christmas. Right. So Michelle Obama's firstly gender ration really
starts back with Betty Ford, who was one of the
most politically active First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt, who was
sort of, you know, kind of a stick out figure
(06:09):
because there was no one like her at that time.
But in terms of modern women, this movement that Michelle
Obama belongs to really start with Betty Ford, who was
a pretty cool lady. Right. Among the things that she
was really outspoken about were feminist platforms at the time,
specifically Equal Rights Amendment that she was strongly for, and
she made breast cancer really big issue as well with
(06:30):
her own fight against the disease. Right. And then after her,
we have Roslyn Carter who really emphasized performing arts and
support for the mental health community and the elderly. And
she's still active today with the Carter Center and their
global outreach, right. And so Roslyn Carter was actually the
first first Lady to have a budget. Um when Jimmy
(06:53):
Carter was in office, he passed a bill seventy which
was when the first Lady was given a budget and
a staff. Probably to that first ladies might have brought
in friends, frankly to host like their events basically, right.
And I think it was Jackie Kennedy who brought in
the first press secretary and she had desperate permission to
do so. But now Michelle Obama has the liberty to
(07:15):
really create whatever kind of support staff that she wants
and needs. And I have a feeling that since she
has a pretty pretty heavy load, like we've been talking about,
that's probably pretty extensive staff, right, And having a support
staff is important for the first Lady because she has
really three main overarching duties, and that would be social affairs,
(07:36):
which you know is the traditional things of inviting diplomats,
which is very important part of politics, uh, and then
press relations and policy issues, and with policy issues. The
first Lady has such a unique sphere of influence because
she is with the president, you know, in the quiet
(07:57):
times when he's outside of the public eye, and really
you know, maybe influenced whatever legislation or policies that he's
working on. Right, And I think that's what makes people nervous,
because you know, we don't elect the first lady. People
don't really look to that when they're looking to elect
a president. And you know, often we're told families are
off limits during elections, but then all of a sudden
they're in office, they seem to have all this power.
(08:18):
You think about Hillary versus Laura, Hillary Clinton versus Laura
Bush and the very different roles they check on us
first lady, Right. Hillary Clinton made made waves when Bill
Clinton appointed her to head of the Task Force on
Healthcare Reform, and as we know now, it didn't really
pan out so well, and she sort of had to
pull back a little bit from from the public space
(08:38):
and maybe take on more of the traditional first lady
duties that some people were really upset that she wasn't
immediately embracing. Right, It's very much a damned if you do,
damned if you don't situation because Hillary was very much
you know, I'm going to promote an aggressive policy that advances,
you know, an issue that people care passionately about, whereas
(09:00):
UM then when we had a change of office in
Laura Bush came into office, she had the platform of literacy.
But you know, I think it's fair to say that
a lot of people may not have even have known
that until they read the extensive White House bio to
see all the things she did with that. Well, so far,
we're not too far into the Obama administration, but it
seems like Michelle is doing a really great job with
kind of balancing the public policy zeal of Hillary Clinton
(09:22):
and the more homemaker type of image that Laura Bush projected.
But I gotta wonder, Molly, how the idea of the
president's spouse would change if we had a female president.
What if we had a first gentleman or first dude
as uh Todd Palin likes to call himself, right, And
(09:45):
I guess those um gubernatorial relationships provide a sort of
a uh model of how that would go. But I
know that you're reading some interesting stuff about Germany where
they do have a first man. What did they call him?
Do you know, I don't know what the official name
for it is, but Angela Merkel is the first female
Chancellor of Germany. And the interesting thing about her husband
(10:08):
is that he hasn't really changed his life that much.
He is a scientist, and if you want to interview him,
it's got to be about his career, and he doesn't
really do that many public appearances. He's very withdrawn from
this kind of public role as as the chancellor's husband.
(10:28):
So I wonder how the same thing would fly in
the United States. Because we love gos, we want it.
We would still want to know what the first the
first spouse would be up to. But yeah, exactly, but
he might have a little more leeway to really pursue
his own his own interests and kind of carry on
his career, especially since the closest we've had to that
(10:50):
situation has been Hillary and Bill Clinton. Whereas we all
sort of knew who Bill Clinton was, who would have
come into the Oval office with a persona already established
in the mindset in the public exactly, and he could
probably carry on with his foundation's work and all of that.
It probably wouldn't drastically change our perception of the first couple, right,
And so it is an interesting thing to ponder since
especially I feel that the things we've talked about in
(11:13):
terms of a homemaker role in addition to a policy role,
we have very specific ideas about how the woman should
fall into this role, and I don't know if we
would apply those same homemaking you know, social gala function chief. Yeah,
I really I cannot imagine. I can't imagine Bill Clinton,
you know, getting really into hosting social luncheon. Actually well,
(11:39):
I mean, I just I think that he would. I
think he kind of farm out the organizational duties, right,
you know, But maybe I don't know. Maybe I just
don't know old Bill well enough to say. But going
back to this question of is first Lady the hardest
job in a or in the world. Probably not, Okay,
probably not. That's kind of an exaggeration, but it's such
an extreme balance. It's sort of every woman's societal role
(12:02):
all wrapped up into one, right, and no matter what
she does, whether she's too active or not active enough,
at some point someone is going to have a complaint
about it. So there's no way to succeed, I think,
in this job. But I think at the end of
the day, we can all agree on the fact that
Shelle Obama has banging arms. Those arms are awesome. Well,
(12:25):
ending on that intellectual high note, we would like to
direct you to the wonderful article How the First Lady
Works written by Stephimiss in History Class co host Candice Keener.
But Molly, before we go, I think that we need
to read some listener mail. We have an awesome question
(12:48):
sent in from Kristen. It wasn't me, I promised it
was another Christian for a lot of email to herself.
I'm not just trying to to boost the pad the
mom stuff in box to make us feel better about ourselves.
But with that out of the way, uh, Kristen had
a question related to our podcasts on egg donation. Well,
(13:12):
I've got some bad news for your Kristen. No sex.
Sex is usually off the table, and also no antidepressants.
As we were talking about in that egg Donation podcast,
there's a lot of psychological screening that goes in to
the decision of whether someone can be an egg donor,
and usually antidepressants would be a mark of uh no,
go right, So there you go. Egg donation pretty strict process,
(13:36):
as we discussed, and should I donate my eggs. If
you miss that one, better come back through iTunes. And
if you have a question like Kristen who is not
my co host Kristen, you can email us at mom
stuff at how stuff works dot com for moralness and
thousands of other topics because it has to works dot com.
(14:00):
Mm hmm. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
and twelve camera. It's ready. Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stop? Mom? Never told you?
From houstuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly. I'm Kristen, and today Kristin and I
(00:20):
are going to start off with a shout out to
one of our sister house stuff Works podcasts, that ever
popular stuff you missed in History Class, starring Candice and
Jane True. And they did a podcast that was really
interesting called uh to Political Parties Influenced the First Lady's Duties,
and they went over you know, they sort of made
(00:41):
a generalization that Democratic first ladies are more political partners
with their presidential spouse, whereas Republican first ladies in general
are more like marriage partners. They have more of a
traditional role. Well, that was recorded during during the election,
before we knew who our first lady was going to be,
and now that Shelle Obama is our official first lady,
(01:02):
Molly and I thought that we would take a look at, um,
how that has UH stood up so far. We're almost
to the one hundred day mark of President Obama's term,
and so we thought we'd look at the duties the
first Lady and how Michelle Obama has taken that on right,
because you can interpret the first lady duties anyway you want.
The roles are not defined, right. They really started out
(01:22):
as just sort of a social hostess, say, did white
house redecoration, sort of like overseer of the house, very
traditional feminine household roles. Yeah, and that's part of what
Candice and Jane cover. It's really interesting she looks from
that podcast. But before she became First Lady, Michelle Obama
was pretty adamant that she was going to be one
(01:42):
of those more traditional first ladies. Her role was basically
going to be mom in chief. She's going to take
care of Malie and Sasha. And you know she's done
that to some extent, but she's done a whole lot
more in the past few months as well. Right, and Molly,
it's interesting you bring up the mom and chief part um.
According to The New York Times, MSUs Obama has the
highest favorability rate of any incoming First Lady since nineteen
(02:06):
eighty and they said that her approval rating really soared
after she sort of shifted the focus of her potential
first Lady rolls to that of wife and mother first
and foremost, which I thought was kind of interesting. Yeah,
it's sort of a statement on the fact that we
do kind of want a homemaker in chief. You know,
during elections, we always uh, you know, want to know
(02:27):
what the potential first ladies cookie recipe is, you know,
what dishes they make for their husband, despite the fact
that once they get into the White House, they don't
do any cooking at all. Right, Um, and Michelle Obama
comes into the White House with a pretty impressive list
of credentials. Um, she was educated at Harvard Law School.
She was the president of Community and External Affairs for
(02:50):
the University of Chicago Medical Center. I mean, this woman
was very busy, had a very impressive career, and now
that's sort of you know, she kind of left it
behind a little bit to become first, right, sort of certain, right,
it sort of seems like that's something she had to
make a very clear statement that she was doing that
during the election for people to almost accept her. Um.
(03:11):
And while she's sort of still maintained that role in
the White House, she's doing a lot more. I mean,
she has started this garden in the White House lawn
to you know, promote healthy eating. She's been visiting military families,
she's been visiting school children. So all the people who
are buzz about a first Ladies role are just watching
her trying to figure out how all these various activities
are going to come together to form a platform, because,
(03:33):
as Candis and Jane were saying, these democratic first layers
are more likely to have kind of this policy platform
that they promote and at the same time balanced with
that policy platform. I think one of the most challenging
aspects of being first ladies that you have to do
all these things in the public sphere, supporting the military, families,
middle class women, etcetera. But Michelle Obama is also on
(03:55):
the cover of Vogue, and she is being at her
every start coo. Real choice is being documented, and I
have to say, I hate to have to bring it
up again, but we are nationally obsessed with her arms.
Her arms are beautiful, yeah, I mean their tone, Yeah,
that's awesome. But I mean you're right, there's all this
constant speculation about whether she's pregnant. I mean, she's very
(04:16):
much a tabloid figure now, which has led Christian and
I had a sort of ponder the question is First
Lady the hardest job in the world because in addition
to all these people watching your every personal choice, you know,
evaluating your marriage, looking at your arms, you're also sort
of required now in this modern age, to have this
policy platform, right, And I would say that even more
than the president, we look to the First Lady as
(04:39):
the barometer for the health of you know, the First
family and how that kind of reflects on the entire
national tone because right now things are really difficult with
the economy, and we have these ongoing conflicts in Iraq
and Afghanistan, and I think that, you know, one of
Michelle Obama's kind of unspoken duties is to re lead, uh,
(05:01):
keep the First family healthy, something something positive for the
nation to be able to look to and kind of
get us through this storm. Right. So, with the situation
in the world, in combination with the fact that she's
one of the you know, the most recent first lads
to deal with young children in the White House, she's
got a pretty tricky role to navigate, which is why
you know, people are obsessed with her every move. But
she's really coming in um as part of a generation
(05:25):
of First ladies. There was a political science professor named
Robert Watson, who defined different generations of First ladies and
whether each was sort of you know, activists, the ones
that were more quiet, and how you know, from Martha
Washington on, we've had to deal with this evolution of
a role since no one really knows what it means. Right,
the first lady has really come to be more of
(05:47):
the president's partner rather than just his at home spouse
who hosts dignitaries and sets up social events and decorates
for Christmas. Right. So Michelle Obama's firstly gender ration really
starts back with Betty Ford, who was one of the
most politically active First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt, who was
sort of, you know, kind of a stick out figure
(06:09):
because there was no one like her at that time.
But in terms of modern women, this movement that Michelle
Obama belongs to really start with Betty Ford, who was
a pretty cool lady. Right. Among the things that she
was really outspoken about were feminist platforms at the time,
specifically Equal Rights Amendment that she was strongly for, and
she made breast cancer really big issue as well with
(06:30):
her own fight against the disease. Right. And then after her,
we have Roslyn Carter who really emphasized performing arts and
support for the mental health community and the elderly. And
she's still active today with the Carter Center and their
global outreach, right. And so Roslyn Carter was actually the
first first Lady to have a budget. Um when Jimmy
(06:53):
Carter was in office, he passed a bill seventy which
was when the first Lady was given a budget and
a staff. Probably to that first ladies might have brought
in friends, frankly to host like their events basically, right.
And I think it was Jackie Kennedy who brought in
the first press secretary and she had desperate permission to
do so. But now Michelle Obama has the liberty to
(07:15):
really create whatever kind of support staff that she wants
and needs. And I have a feeling that since she
has a pretty pretty heavy load, like we've been talking about,
that's probably pretty extensive staff, right, And having a support
staff is important for the first Lady because she has
really three main overarching duties, and that would be social affairs,
(07:36):
which you know is the traditional things of inviting diplomats,
which is very important part of politics, uh, and then
press relations and policy issues, and with policy issues. The
first Lady has such a unique sphere of influence because
she is with the president, you know, in the quiet
(07:57):
times when he's outside of the public eye, and really
you know, maybe influenced whatever legislation or policies that he's
working on. Right, And I think that's what makes people nervous,
because you know, we don't elect the first lady. People
don't really look to that when they're looking to elect
a president. And you know, often we're told families are
off limits during elections, but then all of a sudden
they're in office, they seem to have all this power.
(08:18):
You think about Hillary versus Laura, Hillary Clinton versus Laura
Bush and the very different roles they check on us
first lady, Right. Hillary Clinton made made waves when Bill
Clinton appointed her to head of the Task Force on
Healthcare Reform, and as we know now, it didn't really
pan out so well, and she sort of had to
pull back a little bit from from the public space
(08:38):
and maybe take on more of the traditional first lady
duties that some people were really upset that she wasn't
immediately embracing. Right, It's very much a damned if you do,
damned if you don't situation because Hillary was very much
you know, I'm going to promote an aggressive policy that advances,
you know, an issue that people care passionately about, whereas
(09:00):
UM then when we had a change of office in
Laura Bush came into office, she had the platform of literacy.
But you know, I think it's fair to say that
a lot of people may not have even have known
that until they read the extensive White House bio to
see all the things she did with that. Well, so far,
we're not too far into the Obama administration, but it
seems like Michelle is doing a really great job with
kind of balancing the public policy zeal of Hillary Clinton
(09:22):
and the more homemaker type of image that Laura Bush projected.
But I gotta wonder, Molly, how the idea of the
president's spouse would change if we had a female president.
What if we had a first gentleman or first dude
as uh Todd Palin likes to call himself, right, And
(09:45):
I guess those um gubernatorial relationships provide a sort of
a uh model of how that would go. But I
know that you're reading some interesting stuff about Germany where
they do have a first man. What did they call him?
Do you know, I don't know what the official name
for it is, but Angela Merkel is the first female
Chancellor of Germany. And the interesting thing about her husband
(10:08):
is that he hasn't really changed his life that much.
He is a scientist, and if you want to interview him,
it's got to be about his career, and he doesn't
really do that many public appearances. He's very withdrawn from
this kind of public role as as the chancellor's husband.
(10:28):
So I wonder how the same thing would fly in
the United States. Because we love gos, we want it.
We would still want to know what the first the
first spouse would be up to. But yeah, exactly, but
he might have a little more leeway to really pursue
his own his own interests and kind of carry on
his career, especially since the closest we've had to that
(10:50):
situation has been Hillary and Bill Clinton. Whereas we all
sort of knew who Bill Clinton was, who would have
come into the Oval office with a persona already established
in the mindset in the public exactly, and he could
probably carry on with his foundation's work and all of that.
It probably wouldn't drastically change our perception of the first couple, right,
And so it is an interesting thing to ponder since
especially I feel that the things we've talked about in
(11:13):
terms of a homemaker role in addition to a policy role,
we have very specific ideas about how the woman should
fall into this role, and I don't know if we
would apply those same homemaking you know, social gala function chief. Yeah,
I really I cannot imagine. I can't imagine Bill Clinton,
you know, getting really into hosting social luncheon. Actually well,
(11:39):
I mean, I just I think that he would. I
think he kind of farm out the organizational duties, right,
you know, But maybe I don't know. Maybe I just
don't know old Bill well enough to say. But going
back to this question of is first Lady the hardest
job in a or in the world. Probably not, Okay,
probably not. That's kind of an exaggeration, but it's such
an extreme balance. It's sort of every woman's societal role
(12:02):
all wrapped up into one, right, and no matter what
she does, whether she's too active or not active enough,
at some point someone is going to have a complaint
about it. So there's no way to succeed, I think,
in this job. But I think at the end of
the day, we can all agree on the fact that
Shelle Obama has banging arms. Those arms are awesome. Well,
(12:25):
ending on that intellectual high note, we would like to
direct you to the wonderful article How the First Lady
Works written by Stephimiss in History Class co host Candice Keener.
But Molly, before we go, I think that we need
to read some listener mail. We have an awesome question
(12:48):
sent in from Kristen. It wasn't me, I promised it
was another Christian for a lot of email to herself.
I'm not just trying to to boost the pad the
mom stuff in box to make us feel better about ourselves.
But with that out of the way, uh, Kristen had
a question related to our podcasts on egg donation. Well,
(13:12):
I've got some bad news for your Kristen. No sex.
Sex is usually off the table, and also no antidepressants.
As we were talking about in that egg Donation podcast,
there's a lot of psychological screening that goes in to
the decision of whether someone can be an egg donor,
and usually antidepressants would be a mark of uh no,
go right, So there you go. Egg donation pretty strict process,
(13:36):
as we discussed, and should I donate my eggs. If
you miss that one, better come back through iTunes. And
if you have a question like Kristen who is not
my co host Kristen, you can email us at mom
stuff at how stuff works dot com for moralness and
thousands of other topics because it has to works dot com.
(14:00):
Mm hmm. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
and twelve camera. It's ready. Are you
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