Friday, December 26, 2008 - Posts
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Poor Caroline Kennedy: After eight years that made Bush I look way less embarrassing than he used to, we've had enough of political dynasties, thanks. It's unfair, though, to blame her for representing the old way and old guard when the true knock against her is that she hasn't been old school enough, and failed to fork over the kind of campaign cash to state and local Democrats that anyone plotting a political future knows is part of the cost of doing business.
In the end, New York Gov. David Paterson will fill Hillary Clinton's Senate seat with just one consideration in mind: He'll choose the person who he thinks will best secure his own political future. But if that's not Caroline Kennedy, then all the hand-wringing about her unfair familial advantage will have been wildly off-the-mark. The open criticism of her by any number of New York Democrats has already made clear that party people aren't exactly quaking in fear of offending her family; the oligarchy ain't what it used to be. And that this is the reaction at a time when Ted Kennedy is fighting brain cancer makes me think that maybe the "dynasty" has died out already, without an heir.
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Over on the Post's op-ed page today, Lauren Stiller Rikleen laments our confused conceptions of the first lady—"the lack of clear definition of their role has resulted in first ladies facing a web of conflicting expectations," she writes—and then goes on to suggest that, to improve the situation, we saddle first ladyhood with ... a concrete job description.
Huh? This seems totally backward to me. Wouldn't it be nicer to limit the first lady's "expectations," so each occupant could make of it what she (or, someday, he) wishes? Wouldn't a rigid job description either to strain a low-key presidential partner like Laura Bush, who doesn't want to get involved in policy, or provide ammo for the critics of more wonkish partners like Hillary Clinton ("so sorry, my dear, but managing health care reform isn't in the job description")? And isn't it likely that the only duties a job-description-drafting panel could agree to enshrine in the first place are the noncontroversial (and therefore old-fashioned) ones, like picking out Christmas ornaments for the White House tree?
And why do we so often imagine that the complications that emerge when we update female roles (like motherhood) can be solved by shoehorning these roles into the contours of a traditional "job"?
If I were queen for a day, I'd go the other direction: Instead of adding a job description to the first lady's burdens, I'd take away the title all together. The word lady in pop culture suggests all kinds of negative things: the fettered, prim reserve of a woman who isn't too forward in her ambitions ("A lady doesn't wander all over the room ..."), snobbish arrogance (Lady Catherine de Bourgh), even pure evil in feminine form (Lady Macbeth). We hardly use titles in modern life anymore, anyway. How about just "Mrs. Obama" for now?
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