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No doubt Hillary Clinton could fill Condi's high-heel boots and still have time left over to advise Michelle on what not to do as first lady. (Remember when Rice took the job almost four years ago and described her mission as building on the foreign policy achievements of the previous four? Quick work, when you think about it; wonder what she turned to after lunch?) Only, if America wanted a third Clinton administration, wouldn't it have gone for the real thing? I get that in tapping some of these Clinton folks for his transition team and new administration Obama is trying to avoid some of the mistakes the Clintons themselves made when they blew into town with their Arkansas friends and '92 campaign team and made clear they didn't need anybody to show them around or tell them anything. But at what point does this "new'' team start to seem a little too familiar with the way things have always worked and a little too much like the "old Washington'' that Obama campaigned against? I hope he doesn't forget that in both the primary and the general, voters saw experience as less important than a new direction and a new way of doing business.
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And so begins the bride-off. Blech.
Articles like this one pitting Michelle Obama against Cindy McCain, remind me of how gross the position of first lady can really be. The wives of the candidates are being evaluated for such important qualities as jeans-size, glamour, personal wealth, public speaking abilities, and sense of style. Obama is in trouble for over-sharing (Barack is sock-challenged.) McCain for under-sharing (her financial info). Oh and now Michelle is being called “Obama's baby mama" by the ever-classy Fox News (although for my money that fist-bump pretty much redefined foreplay in America for a generation or two).
Maybe it’s too much to hope for anything less than the relentless meringue of these kinds of pieces, but given that we were but a breath away from a Cindy McCain versus Bill Clinton race, is it possibly time to rethink the way we talk about presidential spouses in a way that bypasses the size of their jeans?
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