Public Opinion, the First Ladyship, and Hillary Rodham Clinton

Barbara Burrell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN: 9781138874718
• eBook ISBN: 9781135577377
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This second edition presents Clinton's self-repositioning during the 1996 election, her official role during the second term, her role during the impeachment proceedings, and the beginnings of an independent political career.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Perhaps it was inevitable that all of the debates, controversies, and conflicts that emanated from the contemporary women’s rights movement about women’s roles in society would eventually touch one of the most prominent, distinctive, potentially influential, and yet most traditional positions women have occupied in the United States—that of first lady. This occurred in 1992, as Hillary Rodham Clinton traversed the campaign trail on behalf of her husband’s quest for the presidency of the United States. She engendered a national discussion, to put it mildly, about the power and influence of women, wives in particular, in the political life of the nation. She sparked the public to think about and struggle with gender politics and the relationship between private life and public life.

Now, after nearly completing her tenure as first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton continues to be a contradictory symbol. To conservatives she has represented what is “wrong” with America both in terms of the substantive national policies she has advocated and the role she plays as a woman. Liberals and especially feminists try to grapple with the idea of a woman in an unelected and unappointed position wielding political power as a senior advisor to the president. She has twisted all of the clear dividing lines between what political philosophers have considered the private domain, that is, wife, mother, and homemaker, and the public realm of power and influence in the civic life of a community. Of course, Hillary Rodham Clinton had not been primarily a homemaker prior to entering the White House; she had been a prominent professional outside of the home. She represented a new generation of American women who had come into their own.

However, she did not come by her position in the White House becauseof her professional credentials, but because of her relationship to a man. That is an old-fashioned way of exercising influence in contrast to the women who made headlines as candidates for public office in 1992, during the so-called Year of the Woman in U.S. Politics.

A review of editorials and journalistic analyses during the election of 1992 puts the challenge Hillary Clinton presented to the American public in stark relief. For example, very early she became “a national Roscharch test on which Americans [could] project their views of gender and equality….” For some, she’s an inspiring mother-attorney. Others see in her the “overbearing yuppie wife from hell,” according to U.S. News and World Report (Cooper 1992). Thus one ideological battle was framed as a clash between the professional and the homemaker roles of women. Hillary was characterized as “a new breed of political wife, representing a new generation of working women. To many she is a role model, an inspiration. In other quarters…[she] is seen as a brash, overbearing career woman one step away from being a liability. Her outspokenness has made many uncomfortable, even angry” (Hall 1992). This clash was alluded to repeatedly in political commentary during the 1992 campaign.

A second and very much related focus in the debate surrounding Hillary Rodham Clinton centered on the notion of “first lady” and what a person in that position should be like. There was a resistance and a questioning of “the idea of a first lady openly engaged in the affairs of state…. The public is still skittish about the idea of a first lady who is more involved in substance than ceremony” (Dowd 1992). Some voters, “particularly older women, are uneasy with the notion that Hillary is ambitious—not just for her husband, but for herself” (Clift 1992), although an analysis of poll data does not necessarily bear out this contention as we will see later. Putting these two fault lines together in the political debate surrounding Hillary Rodham Clinton, that is, women as politicians and wives as influential policy advisors captures the problem for Americans throughout Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as first lady.

The debate surrounding Hillary Rodham Clinton touches the core of the challenge the women’s movement has presented to our society. As historian Carl Anthony has described it, the “whole first lady issue [is] a lightning rod for something that goes far deeper. And that is the hypocrisy we still have about the status of women. It is a jealousy” (as quoted in Morrison, 1992). Criticism of Hillary Clinton illuminated “society’s ambivalence toward changing roles…. Men may be projecting on to Mrs. Clinton their hostility toward feminism, while women, overwhelmed by their multiple responsibilities, may be projecting their frustrations” (Pogrebin 1992). But at the same time, many had a strong positive reaction to her; her defenders and champions have also been vocal. As Patricia Ryden put it: “The role of the first lady can be seen as a microcosm of the constraints and contradictory expectations faced by public women due to the tradition of a gender-based public/private dichotomy.”

Why do we even have a first lady? Part of the answer lies in the dual leadership role that the president fulfills. The president is both the head of the government, performing executive and legislative duties, and the head of state, presiding over ceremonial functions for the nation and representing the United States in the world. Most other democracies separate these two functions, some with a prime minister and a president. “The American president, charged with both tasks, frequently resorted to sending substitutes on ceremonial and other occasions when a mere physical presence was required. Members of the president’s household made excellent surrogates. They signaled the president’s approval and also his continued control of government” (Kellerman 1981, 26). Thus, the spouse can serve as a substitute for the head of state for ceremonial functions, and the family becomes a prominent symbol in national life, a sort of royal family. Because we do not have royalty, the “first family” becomes the focus of attention for the media who link them to the public. Thus, the role of hostess has always been of prime concern to presidential spouses (although some in the 19th century did not perform this “duty” for a variety of reasons).

The position of first lady in contemporary times has the potential of becoming an important part of the office of the president beyond the role of assisting with ceremonial head of state duties. Legally she is now considered to be a “de facto” governmental official. (See Chapter 5.) Certainly Hillary Rodham Clinton has had this larger vision of the first ladyship in mind. Because the office of first lady could be transformed into an institutionalized policy making center, a systematic analysis of the people’s beliefs about that office and the actions of the person in it is an important part of the study of the contemporary presidency and a significant illustration of how gender affects politics in the United States. The central research focus of this study is the limits and opportunities of the presidential spouse being an overt policy advisor in the White House Office, questions surrounding that possibility, and its linkage to liberal democratic theory which emphasizes the autonomy of the individual. This study integrates this philosophical perspective on individual autonomy and the first ladyship with an analysis of public opinion regarding her role and activities.

First ladies have always been able to exercise private influence if they so desired. Some first ladies historically have been publicly influential, starting with the second first lady, Abigail Adams. But moving toward the more formal notion of a role in policy making is a different step. The role of would-be first ladies as more than cheerleaders for their spouses on the campaign trail did not begin with the 1992 election. In 1987, the Polk County Iowa Democratic Party sponsored a forum with the wives of six of the announced Democratic contenders for the presidency. Each of the wives spoke about the issues that she would pursue in the White House and her vision of the role of first lady. Such a gathering implied that voters should look beyond the man running for the office and examine the ideas of their spouses. It suggested an enlarged role and a policy prominence for future first ladies. Interestingly, however, at the end of her history of first ladies, Betty Caroli concluded in 1987 that the job of first lady might actually decrease in the future. She thought that as wives came to pursue their own professional careers, they would be less likely to drop them if their husband won the presidency (1987, 330). But rather than a contraction of the role, what we are being exposed to with Hillary Clinton in the White House has been an attempt to expand that position into one of a real political partner and at least a quasi member of the government.

In the past two decades scholarship on first ladies has been transformed from a main emphasis on social history to include political science perspectives and broadened theoretical approaches. Numerous studies have provided an historical overview of the presidential spouse’s role as first lady and a number of biographical sketches have been written. College courses on the first lady have been offered, symposia have brought together former First Ladies to discuss their legacy, and scholarly panels have been held to measure the significance of presidential wives, such as the 1984 conference titled “Modern First Ladies: Private Lives and Public Duties” held at the Gerald R.Ford Presidential Library, and George Washington University’s continuing education series, “The President’s Spouse,” carried on C-SPAN in the fall of 1994. Historian Lewis Gould has edited a symposium on “Modern First Ladies and the Presidency” in Presidential Studies Quarterly (1990). Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure in the White House has produced a number of articles focusing on media relations and the first lady such as the Political Communication symposium “Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Image: Content, Control, and Cultural Politics” (April-June 1997).

Two historians of the first lady well articulate her significance to studies of American politics. According to Betty Boyd Caroli, “First Ladies have reflected the status of American women of their time while helping to shape expectations of what women can properly do. They extend our understanding of how women participated in government in ways other than simply voting and holding office” (1987, xxi). Edith Mayo and Denise Meringolo state, “The experience of first ladies bears witness to the ways in which the personal and the political often converge in women’s lives. This new angle of vision on first ladies, based on recent scholarship in women’s history, places first ladies in the context of the American presidency and the history of women in America and demonstrates their importance in expanding public roles of women” (1994, 7). Further, Gould has noted that, “By the early 1990s the outlines of a distinct research area devoted to First Ladies had emerged where history, political science, and women’s studies intersected” (1996, xiii). Scholars have begun to recognize presidential spouses as forces in executive branch administration, policy, and politics.

OUTLINE OF THE BOOK

Hillary Rodham Clinton has challenged the political system. The media, of course, have made much of this challenge to the traditional role of first ladies in both political reporting and in commentaries. (So, too, Clinton political opponents have made an issue of Hillary Rodham Clinton in this role.) The media have also sought to gauge the response of the public to her in this role and thus, have commissioned public opinion polls to ascertain the reaction of the public. These polls are important. They tell us (with all of the caveats of polling methodology) how the people have been affected by this phenomenon. They allow us to explore thinking about the interaction between the public and private in at least one aspect of gender politics. This work as a second edition of Public Opinion, the First Ladyship, and Hillary Rodham Clinton expands on the central concern of the first edition. The focus of the first edition was on the first two years of the Clinton presidency, a time during which Hillary Rodham Clinton assumed the most formal role of any first lady in the presidential advisory system. This edition allows us to extend our focus to examine her legacy as first lady with the insights gained from her first six years in the White House. The focus remains on the people’s reactions to her and her activities, but this edition also explores her involvement in the presidency more broadly.

This book takes advantage of the many and varied public opinion polls which have measured the people’s reaction to Hillary Rodham Clinton and her activities to reflect on public acceptance or disapproval of this changing role for women. The chapters that follow tell the story of public response to Hillary Rodham Clinton as first lady through a description and analysis of public opinion as measured in national and state surveys during the Clinton administration. Hillary Rodham Clinton has been the focus of polls from the early days of the 1992 campaign season. Never before has the public been asked so consistently what they think about a presidential candidate’s spouse and a first lady. Not only have people’s general responses to her as first lady been surveyed, but how she is viewed by the public in a great variety of domains also has been explored—as policy advisor to the president and head of the Health Care Task Force, as an influential presence in the White House, her personal qualities and characteristics, her own future in politics, and her involvement in the Whitewater real estate deal while serving as first lady of Arkansas. I examine what these polls tell us about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s relationship with the people. Most importantly I ask what are the systemic implications of the public’s response to this person in this position for how Americans think about women in political leadership roles.

Chapter 2 does four things. It explores the way in which the first ladyship is problematic in the presidential domain. It lays out the theoretical consideration of the relationship between the private sphere and the public sphere as it impinges on the opportunities for and limits on a presidential spouse to fulfill the liberal democratic idea of individualism. It discusses the idea of gender roles and how our perceptions of those roles affect the first ladyship. It then places Hillary Rodham Clinton’s claim to political influence in an historical context by considering the political influence of her predecessors.

Chapter 3 begins a more central concentration on the people’s reaction to Hillary Clinton focusing on the campaign for the White House in 1992. When she hit the campaign trail in 1992 Hillary stimulated a new research interest on the part of public opinion pollsters—surveying about presidential wives. She was a prominent and controversial figure in the 1992 campaign. Chapter 3 discusses the roles she played in that election. It examines media coverage of her campaign activities and image, considers the nature of the political opposition to her, and analyzes public opinion data to learn how the people reacted to her on the campaign trail and determine the basis of group support and opposition to her. The people’s response to her and the discussion and debate her activities sparked about private and public roles were distinctive phenomena of that campaign and contribute to our understanding of the complexities of women achieving political equality.

We should expect a greater polarization in the people’s response to Hillary Rodham Clinton than for most former contemporary first ladies because of the image she (and the future president) developed during the campaign for the White House. We should expect a greater intensity of feeling both positive and negative given the national discourse of her role in her husband’s campaign and administration. Perhaps she has elicited distinctive responses from men and women, with women among her strongest supporters and men more challenged by her strength, because of the way in which she was using the role of wife in the public sphere.

Chapter 4 chronicles Hillary Clinton’s favorability and job approval ratings throughout the Clinton administration (1993–1999). It particularly examines the public’s response to her efforts to transform the first ladyship into a more public advisory and policy-making position. Actions and reactions throughout the two terms of the Clinton presidency on the part of both the first lady and the public are analyzed. Multivariate analyses of group support and opposition to her over time are incorporated into these analyses testing hypotheses regarding her favorability ratings. These findings are embedded in a theoretical discussion of the role of first lady. Her level of popularity is also placed in historical context.

Chapter 5 explores the response of the people to the first lady as an overt policy advisor and their views of her influence. I consider both personal responses to Hillary Rodham Clinton in that role and tease out more systemic reactions to that position regarding women in politics. This chapter focuses on the first lady taking on a policy-making or advisory role in the administration. It considers the historical development of the Office of First Lady and her governmental status. It examines public opinion data regarding Hillary’s efforts as a policy advisor and head of the Health Care Reform Task Force, and it contains an analysis of how she responded to the backlash over the failed health care reform effort and the continued Whitewater legal problems and continued to influence public policy in more traditionally accepted ways. Data from public opinion survey questions about aspects of the policy-making role of the first lady focus our attention on the central concerns of this work: philosophical and empirical perspectives on a substantive role for a spouse in a presidential administration.

Chapter 6 examines the role of the first lady as a campaigner. This chapter explores Hillary’s role in the 1994 and 1998 mid-term elections and the presidential campaign of 1996. Hillary was one of the most popular Democratic campaigners in 1998 after playing a more focused role in the previous two campaigns when she was feared to be a political liability. Wives have become increasingly active on the campaign trail, taken on more complex roles, and established a strategic importance to their husbands’ candidacies. Several scholars have even attempted to quantify their effect. I will review these efforts and expand on them by considering the qualitative aspects of Hillary’s campaign efforts. This research also explores the strategic uses of Hillary in the various campaigns and of Elizabeth Dole as a presidential wife in the 1996 campaign. The campaign roles of spouses very much address their relationship to the public and their force in administrations.

A further prominent feature of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s first ladyship has been her global diplomatic missions. Chapter 7 presents totally new material; it first chronicles her international travels, with an emphasis on her foreign policy missions regarding women’s rights. Hillary Rodham Clinton took over twenty solo journeys abroad as first lady. This chapter then combines an analysis of the nature of the feminism she espoused globally as an individual, an examination of the extent to which she served in a governmental capacity in foreign affairs, and whether this is a new facet of the Office of First Lady. While Hillary made a conscious effort not to negotiate foreign policy as a representative of her husband as Rosalynn Carter had in Latin America, she did represent the government in announcing aid packages in foreign trips. She also publicly supported human rights issues. These activities were much broader and substantively more important than the traditional goodwill trips of former first ladies. They were diplomatic missions signifying a new dimension to first lady activism, and they must be considered if we are to make a comprehensive assessment of the new governmental status of the first lady.

Chapter 8 concludes this work with a discussion of the philosophical perspective driving this work. It reflects on the possibilities of the presidential spouse acting as a policy advisor and considers the evidence of public support for that role. It examines the issue of accountability and argues for a freedom of choice for the presidential spouse to seek achievement as a...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD
• CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 2: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE DOMAINS, GENDER POLITICS, AND POLITICAL WIVES
• CHAPTER 3: THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE WHITE HOUSE
• CHAPTER 4: PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF THE FIRST LADY
• CHAPTER 5: THE FIRST LADY AND PUBLIC POLICY MAKING
• CHAPTER 6: THE PRESIDENTIAL SPOUSE AS CAMPAIGNER
• CHAPTER 7: THE FIRST LADY, HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
• CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSION: THE FIRST LADY AND EQALITY FOR WOMEN
• REFERENCES