The Political Role of the First Lady in the Twentieth Century

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: USA, grade: A, Johns Hopkins University (-), language: English, abstract: The president of the United States is in the center of the American political system. Accordingly, this institution, its development, its position within polity, and its incumbents have been and still are subject of scrutiny in the field of political science. While a myriad of scholars studied the U.S. presidency, the 'office'1 of the First Lady has remained widely omitted from consideration until the 1980s. Since then, this general neglect was remedied in that several political scientists began to pay attention to the outstanding role of the presidential spouse which obviously holds an enormous potential of power. Being the person closest to the most powerful man in the United States or rather the world, the First Lady can exert momentous influence on her husband and, therefore, public policy. As the presidency itself, the institution of the First Ladyship has considerably changed during American history. While until the first decade of the twentieth century the presidential wife's role was largely limited to hostess and ceremonial functions, her scope of responsibilities and duties has tremendously extended since then. However, as the First Lady is neither an elected nor an appointed member of the White House, and the Constitution remains silent about her office, it is largely shaped and defined by its respective occupant. Consequently, the institution of the First Ladyship to be found today does result not only from changing societal and political developments and public expectations, but also to a high degree from the way presidential wives have carried out their office. With the emergence of a more active First Ladyship, presidential spouses were confronted with growing criticism on the part of feminists as well as traditionalists who disapproved their 'illegitimate exercise' of power. Yet it is not clear in how far First Lady can influence American politics and to what degree they actually make use of their power. This paper tries to examine these questions, focusing on the potential of political influence the office of the First Lady contains. Since the major changes of the First Ladyship took place during the twentieth century, the scope of this paper is limited to this time period. [...] 1 Although the First Ladyship is strictly speaking no office, at least no formal one, for the sake of simplicity and legibility, in the remainder of this paper it is referred to as 'office'.