The First Lady Gambit

There comes a point in every presidential election cycle, usually shortly after the Democratic party has selected its nominee, when the Republican Party and its army of surrogates make a concerted effort to paint the wife of the Democratic nominee as some sort of un-American elitist weirdo. It's always the same thing. We saw it with Kitty Dukakis, with Hillary Clinton, with Teresa Heinz Kerry, and we even saw the beginnings of such an effort with Howard Dean's wife, Judith Steinberg, when it looked like Dean was going to run away with the nomination in late 2003. The current target, of course, is Michelle Obama, who right-wing radio hosts, bloggers, and pundits are all eager to paint as some sort of bitter, America-hating black militant.

Commenting on Michelle Obama's appearance on The View today, the always-obnoxious Lisa Schiffren condescendingly writes that Obama "is pretty good at seeming like a regular gal. In this she has proved a much quicker study than Hillary, who took a decade plus to soften up and learn to hide her contempt for small talk."

Yuval Levin of the National Review recently penned an article about Michelle Obama entitled "America's Unhappiest Millionaire" which describes her as "bitter" and "relentlessly negative."
She writes:

Her listeners have to wonder exactly what she has in mind by “regular folks” when Mrs. Obama says that after completing their Ivy League undergraduate and graduate educations, she and her husband “found ourselves in a position like most young couples, with our PhDs and JDs and MPHs and LMNOPs, all those wonderful degrees, all mired in debt. We had not paid off our loan debt until just a few years ago.” But whether you are highly educated multi-millionaires or not, in Michelle Obama’s America, chances are you’re afraid, isolated, and hopeless.

And this is all very tame compared to the vitriol currently spewing out of right-wing radio land, where you get the impression that Michelle Obama is the reincarnation of Malcolm X.

Of course, this entire caricature is based on the slimmest of evidence (if you can even call it that). As you quickly notice when you read or listen to any of these rants, they all cite the same two or three quotes, all of which are taken out of context. It's like trying to make the case that Tiger Woods is a crummy golfer by pointing to two or three missed puts.

If you actually watch Michelle Obama in any of her public appearance (of which she does several each day), it's pretty clear that she's not some bitter, angry zealot. Quite the opposite. She's always smiling and always cheerfully campaigning on behalf of her husband, echoing his message of hope and change. She seems quite content with her life, and her love for her husband and two daughters is readily apparent.

And the attempt to brand her as a millionaire elitist is especially galling. She's someone who grew up in a working-class household and managed to put herself through school with loans and scholarships (as did her husband). She and her husband are far less wealthy than the typical presidential couple. They barely qualify as millionaires and most of that money came in the last few years as a result of Obama's book sales. By contrast, Cindy McCain grew up as the only child to extremely affluent parents and is now extravagantly wealthy.

But we have to endure the same garbage every four years. The wives of the Republican candidates are largely ignored, and no matter how wealthy they are or how many skeletons they have in their closets, they're presumed to be "regular folk." The wives of the Democratic nominees, however, are invariably demonized for completely trivial statements and misdeeds and treated as if they are aliens from Mars. Welcome to American politics.