First Lady's Duties And Role Explored

In the households of most married couples in America, it's now the norm: working husband, working wife.

But when it comes to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, public attitudes toward the appropriate roles for the wives of presidents and presidential candidates remain so traditional that spouses who stretch the boundaries risk rebuke at the polls.

"It's one of the great opportunities for a woman or for a man if you accept it for what it is -- that your hands are tied in some ways," former first lady Barbara Bush said in an interview with USA TODAY. She curbed her tongue and stuck to non-controversial causes during her four years in the White House in an effort to"not cause George huge embarrassment."

Attitudes are changing, she says, but slowly.

In this year's campaign, Laura Bush, a more traditional first lady than even her mother-in-law, is considered such political gold that she's featured in most of President Bush's TV ads. In contrast, the outspoken, Mozambique-born Teresa Heinz Kerry -- who would be a less familiar sort of presidential wife -- is viewed as a mixed blessing for Sen. John Kerry.

Laura Bush's favorable-unfavorable rating in a USA TODAY poll this month was a glowing 74%-16%. Teresa Heinz Kerry's was lukewarm: 40%-34%.

Many Americans agree on a long list of things that first ladies shouldn't do, according to a USA TODAY/MacNeil-Lehrer Productions/Gallup Poll. A majority say she shouldn't be a formal adviser to the president, paid or unpaid. Two-thirds say it wouldn't be appropriate for her to be elected to office. Nearly half say she shouldn't hold a job in the private sector, either.

So how should she spend her days?

Almost everyone says she could serve as an official hostess at White House events and champion a non-partisan cause. Being the president's confidante and volunteering for a charity are widely acceptable, too.

Which is more or less what White House wives have been expected to do for the past century.

Consider: Nine of 10 Americans say they would be willing to vote for a qualified woman to be president. But half of them say it's inappropriate for a woman to have any sort of paying job if her husband is president. Hollywood starlets face less backlash than presidents' wives do when they testify before Congress or speak out on controversial issues.

"I found that Washington was in many ways a more conservative environment than Arkansas, and I never expected that," says Hillary Rodham Clinton, who spent eight years as first lady before being elected to the U.S. Senate from New York."It was much more difficult to be part of the president's team the way I had been part of the governor's team."

Attitudes toward first ladies are"a lagging indicator about where women are in the country," says historian Lewis Gould, one of the first academics to see White House spouses as a subject for serious study."It's always seemed to me to be about half a generation behind what women in the workplace or in the cultural world or in the political world are doing."

That has been underscored this year by the women who are married to presidential contenders. Judith Steinberg is a doctor who continued seeing patients in Vermont when her husband, Howard Dean, was the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. (Her absence" created a ton of problems for us," campaign manager Joe Trippi recalls. Some voters assumed she didn't support his bid because she wasn't with him.)

Heinz Kerry is a philanthropist. Laura Bush was a librarian. Elizabeth Edwards is a lawyer. Lynne Cheney was a conservative commentator who reveled in the partisan crossfire of cable TV before her husband was elected vice president four years ago.

Since she became second lady -- a role even more amorphous than first lady -- Cheney has focused on less controversial fare: three books for children on American history, including A Is for Abigail and When Washington Crossed the Delaware.

'They are Mrs. America'

"They have to be very careful," says Dawn Schaible, 68, as heads nod in accord around the table at the Westminster Senior Activities Center in Westminster, Md. Ten women and one man from this small town 45 miles north of Baltimore gather over coffee and cookies to chat while a bingo game begins down the hall.

"It's almost like they have to have a project like Miss America -- because they are Mrs. America," says Anita Healy, 73, smiling at her turn of phrase.

"And they can't disagree with their husband in public," adds Sylvia Marks, 76."That's a no-no."

All but one of the women worked outside the home at some point during their lives. But all reject the notion that the first lady might have a job outside the White House."Impossible," Claire Null, 67, declares -- for security reasons, if nothing else. They see a potential for conflicts of interest and say the president needs her full-time attention. They worry about power exercised by someone they didn't elect.

But Null adds,"My daughter would feel very strongly that the first lady should keep her job."