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She came to the office.

You know, more educated.

She had a law career.

She was deeply ambitious.

So I wanted to sort of start with Hillary and end with the first First Lady who actually goes to work and takes a paycheck and the rest of the time she's doing, as you say, this volunteer job Hello.

I'm Bonnie Erbe Welcome to To the Contrary, a weekly discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

This week, First Ladies.

Americans are fascinated with them, at least most of them.

And she gets no pay, no real job description.

Each one has played a different role in the White House with varying amounts of influence.

How has that changed over the years?

New York Times White House correspondent Katie Rogers takes a look at the most recent First Ladies in her new book, American Woman The Transformation of the Modern First Lady from Hillary Clinton to Jill Biden.

So welcome to the show, Katie.

How are you?

I'm good.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you for being here.

So why these first?

Why these five first ladies?

Why didn't you want to broaden it out a bit?

So that's an interesting question.

It's a kind of long winded answer.

I was approached to do a biography of Jill Biden, and right after, I think, right, right around the time of the Biden inauguration and I had been approached to do, I started covering the Trump White House, and I was going on to cover the Biden White House.

And, I didn't really want to write a single biography of a first lady.

The more I learned about Jill Biden, though, I kind of saw her story as modern.

She grew up, during the 60s when women were really questioning this concept of having it all.

And, you know, they're really the first generation where their mothers advise them, you know, you can go to college, you can do this and get married and have babies.

And that was something that was sort of present in her early life.

And the more I looked at other women of the time period, Hillary Clinton was one of them.

Laura Bush was another, Melania Trump.

And, Michelle Obama a bit younger, but I guess I kind of saw them as a cohort of women who were really grappling with a modern question about having it all and minimizing their careers to to further the careers of their husbands or choosing to try to keep it to themselves.

And really, it just seemed like the Clinton presidency was, in the 90s, such an experimental decade in many ways for our technology, our pop culture, our political discourse is very much it was very much the precursor to sort of the tribal lives politics we have now.

she just seemed like a very good bookend to me.

And also, she came to the office, you know, more educated.

She had a law career.

She was deeply ambitious and using her as sort of this, starting point, for pushing, trying to push this role forward out of the sort of help it's been an amber this whole time, really.

And and the experiences that she dealt with were fascinating.

So I wanted to sort of start with Hillary and end with the first first lady who actually goes to work and takes a paycheck and the rest of the time she's doing, as you say, this volunteer job as first lady, which is essentially what it is.

So let's start with Hillary.

Since you do, do and she quite frankly, from my perspective, anyone who's not covered the white House but covered Congress for the Supreme Court and overall Washington for several decades now, she kinda started out of the box harder on the I'm my own person, routine or philosophy than anybody else, and probably of my lifetime has been the most disliked first lady.

do you think that her, that because she, at least at first, was part of her husband's political career but tried to separate herself completely?

Did that boomerang on her?

I think it did.

And I also, the more I reported and researched on all of these women, they're sort of introductions to the country as a political spouse are hugely important.

you know, Michelle Obama took a ton of flack on the campaign trail for saying at one point, I'm proud of my country for the first time.

And that was a huge mistake.

In politics, they call it scar tissue, that you just make the mistake and you have to move forward from it.

And Hillary Clinton is someone who, on the campaign trail, and they were dealing with a lot of questions about their marriage, obviously, and questions about transparency with their finances and her answers to questions about her marriage and who she was in that marriage.

you know, I'm not going to stay at home baking cookies.

I'm, you know, I'm I have my own job, and I care about it.

And it was just a it almost came across as like a very brusque, almost offensive answer to a lot of American women who were like, well, hey, I that's what I do, you know, and I think that the Clintons in particular felt they had a mandate to really push the country forward on a lot of different issues.

And I think she found that really large swaths of Americans were not ready to have a woman being like, well, I don't you know, I don't just want to do this.

I want to be more than this.

It was the first time someone of that stature in that role ever talked like that.

And I think the lesson of Hillary Clinton is that, you know, she she saw signals, but, you know, it wasn't actually what Americans were ready for.

and then that was on top of that, she was assigned a co-policy role, you know, alongside her husband, basically reforming American health care, within the first year of the administration.

And that was another thing that she learned that Americans did not want.

They elected her husband.

They wanted him to govern and lead.

And they did.

You know, Bill Clinton, President Clinton respects and admires his wife's intellect and ability and that was a case of them thinking the rest of the country would want that, too.

And there were a lot of, you know, lessons learned during that time.

And and then the second term, she told me for the book, you know, I started to just look toward things that wouldn't organize against me immediately.

So that's why she, you know, delivered a speech in Beijing geared toward women's rights and sort of, you know, assumed a little, not a little, but a newsletter writing about her life, just things that were softer and less polished, focused.

And to me, that's really, you know, as somebody who covers politics and you do too.

It's like it's almost like policy is the boy stuff.

And it's just not to be touched.

Sometimes it's not true, but that is, you know, that was her experience during those years.

You know, there were a lot of years where nothing she could say or do would be enough.

And particular around her husband's impeachment and her decision to stay with him and support him versus I don't know what people would have expected, rather her do in that situation.

But every decision she made was sort of sent through this like, machine of whether or not it was offensive or it was enough or it was being too much, or she wanted too much.

so yeah, she was a fascinating one to start with for that reason, because just every decision she made that so many people had a knee jerk reaction too Sometimes feels like a prison for them in those jobs.

Talk about that a little more, especially as it, pertains to Hillary.

And then later on through the rest of the the other four you profile, There is a part of the book where I do have sort of a quick John through First Lady history, and I think, you know, Martha Washington was the first one.

She wrote a letter to her cousin, her cousin, and it was like, I feel like I'm in prison, that it's just a very isolating role to have.

And as our, as our as we have evolved, I guess as a society, it's become even more of a security enforced bubble.

And these women, can't open the window without the Secret Service clearing out the area.

they work really hard and especially women.

The women I looked at and reported on, they worked hard to get little breaths of normalcy.

Michelle Obama was one who would try to go to Camp David often.

even Melania Trump would sneak off to New York more than we knew at the time to hang out at her house or her the Trump apartment, and get her hair done.

Jill Biden is somebody who goes and teaches twice a week and really prides herself on being able to talk to, like, normal people who are outside of the bubble and, so it becomes sort of a, it becomes an art almost, you know, getting these little moments of escape.

and to just hear from people who are not advisers, who are there to sort of tell you.

Yes, and tell you things are great.

Also, when she snuck off to New York, it was to spend time with Barron, right?

Who?

They didn't really want to be spending much time in Washington.

I mean, I don't know how much she was with Barron when she would head to New York because Barron was in school in Washington for almost well wanted, didn't move down with him until more than halfway through the first year.

but yeah, so a lot of her time in the white House was trying to protect him, spend time with him.

she spent a lot of time on his schedule.

Her aides were always kind of wondering what she was up to because she spent so little time downstairs in the East Wing, and a lot of it was, arranging his life and making sure that he was okay.

And do you think she did a good job with that for him?

I think so, I mean, I think she she didn't do a lot otherwise.

You know, policy wise or, you know, she had me best, which was the child focused initiative, against cyber bullying, which she had a really hard time with because her husband, of course, is not a model for, online safety.

but to put it lightly.

so, yeah, I think she, she did work hard to, you know, according to my reporting, just keep his life sequestered and keep things normal.

Her parents, her mother died in January, but her parents lived at the White House with them so her son could have more of a family structure around, she devoted a lot of her time to that.

And moving through so, yeah, we talked already a bit about Hillary Clinton.

we didn't talk about, Melania Trump in terms of her career, but but she's the only recent one, I think, who hasn't?

I mean, she was a model, she, she socialized, in New York City a lot, but she was didn't come in there as a lawyer or as a doctor, as a PhD, blah, blah, blah.

and does that, did that make it easier for her?

In other words, do first, like ladies get more harsh criticism for trying to have separate careers?

I don't know if things were easier for her.

She she was she did have a few businesses in which she's used her the Trump name to sell jewelry and skincare.

She had to shutter those out of the administration.

So she did have businesses that she had to sort of step away from.

And as I reported in the book, she was frequently meeting with her attorneys about the business initiative she had or money she had in the bank.

And, so she was she's very focused on, finances, the Trump name, her name being put on things.

She signed off on every photo that was ever used of her.

I think she had a couple of successful lawsuits against, websites that use her photos without permission.

so I think I think she just had a different experience than, you know, the the ones who came with a, with a different career, like law or teaching.

you know, part of what's interesting to me about studying the transition from Melania to Jill is you can almost make the argument that Melania approach was so different than the others that it really unraveled the role in front of her eyes.

And it was a sort of a civics lesson.

And so was Trump.

they both did this where you and in her case, you learned about there were there are no real rules for this.

You don't have to do anything if you don't want to.

And there have been first ladies who did very little in public throughout history.

but really, having Melania Trump disappear for weeks at a time, would she she did, or send a tweet that was at odds with her husband, which was not infrequent, would have happened often enough.

Slap her husband's hand away in public, not accompany him on overseas trips when really she was a huge, boon for him in that in those settings, she's European born.

She it was a good look to have her on a world stage, because she could be more sophisticated than her husband in those settings.

So declining to do that, going separately to the State of the Union, after the reports of of hush money paid to to Stormy Daniels, I mean, she did all of these things, you know, on instinct because she wanted to do them.

And you can almost make the argument that somebody like Jill Biden coming in and saying, okay, well, I'm going to teach two days a week and I will be on those days, but the rest of time will be First Lady.

It's almost easier in that sense, for somebody to come in and just be like, I'm going to do this part time, but I will do it and I will like I will enjoy it.

so there weren't that there were critics like Jill Biden's decision to teach.

I would say there were more critics of her wanting to be called doctor than actually going to work.

But, it just, you know, you can make the argument that these women kind of smooth a path for the ones that come after.

So when you think about who comes after Jill Biden, if it's not Melania Trump, you can almost imagine that the suite of options will be longer, because of what these women have done.

And let's talk a moment about, Laura Bush because, you she was first lady for eight years.

she was more a behind the scenes kind of person.

She didn't.

Her career had been as a librarian, which is not an aggressive out there competitive like actress like lawyer, like doctor, etc.. Career.

was she better liked because she was less of, you could say threat to, women, you know, threat to men, about women's power.

She was very popular during that time, and I you could make that argument, but also, you can't change the fact that she was a wartime first lady for so much of it just creates a completely different context.

And she was popular within that context.

So she launched the national, Book Festival, three days before 9/11.

And that was going to be the extent of of what she was going to do, as you say, she was a librarian.

she launched a book festival in Texas as First lady of Texas, and she wanted to expand that nationally.

But beyond that, she was a messenger for her husband.

But not I don't think he would call her a surrogate.

She had no interest in in that kind of life.

Like Jill Biden is out.

Shes doing, like, a four day campaign swing this weekend.

so I, you know, she was able to assume, as I as I said earlier, the president's radio address and speak about Afghan women and girls and do it in a way that was almost covert messaging on behalf of him, not overtly political, but like as a mother, as a wife.

I feel this way.

And, this is why this issue was important, because I hold this place within my old family, and because she was sort of, you know, these women assumed the role like the president's consoler in chief always when a national tragedy happens and, the first lady is become sort of this maternal America's mother figure and Laura Bush was successful in that way.

so it's interesting to think about if she would have had an easier time without that.

But it's impossible to kind of think about it in terms of just a normal presidency, because it wasn't.

And Bush was so unpopular by the time he departed that her numbers comparatively were, you know, up in the sky Jill Biden, has she been the most successful first lady at integrating her own career and staying at least somewhat separate from the president?

I think so I think she came in just saying, this is what I want to do.

And as I reported in the book, there was a lot of internal pushback, including from her husband, about whether she should do it, whether she could do it, whether it would be too much, how she was going to take a paycheck, and how that be ethically, clear.

but really, she, she had spent eight and we should say, you know, she'd spent eight years as second lady and was able to teach in that role.

So there was a bit of a blueprint for how she could do it.

but really, the thing that I learned about her is that she's a lot tougher, and a lot more a matter of fact, about what she wants to do and what she thinks.

You know, people around her husband should be doing than than I, than I knew, I think, in the beginning.

So I think she has integrated it and, and people, her advisers or people in that world have told me it's not because she wanted to make some grand gesture about women working, which I think is is kind of funny to to think about, because it does come across as if that is the case.

What really she wanted to keep her identity.

She wanted to keep working.

It's as simple as that.

and it has the ripple effect of of in the future, making it easier for whoever has the job next.

One of many things I learned from your book, but that the Obamas and the Bidens were not particularly close.

I mean, you always think of Joe Biden being at the the then president side all the time and praising him.

But you say there were invitations sent to the then Vice President Biden, the Bidens.

and yet they were always busy with their own events.

They never went to dinner in the White House for eight years.

Yeah.

And you understand how that is completely rare, right?

For them to not have, a dinner in the residence is, is pretty.

I mean, that's that's rare.

I think maybe the bushes and the Reagans had a similar distance, but even more documented, that was a very icy relationship.

But the Obamas and the and the Bidens, were also just in very different life stages.

The Obamas had two young kids that they were trying to adjust to.

Washington.

The Bidens have this, you know, this apparatus of family, all over Delaware.

And they were in Delaware all the time.

You know, the Bidens go back almost every weekend now.

So it's explained to me that that is a big factor.

But also they had to gel over time.

They were not close for years.

by the time Beau Biden died of cancer in 2015, and President Obama delivered the eulogy for Beau.

that is very much seen as a turning point in their relationship where it became, almost familial.

You know, they Biden and Obama people described them as very close now.

But, you know, Biden is somebody, too, that has, a little bit of a he wants to have credit for things.

He wants to be taken very seriously during the Obama administration.

He wanted his experience in the Senate to be something that people, you know, exalted and praised.

And, it was hard for him when he was not the North Star of the operation anymore.

So there is that sort of, that had to be overcome and that took time.

How did Jill Biden, a second lady, if you will, during that time, and Michelle, as first lady, managed that they were not particularly close either?

No, I think from from Jill Biden's perspective, I think she, you know, as somebody who reached out to Michelle Obama often and I think a couple of times Michelle Obama came over to the vice president's residence for cocktails, I think is what I have.

I haven't reported as and, it was really how it's been described to me is that, you know, Jill Biden wanted a pretty close relationship, and by all accounts, they are fond of each other and like each other.

But Michelle Obama had, she had a lot to do during those eight years.

She had she was the first black first lady that America had ever seen.

She had two young girls that she was she was trying to keep them on a normal trajectory.

And they had friends and they had contacts.

And that was more of Michelle Obama's world, than than building a closer relationship with the second family.

And I must I must say this Michelle Obama is an incredible human being.

But I was so disappointed when, I guess it was Axelrod.

David Axelrod decided that she could not use her sterling Ivy League education.

to remain as a lawyer or, hospital executive in some form.

And she had to become, you know, like a full time mommy.

And not that there's anything wrong with that, but that's not what she was trained for.

And that was not the lifestyle she was living before.

then Senator Obama ran for office, and it was just there.

And she was wonderful in what she did do and steering the country towards growing their own produce and and exercise and all that sort of stuff was wonderful.

But she still didn't get to have her primary, talent that she exhibited before the public in the form of having one of the most incredible brains of any first lady.

And they met, you know, as you know, that he was a associate, that, you know, she had a big corner office in Chicago, and he comes in this hot shot that she is, you know, sort of looking at him askance, like, really?

Are you that great?

You know, she was she was in a much more senior position at the beginning of their relationship.

And, you know, as anybody in any relationship knows, when that power dynamic shifts, it becomes quite uncomfortable.

And one of the interesting things that I uncovered about her and just just basically charting her time before and after the office, being in office is, she had to really downplay the fact that she had given up her career.

Just all the interviews she gave on the campaign trail.

My family's more important.

Adjusting my daughters is more important.

In our family, being together is more important, which I'm sure there is absolute truth to that.

But she had to survive this role first before she could then later talk about, you know, publicly what it was like for her to give that up and from her own words, you know, in her books and and speaking after afterwards, it's like, clearly that wasn't the case.

That was much harder for her than she felt she was able to talk about at the time.

Thank you so much for that insight and all the others in the book.

That's it for this edition.

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