Talk of a ‘first lady’ is un-canadian
It’s true that I became irascible when I read a sister newspaper’s headline calling Nazanin Mackay “Canada’s potential first lady.” I mean no disrespect to Mrs. Mackay here. For all I know it is a serious flaw in our democracy that we are speaking of her, and not her husband, as a potential prime- ministerial spouse. It’s this “first lady” business I dislike. This is an un- Canadian invasive species that careless editors try to apply to the wives of PMS at rare but increasing intervals.
But I didn’t get earnestly annoyed until I heard an intelligent acquaintance object to the usage ... while admitting that it was a “pedantic” point. Listen, I’ve made as much money out of professional pedantry as any Canadian. This isn’t pedantry. This is about the underwater nine- tenths of our constitutional iceberg. This is about what Confucius called the rectification of names.
So I ask you: what Canadian, in 2020, is still eyeing the paraphernalia of the American presidency with envy? The pedantic point to be made, although it is also a point of etiquette, is that a prime minister’s wife cannot possibly be the “first lady” of a realm currently equipped with a Queen. Not to mention a vicereine who can hire and fire prime ministers.
A “first lady” is a convenience that republics, for social and diplomatic purposes, have instead of reigning queens or consorts. The senior female member of the presidential household is recognized as First Lady of the republic when the president is widowed or single (like Buchanan, whose niece held the title).
The word “princess” is almost literally just the Latin for “first,” and some Americans must have sensed they were tempting fate when they united their social hierarchy with their political one under a title savouring of hospice- stage republicanism. The original vision was of a country that did not have princesses or anything like.
The U. S. had, after all, done its best to protect itself by giving the chief magistrate the humble, almost secretarial title of “president.” This availed nought. The executive branch in a government that was already reinventing a lot of wheels still needed to entreat with the world, and with the other elements of domestic government, in an understandable human way: i. e., over food and drink, at parties. The president’s hostess was required, if only for her own sake, to have some verbal token of high feudal rank.
It has been left to Canada, through a twist of fate, to create an absentee monarchy with superior republican virtues. We have an Order of Canada, a ragbag which is universally ignored for most social purposes, and we have ironical “Honourable” and “Right Honourable” tags as a harmless means of paying homage to successful politicians. But the principle that our head of government is a servant is alive.
We don’t surround prime ministers with praetorian guards for the remainder of their lives and then entomb them in pharaonic “libraries” consecrated to their every bowel movement. We grimace at the mere thought of fixing up the PM’S official residence (notoriously inferior in comfort to the Opposition Leader’s), forcing him to upgrade his third- best living quarters in sheepish semi-secrecy. And we have at least our fair share of rancid partisanship, but it has rarely if ever been contaminated by the cult of personality. A national party leader hardly ever escapes public life without being betrayed, insulted, or humiliated by his own followers.
Making a “first lady” out of the prime minister’s wife, or a “first gentleman” out of her husband, would be an important psychological step in the direction of Americanism — of making the head of government socially paramount, and allowing him or her to establish a royal- style artistic and intellectual court. ( This is one of the less- noticed Trumpian innovations. He has a court, as sure as George III did, with an easily identified camarilla; and the newspapers will be sure to let you know who is in favour and who is drifting out.) We have had a few prime ministers whose wives tried very hard to be ethical and sartorial trendsetters. They have enough advantages in these endeavours without quasi- official standing — which would, in the end, become official and acquire a budget and administrative sub- departments, as the American First Lady has.
We are no longer very careful about the active practice of monarchism, so our learned defences against this sort of thing, our old heuristics of resistance to American conceptual influence, are weak. We mostly don’t sing God Save the Queen anymore, or display pictures of our sovereign over the water. These were habits elected politicians didn’t want us to have.
Monarchists are often thought of as absurd cosplay re- enactors of imperialism, and the shoe undoubtedly fits some of us, but we are losing something pertinent when we abandon everyday regard for the monarchy and forget its existence altogether. We are creating a social vacuum that our politicians, long content to float near the upper boundary of a colourless and nebulous “establishment,” will fill if we let them. The U. S.A. has learned what comes of the fusion of celebrity with political power. If we decide we wish to become a republic, couldn’t we at least have one of our own design that avoids the obvious mistakes?