Before Melania
She may not be that different from those who came before her
See how the five first ladies that preceded her defined their roles
In one sense, Melania Trump is very different from her five immediate predecessors, Michelle Obama, Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Bush and Nancy Reagan: They all moved into the White House immediately after inauguration.
Thus, they had more opportunities for taking on the trappings of first ladyhood than Trump, who won’t move in until sometime in June.
But the truth is it takes every first-time first lady months to decide how she’ll approach an undefined, unpaid and highpressure role, says Anita McBride, who served in multiple administrations, was chief of staff to Laura Bush and now studies the legacies of first ladies at American University in Washington.
“We’re used to seeing, in the last few first ladies, a slightly more immediate impact on their work, as with Hillary Clinton, who was right out of the gate on health care,” McBride says. “Even Michelle Obama did not roll out her first initiative until nine months in and after she had consulted experts and done her due diligence.”
Here’s what the women who came before Trump did in their first year:
MICHELLE OBAMA 2009
She declared herself “mom-inchief ” to her two preteen daughters. She also was front and center almost immediately, in February 2009, going on a “listening tour” of federal agencies in Washington where she met with workers and thanked them for their service.
By April 2009, she was out on the White House grounds, planting herbs in the Kitchen Garden with Washington schoolchildren, laying the groundwork for her Let’s Move campaign for healthy eating and against childhood obesity that kicked off in the fall.
That effort, one of her three signature first-lady causes, soon featured Obama, dressed in workout clothes, leading exercises and racing with schoolchildren on the White House lawn. She promoted her campaign (and American fashion brands such as J. Crew) on late-night talk shows, danced with Jimmy Fallon, competed at push-ups with Ellen DeGeneres, and led hundreds in jumping jacks on the South Lawn.
LAURA BUSH 2001
Education, books and libraries were the main causes for the former librarian. Just before Sept. 11, 2001, she worked with the Library of Congress to launch the first National Book Festival, attracting big-name authors and big-deal attention. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, she became the first first lady to record a full presidential radio address, in November 2001, speaking out in defense of women and children under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. By 2002, she had launched the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries.
Tragedies are the things one can’t prepare for, McBride says. “That’s where we see the deep and inner and true character of the person and their abilities. In Laura Bush’s case, it was the ability to comfort a nation in shock.”
HILLARY CLINTON 1993
The Yale Law grad-turned-poli- tician’s wife may have been the most activist first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt two generations earlier, and in fact briefly campaigned with her husband under the slogan “two for the price of one.”
“She was the first first lady to have gone to graduate school and become a partner in a major law firm, which contributed to the fact that she was seen as consequential,” says Myra Gutin, a first lady historian at Rider University in New Jersey.
Soon after Bill Clinton’s inauguration, he named his wife to lead a task force on national health care reform. It did not go smoothly. By September, she was up on the Hill testifying before congressional committees in support of the president’s health care package. But she endured widespread criticism for running the task force in a non-transparent and in a seemingly highhanded fashion. The Clinton health care bill later was defeated in Congress.
BARBARA BUSH 1989
Literacy had long been her cause, but when she got to the White House she was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, a malfunction of the thyroid gland, and had to undergo radiation treatment.
Still, she spent her first year launching the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, which is still active. In her first week in the White House, she brought attention to homelessness by visiting Martha’s Table, which provides meals for poor families in Washington. Two years before Princess Diana did it, Bush made front pages around the world when she visited a pediatric HIV/AIDS clinic in Washington and cuddled a baby at a time of widespread misconceptions about HIV transmission.
And she also wrote a bestselling book about the family dog,
Millie’s Book, which was published the following year.
NANCY REAGAN 1981
She had made the fight against drug abuse — Just Say No — her cause since she was first lady of California, and planned to continue it in the White House. But her first year was interrupted by the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981.
“(The assassination attempt) kick-started her into doing something of a more consequential nature,” Gutin says. By the end of the Reagan administration, she was known as her husband’s closest adviser in the White House.
She performed at the annual Gridiron Dinner in 1982, dressed as a bag lady and singing Sec
ondhand Clothes in a self-deprecating spoof that helped defuse controversy over her borrowing of designer couture. And the following year, she appeared as herself in an episode of the sitcom, Diff ’rent Strokes, to warn against drug abuse.