Behind Every Great President

A powerful First Lady can be the first step toward a historic presidency.

Frustration with Obama isn’t just coming from the GOP. Many progressive Democrats are tapping their feet, impatient for the change they were promised. Yes, health care was passed — but without a public option. Yes, two women have been nominated to the Supreme Court — but they don’t have robust progressive backgrounds. Yes, we’ve repaired some of our standing with the world — but Guantanamo is still open. Yes we are close to a financial overhaul - but there are enough loopholes to drive a Goldman Sachs bank truck through.

On the Bill Moyers show, Robert Kuttner recently discussed past presidents who enacted powerful legislation and what pushed them into making the tough choices: “If you compare [Obama] with Roosevelt or LBJ or Lincoln, the… thing that’s missing is a social movement. In all of these great periods of transformation, you had social movements doing a complicated dance with the president, where sometimes they were working with him, sometimes they were beating up on him… It describes the labor movement and Roosevelt. Where’s the movement?”

Kuttner, in his new book A Presidency in Peril, doesn’t want to let Obama off easy, but neither does he want to give up on him. It will take pressure and persuasion, among other factors (like some cooperation with Congress), to get the necessary bold action we need to deal with everything that faces us. He laments the force of strong, organized social movements to jolt a president into action, and surely there is room for that to spring up right now, although it has yet to appear.

But another force that can change a presidency is a powerful first lady who prods her husband to make tough choices. There may be no better example of what such a force can accomplish than Eleanor Roosevelt. When FDR took the path of the pragmatist, Eleanor was there to be the idealist, to work for what should, rather than what could be. As Blanche Wiesen Cook remarks in her biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, “FDR liked to boast that he was a ‘practical politician.’ He knew how to compromise, make deals, be duplicitous. ER understood the nature of the game, but wanted some assurance that it would be played for the right reasons, the most needful causes.”

She didn’t always fight for what FDR wanted, either. She butted heads with him — sometimes publicly — over internationalism, race, housing, spending. She had regular radio and newspaper columns in which she expressed her own opinions, whether or not they were in accordance with her husband’s.

She was also the first First Lady to campaign for a politician, helping Democrat Caroline O’Day win her seat as member of Congress at large for New York State (something at that time similar to a Senator). When attacked for her political move by those who claimed she was using her influence unfairly, she replied: “I am acting as an individual…I believe in certain things, and I think a person who does believe in certain things has the right to support them.”

It was Eleanor who fought for Arthurdale, an experimental housing complex that gave poor West Virginians livable housing and jobs. She was the one who put lynching in front of FDR’s face, even when he was compelled by Southern Democrats to look away. She fought for anti-discrimination language in the New Deal so that black people and women wouldn’t be left out of the work programs. She pushed FDR to consider the poorest of the poor, the minorities that were being ignored in Federal programs, and the plight of women. She was, as Robert Sherwood observed, “the keeper of and constant spokesman for her husband’s conscience.” Rarely, if ever, did she waver from what she thought had to be done.

Michelle Obama has already championed some worthy causes. She has taken on the issue of childhood obesity, a serious affliction in our country today. She’s gotten to know military families and fought for the needs of veterans. These are important issues, and a good first step. Like Michelle, Eleanor didn’t want to go to the White House. It took her a while to get adjusted and to find her passion - and her voice. But once she found it, she never lost it. I am excited to see what causes Michelle Obama will be passionate about and what difficult issue she will force the country - and her husband - to face.

FDR is remembered as a great liberal president, but he may not have moved so far left without the gentle nudges - or angry badgering - of his wife. She had her own convictions and beliefs, some of which lined up with his and some of which did not, and she used her position as First Lady to fight for what she thought was right. While social movements have been necessary to help form the opinions of our great leaders, their wives can play that role too. We don’t just need a New Deal — we need a New Eleanor.