Non-spouses have played roles like hers in past administrations. None quite like her.
First ladies aren’t always presidential spouses. In fact, two early uses of the title refer to the beautiful, popular Harriet Lane, niece of James Buchanan, the only lifelong bachelor president. She was an able hostess who, not long before the Civil War, arranged for Northern and Southern guests to be seated apart at a White House function in order to keep the peace. Harper’s Weekly called her “Our Lady of the White House,” and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper captioned Lane’s picture thusly: “The subject of our illustration … may be justly termed the first lady in the land.”
So as we learn that Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump’s oldest daughter, arranged a meeting between the president-elect and former vice president Al Gore; that she and husband Jared Kushner are reportedly house-hunting in Washington; and that Ivanka is rumored to be looking at White House office space, it’s pretty fair to say she isn’t breaking completely new ground. There’s no job description, so like other first ladies, Ivanka can define her position — and it looks like the gig is hers — in a unique way: advocating for nonpartisan causes, as Laura Bush did with children’s literacy and Michelle Obama did with nutrition, or setting up in the White House’s West Wing as a de facto policy adviser, like Hillary Clinton.
But unlike her predecessors who weren’t the wife of the president, Ivanka appears poised to be an adviser, advocate and hostess all at once. Which could revolutionize the role — and make her the most powerful first lady ever.
“Ivanka and Jared and Don Jr. are more influential than any Cabinet member,” a friend of the Trumps told me recently, referring to the first daughter, her husband and her older brother. And given Ivanka’s enthusiasm on the campaign trail and her understanding of the ways of official Washington — in contrast to her stepmother’s apparent indifference — it’s not only conceivable that she’ll be the incoming administration’s titular first lady, she’ll redefine the position by expanding it in ways that will make it almost unrecognizable.
When I interviewed Rosalynn Carter earlier this year, she clearly remembered the uproar over her decision to sit in on her husband’s Cabinet meetings, even though she did so without saying a word. Then, first ladies were expected to hide their influence. Ivanka, on the other hand, was at the table Wednesday (along with Don Jr. and brother Eric) when the president-elect met with tech CEOs. And she hasn’t done much to dispel the notion that she and her husband will be top advisers, despite describing her role in the administration to “60 Minutes” reporter Leslie Stahl by saying, “I’m going to be a daughter.”
Throughout our nation’s history, nontraditional first families, with a president who had remarried, or with someone other than the president’s wife serving as first lady, were not as uncommon as they have been in recent years. In part, that’s because life expectancies used to be so much shorter. Martha Jefferson Randolph was first lady because her mother died nearly 20 years before her father, Thomas Jefferson, was inaugurated. Rose Cleveland was her brother Grover Cleveland’s first lady until his marriage to Frances Cleveland. In more recent times, filling in for the first lady hasn’t always been a coveted assignment: 17-year-old Susan Ford stepped in temporarily, and reluctantly, during President Gerald Ford’s first diplomatic reception, when first lady Betty Ford was recovering from a mastectomy and couldn’t attend.
A mix of daughters, nieces and sisters have held the position. But it has become increasingly unusual for a first daughter to take on more than a peripheral role in her father’s administration, and it has been a century since there was a first lady who was not the president’s wife. The last time it happened was in 1914, when President Woodrow Wilson’s wife died less than two years after his inauguration and their daughter, Margaret, became hostess until President Wilson married Edith Bolling Galt Wilson. Edith would become the most powerful first lady — seen almost as an acting president — after the president suffered a debilitating stroke in 1919, 18 months before he left the White House. Ivanka probably won’t wield that much unilateral clout, but the breadth of her involvement will be singular.
There’s also precedent for reluctant first spouses. Jacqueline Kennedy depended on Lady Bird Johnson to fill in for her so often that Kennedy’s staff took to calling the then-second lady “Saint Bird.” Bess Truman fled Washington to her home in Independence, Mo., as often as possible, but as wives of presidents, both she and Kennedy were still expected to make themselves available for state dinners, holiday celebrations and foreign trips. Melania Trump is a more exaggerated and, in a way, more transparent version of these women. Though Melania emerged occasionally during the campaign, she’s been almost invisible during the transition. Up to now, she’s not even made the pretense of moving into the White House, planning instead to remain at Trump Tower for at least the first several months of her husband’s administration.
Ivanka, then, will start out as the most prominent woman in her father’s White House. And while I’m not sure she’ll always delight in playing hostess, I do think she is intrigued by the potential to serve as an envoy from President Trump to skeptical blue America. She has, after all, already brokered meetings between her father and Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio, two of the country’s most visible environmental activists. She was already a powerful voice in the campaign, and before that she was the most visible representative of the Trump brand, next to her father
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