 Good afternoon and welcome to the William G. McGowan Theater here at the National Archives. I'm David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States. And it's a pleasure to welcome you, and please you could join us for today's program, whether you're here in the theater or joining us on our Facebook or YouTube channels. Today's conversation is one of many programs we've developed to tie into our new exhibit in the Lawrence F. O'Brien Gallery upstairs, rightfully hers, American Women in the Boat. We had started, and I'd like to tell you about two other programs coming up soon in this theater. Tonight at 7 p.m. we'll partner with the United States Association of Former Members of Congress, the 2020 Women's Vote Centennial Initiative and the National Women's History Alliance to present a panel discussion, the female candidate for office challenges and hurdles. Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petrie will moderate the discussion, which will include Anne Lewis, former White House Director of Communications, and former members of Congress Donna Edwards and Barbara Comstock and Connie Morella. Next Thursday, June 20th, at noon, Senator Mike Lee will be here talking about his new book, Our Lost Declaration, America's Fight Against Tyranny from King George to the Deep State. Check out our website, archives.gov, or sign up at the table outside the theater to get email updates, and you'll also find information about other National Archives programs and activities. And another way to get more involved with the National Archives is to become a member of the National Archives Foundation. The Foundation supports our education and outreach activities. Visit their website, archivesfoundation.org, to learn more about the Foundation. I mentioned earlier that we just opened a new exhibit upstairs. Rightfully hers is the cornerstone of our centennial celebration of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. The exhibit tells the story of women's struggles for voting rights and explores the roles of women from a variety of backgrounds. Once they won the vote, the door was open for them to serve in public office, both the pointed and elected, but the women most in the public eye in the world of politics have not been on the ballot. The First Lady, and by extension the spouse of any presidential candidate, is a figure of public fascination, although she does not run for any office. You can find a wealth of information about the First Ladies since Lou Henry Hoover and the 14 presidential libraries operated by the National Archives. You don't have to visit in person. There's a great deal available online through each library's website. To date, the White House occupants have been presidents and First Ladies. Hillary Clinton's run for office in 2016 raised the possibility of a first gentleman as a presidential consort. And that prospect inserted a new twist into the discussion of the role of a political spouse. Tammy Veehill will tell us about the spouses of presidential nominees of the last several elections and how they have challenged or reinforced perceptions of the role of gender and the place of women in American political life. Tammy R. Veehill is an associate professor of communication at Boston University. Her research interests include political campaigns, persuasion, and women as political communicators. She's the author of Connecting with Constituents, Identification, Building, and Blocking in Contemporary National Convention Addresses and the co-author of the Third Agenda in the United States Presidential Debates, Debate, Watch, and Citizen Reactions, 1996 to 2004. Dr. Veehill has published journal articles and book chapters on the rhetoric of Michelle Obama, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George W. Bush, and on national nominating conventions. She has served as an expert source for stories and several news outlets including The Guardian, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Tammy Veehill. Thank you. Archivist Ferio. And thank you to David Swanson and the folks here at the archives for inviting me to participate in this wonderful series of events that they've been doing in the Rightfully Hers program and supporting the Rightfully Hers displays. So, 1776, Abigail Adams famously wrote to her husband, John, imploring him to remember the ladies as he and other founding fathers worked to construct the documents upon which the new Democratic Republic that would become the United States of America was eventually built. John, insisting that he and his compatriots would not surrender their masculine system, ignored Abigail's request, and women were indeed left out of the founding documents. As we know, it took almost 150 years before female citizens were granted access to the national ballot box. Today, as we celebrate the centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment, it is clear that women have made many advances in their efforts toward equality but are still fighting to achieve political parity with men and continue to struggle against a system that treats half the population as a special subclass of contingent citizens. In Moms in Chief, the rhetoric of Republican motherhood and the spouses of presidential nominees 1992 to 2016, I explore the ways in which longstanding traditional perspectives on women established during the early years of the nation's founding still impact contemporary interpretations of women as political actors. Specifically I look at the ways the consorts of presidential candidates have been judged by the press, the parties, and the public based on outdated interpretations of the interests and aptitudes traditionally assigned to women and men. I also address how the spouses themselves have variously embraced and contested customary gender roles. The sex-based expectations at the root of my analysis are articulated by a rhetorical trope known as the Republican motherhood ideal. Now, it's important to note that the concept of Republican motherhood is not a party-based idea. Here, the idea of Republican is really referring to the governmental philosophy of representative Republicanism and not the GOP. So Republican party members do use this type of rhetoric often. So do Democrats and so do other people who aren't affiliated with any party in particular. So that might lead you to ask what then is Republican motherhood? Republican motherhood is a concept that was really developed sort of retroactively by academics who were describing what they saw as rhetorical strategies that had been used starting actually really in the age of the Enlightenment and moving forward, but in the United States following the Revolutionary War, when women were struggling to try to find a place in this new nation, trying to figure out what exactly their role should be. And what ended up happening was that the women, as they started to figure out that a lot of the restrictions that had been placed on them were really social restrictions rather than actual physiological restrictions or anything meant to do with their aptitudes, their actual aptitudes. They started to fight back and say, well, what about us? And they were reaching for the rights that were rightfully theirs at the time or should have been. But the leaders at the time actually instead of giving them, granting them the practical political empowerment that would have fit along with the philosophy of the Revolutionary War, the idea of having equality, of being able to have representative government, of being able to have participatory government, instead of actually granting them that political empowerment. The leaders of the time basically gave them rhetorical acknowledgement for the work that they were doing. So what happened was looking back to the idea of Spartan motherhood, where in Sparta, women were praised for their political value as mothers and as wives when they raised children that were particularly sons that were good warriors or good governmental employees or participants, then they earned praise as participants. In the United States, after the Revolutionary War, leaders started to talk about women's role as mothers and as wives rather than as citizens fully formed. So the concept of Republican motherhood, when we go back and look at how they talked about women throughout the founding years of the nation, we see that there are some themes that keep coming up. Women's were defined based on their relationships with others, so instead of being called citizens, they were called mothers, they were called wives, they were called daughters, and their rights were tied to the idea of the roles that they played in that social construct rather than as autonomous individuals. So the rhetoric of Republican motherhood conflates the categories of woman, wife, and mother, and equates marital and spousal duties with political activity. Now this is kind of an interesting idea because the rhetorical trope actually gives us a complex web of uses, and scholar Wendy Gunther Canada in 1996 argued that Republican motherhood as we look at it over the years actually has served both as a feminist response to patriarchal politics and as a theoretical trap for women as citizens. As a feminist response to patriarchal politics, it was really useful because for the first time women were actually being acknowledged for the work that they were doing in the home. Being domestically centered became valued and valuable, and it was imbued with national importance. So that was really a positive step for women in many kinds of ways. It also celebrated wives and mothers and proclaimed women's value in a way that it had not been acknowledged previously, and so it gave status to this previously dispossessed group. In addition, a very important step that occurred here, Republican motherhood rhetoric because the idea was that women were empowered, that they were patriots by being mothers, good mothers and wives, that they actually got to argue for more access to education and more access to the political sphere. They could make the claim that if they were going to be a good patriotic woman, i.e. a good mother and a good wife, they needed to be educated because they would be better companions for their husbands and they would be better able to educate and understand education for their children. They also gained some access to the political sphere by being able to argue that if they were really in charge of taking care of the home and that their political charge was taking care of the family, that they needed to be able to have access to the political sphere to be able to talk about issues that directly related to the home. So they started talking about things like sanitation and education and mental health and physical health, and that was really a way that gave them entry into the political sphere and be able to speak publicly on something that they were expected to be experts on. Unfortunately, though, for all of these potential positives that did come out of the use of Republican motherhood rhetoric, it also was, as Wendy Gunther Canada stated, a theoretical trap for women as citizens. The reason for this is because within all of the conversation about women acting as mothers and wives, there was this sometimes implicit and sometimes explicitly stated expectation that the consummate female patriot was to be self-sacrificing, was to be differential, and to be defined by her relationship with others. Now all of those meant that they lost their own identity and were not expected to be assertive on their own right, or to assert their own rights either. So it urged women to avoid self-advocacy and shun public displays of personal political ambition, and framed any kind of display of ambition as being unbecoming of a lady. So it encouraged women to kind of quiet themselves down, or only to speak on behalf of others. It also limited the ways in which females could engage in public dialogue because it narrowly delineated the acceptable interests and motivations for female political action. We start to see then the development of this false dichotomy between so-called feminine issues and masculine issues that we still talk about today, where feminine issues were cast as those that were compassionate issues or sometimes considered soft issues, things like education, like healthcare, things that people thought were framed as less important, whereas masculine issues became things like the economy and the military and international relations and things that were supposed to be more complex and more suited toward their skills and abilities. So it was very problematic for women as citizens in terms of what was going on with the spread of this Republican motherhood rhetoric. The rhetoric also offers this interpretation of women as naturally limited political actors, and therefore casts them as deficient leaders, causing problems for women in politics even to this day. I guess the biggest problem with this trap for women as citizens is that it actually, the rhetoric of Republican motherhood actually casts men as the de facto classic citizen. The true citizen is a male, whereas women become cast as secondary contingent citizens that are dependent on men, mostly their fathers, their husbands, their sons, for their political empowerment and representation. The idea of Republican motherhood still dominates key aspects of our contemporary discussion of women as political actors. Moms and chief focuses particularly on how our interpretations of spouses of presidential contenders, who as the archivist here has pointed out to us are actually most often the most visible women in presidential campaigns, how our perceptions of them are informed by this archaic perspective on women. Looking at the spouses of major party nominees between 1992 and 2016, it is clear that the Republican motherhood ideal still pervades the way that we talk about women by the press, the parties and the spouses themselves. Members of the news and entertainment media heavily rely on Republican motherhood rhetoric to help shape their depictions of presidential contenders' spouses. Reporters reinforce the Republican motherhood ideal by treating spouses of presidential nominees as having limited interests and capabilities. They focus their stories on the maids' perspectives on parenting, report on spouses' appearance and fashion sense, and underscore the ways the consorts embrace or challenge traditional gender roles. And usually they focus on embracing traditional gender roles as being the positive approach and contesting as being highly negative. The Republican motherhood standards have continually informed comparisons and judgments of the individuals in the role for decades. Moms and chief, I start with the comparisons in 1992, which pitted Barbara Bush against Hillary Clinton, and this is a particularly telling election cycle because these two women were cast as being extremely different people. Barbara Bush, the press, talked about her as the affable grandmother. They even called her America's grandmother. They talked about, they highlighted often how she moved her family around to help support George H.W. Bush in his political endeavors and helped him to be able to serve his nation much more compellingly because she took care of the home and raised their children. They also talked about how she raised children who were also going into politics. So they cast her as sort of the ideal female patriot. They also talked a lot about how she kept her own political opinions to herself more often than not. And then later on in the campaign where she started to actually speak up on what constitutes a family and her opinion on abortion and abortion laws, people started to talk about how she was having a bit of an awakening and an enlightenment, but they didn't actually cast that as necessarily a negative thing. It was just part of her support for her husband. With Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, she was often condemned for being a modern woman. She was frequently cast in negative terms on talk radio. She was considered, she was called a feminazi. Lots of different news stories actually cast her against Lady Macbeth, used the Lady Macbeth reference to talk about her. And in one particular story, she was actually cast as the yuppie mom from hell. Most of the time her descriptions included things like the outspoken wife of the governor of Arkansas. And so there was a clear contradiction that was going on between them and she was clearly cast as the more negative of the two candidate spouses. Entertainment forums also accentuated this idea of their distinctions but showed more of an emphasis on how the women didn't meet the idea of being ladylike in more physical kinds of senses. For example, on Saturday Night Live and some of the other entertainment venues that were skit shows at the time, people who were playing the role of Barbara Bush were often male to accentuate her girth and her size and her deeper voice. With Hillary Clinton, there were skits where she was portrayed as having these gigantic shoulder pads because of her structured suits that she used to wear, her skirt suits and her pants suits. And in one particular episode of one show, she was actually seen wearing a football shoulder pads underneath a suit jacket and so very much accentuating her attempt to look male. And so even in the entertainment area, we would see these contrasts kind of going on about whether or not they were, or these assessments of whether or not they were looking ladylike. So 1992 made some sense that there would be this high accentuation on the idea of Republican motherhood and the Republican motherhood ideal because you had basically what was cast as the woman who did embrace the Republican motherhood ideal wholeheartedly versus the one who allegedly was completely anti motherhood, anti domesticity and anti femininity in lots of ways according to the press. So you would think that that would change a bit in 1996 because in 1996 we had a pairing of women who were actually both very established professional women who had Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Dole. Elizabeth Dole had had a very long history of political activity long before she ever even met Bob Dole. And in fact she had arguably more presidential political experience than her husband when the 1996 election was going on because she had been a cabinet member for two different presidents and she had served as secretary of transportation, secretary of labor and had done countless other jobs in government. And yet the press continued to cast them both in terms of their ability to embrace or contest femininity in a classical kind of sense. They talked a lot about how Hillary Clinton had flubbed the 1992 campaign. They went back to lots of things that she'd said that they thought or that they had cast, the press had cast as being anti housewife and anti female. With Elizabeth Dole the reporters downplayed her time in government and instead accentuated the work that she was doing as president of the Red Cross because being president of the Red Cross was a much more compassionate seeming role than being secretary of labor for example. And so there was a lot of accentuation of Elizabeth Dole as being Senator Dole's wife. It even got to the point where when she ran for president in the year 2000, a lot of reporters actually credited her popularity with how well she embraced the wifely role in 1996. So instead of actually moving along the conversation away from Republican motherhood, we actually see that it got more deeply entrenched. And we continue if we take a quick cursory look over the other folks who were covered in the span of this book. You'll see that Tipper and Laura Bush were both, Tipper Gore and Laura Bush, were both applauded by the press for their embrace of customary femininity for supporting their husbands and caring for their children. Each were framed also as an anti-Hillary figure. So making sure that there was a contrast between the modern woman and the traditional woman. When Teresa Hines-Carrie came on the scene in 2004, she was deemed too wealthy, too assertive and way too powerful to be ineffective, first lady. That's the way that the press cast her, at least. Cindy McCain and Anne Romney were idealized as stay-at-home moms who supported their husbands' ambitions in different kinds of ways. And in almost every story I found about either of those women, the number of children they had and the way that they raised them was an accentuated element. With Michelle Obama in 2008 and also 2012, she was portrayed as sort of the idealized every mom. Even though she was an Ivy League educated attorney, she had worked in very high-powered positions. Her representation in the press had continually come back to her being a mother. They might mention her education, but it was never a focal point of a story, whereas stories about her and her children or her and her interaction with her husband were really what the press tended to focus on. Press treatments of Bill Clinton, on the other hand, tended to reinforce traditional notions of gender by highlighting his masculinity. This was apparent when, particularly in entertainment media, when they would do things like have photoshopped pictures of Bill Clinton in a ball gown to sort of contrast this idea of him being a first lady and saying, oh, can he really fulfill the duties that we'd expect of a first lady? There was also a cover, I think, of the New Yorker where they had him in earrings and a full face of makeup, and they were trying to contemplate whether or not he would be, you know, what they would call him the first gentleman, the first, like what kinds of names would come along. The other part, though, that contradicted a lot of the coverage of other spouses and tells us that this was a very gendered conversation is that with Bill Clinton, the press talked often about a range of topics. With the women, they would talk about a very narrow focus on parenting, focus on home, focus on their ideas related to so-called feminine topics. With Bill Clinton, they talked about the economy, the foreign affairs, they talked about pretty much everything. And they didn't ask Bill Clinton to do things like give a tour of the family home. Or they didn't talk about his fashion sense. They didn't talk about the sort of limited notions that they did with the women. And so we know that there was a contrast. Granted, there is a little bit of a distinction here because he was the president of the United States. But part of that issue is that being president of the United States has always been seen as a very masculinized job. And the masculine traits or masculine leadership traits are usually accented. And so it would make sense that he'd have that sort of aspect. But it also then reinforces the gender issue. So we see that press portrayals of candidates mates, particularly the wives, occur in a very restricted manner that encourages audience members to judge the consorts using narrow and outdated standards. This approach robs the women in particular of their own standing as autonomous individuals with interests and aptitudes that expand beyond the borders prescribed by the Republican motherhood ideal. Although members of the media often do this because the standards are familiar and easy to build stories around, journalists and entertainers are not the only ones who employ this archaic trope during a campaign. Every chapter in Moms and Chief illustrates how both Republican and Democratic parties use Republican motherhood rhetoric to shape perceptions of the spouses of presidential contenders. They do so to enhance the standing of their candidates mate and to erode support for the opponent's spouse. Criticisms of the opposing candidates mates often demonstrate how un-lady like the women are by using old fashion standards of femininity. While positive messages of their own nominees consorts usually underscore how the spouse was supportive, submissive and other centric. One exception was Bill Clinton in 2016. He's, by the way, generally the exception and that kind of proves a lot of the point that I'm making in the book. But the one exception in 2016 is that in his case, the opposition used his masculine traits to emphasize how his wife, Hillary, the actual candidate, had difficulties enacting expectations for either a good patriotic woman or a presidential president or a potential president. It's really kind of interesting when we turn to the idea of the parties because when we look at the parties, what happens with them is that they take very interesting stances. While earlier I explained that the concept of Republican motherhood isn't about the party, in fact, when you look at the way that the parties use Republican motherhood rhetoric, we see that Republicans actually are much more clear and usually much more effective. I use that word a little curiously because effective means that they're actually reinforcing the idea of Republican motherhood. But they use it very, they use this rhetoric very, very clearly. Part of the idea is that Republican Party, especially today's Republican Party has, is known for being much more conservative so their perspectives on women would be more conservative so that would make sense that this ideal would be their idealized notion of females. But we see it in a lot of different ways. When they talk about positive depictions of women, they tend to accentuate ideas about who they're related to, their idea of being connected to men in particular kinds of ways, and also in terms of their lady likeness. For example, in 1992, Pat Robertson at the Republican National Convention described Barbara Bush saying, she was a gracious lady, a devoted wife, a dedicated mother, and a caring grandmother. Nobody can convince me that the American people are so blind that they could want to replace Barbara Bush as first lady. So he's making the case for George H.W. Bush by talking about how ladylike Barbara was. This actually kind of harkens back to some earlier Republican candidate, or Republican campaign strategies. For example, Pat Nixon when Richard Nixon was running for president, there was a campaign that used the slogan Pat for first lady instead of Richard for president. And when Gerald Ford was running for president, there was a grassroots campaign, and people were wearing buttons that would say vote for Betty's husband. And so you use these spouses in an interesting kind of way. And the example of Pat Robertson on Barbara Bush kind of harkens back to that. The Republicans also, though, are very good at using the negative element of Republican motherhood where they're trying to cast the Democratic spouse in a particularly bad way, in a particularly un-ladylike fashion. One of the best examples of this would be, again, in 1992, Richard Nixon representing the GOP was talking about Hillary Clinton, and he talked about how she was a little too assertive to really be an effective first lady. And he, in one interview, argued that Hillary pounds the piano so hard that Bill can't be heard. You want a wife that's intelligent but not too intelligent. He also went on to say, intellect in a woman is unbecoming. So they started casting, you know, the Republican motherhood rhetoric was very clear in that realm, but at the same time it's not like it just went away in the 90s either. When it came to talking about Michelle Obama, the GOP operatives talked about Michelle Obama's un-ladylike physique. In fact, there were some alt-right individuals or very conservative individuals who would talk about her as and spread rumors that she had once been a man just because she was so tall and she had such strong arms. So there was a lot about not being ladylike with Michelle Obama. In addition, they would talk about degrading her relationship with her husband. Some GOP members referred to Michelle Obama as Barack's baby mama instead of his wife. So again, sort of calling into question how well she was playing the role of the traditional woman. So Republicans tend to be pretty good because they tend to be pretty, not good, they tend to be very effective in their use of Republican motherhood rhetoric because they tend to stay on target pretty consistently because it does tend to align with the ways in which they tend to talk about women generally. But the Democrats, on the other hand, are a little problematic. They do try to use this rhetoric. They try to use rhetoric of Republican motherhood in their own ways, but often kind of stumble over it themselves because Democrats tend to espouse an ideal that they are a little more varied and accepting a wider variety of perspectives from individuals. So they tend to have problems when they try to critique the spouses because they either have to argue that the woman is too traditional or they have to argue that the woman is too non-traditional and counter their own perspectives. And so that becomes problematic. We see this in a couple of different times with Barbara Bush, for example. The Democrats complained that she was out of touch with the realities of women of the 90s because she wasn't speaking up as a candidate, I mean, as a candidate's spouse and talking about her own perspectives. But then when she did share her political opinions, they argued that she was being too assertive. So she couldn't be womanly enough and then she was too womanly and then she wasn't womanly enough. So Democrats tend to have that problem all the time. They did the same thing with Laura Bush in 2004. But the parties used the spouses in campaigns to make them fodder for critique by the opposition. The fact that most of the criticism that arise, sorry, the fact that most of the criticisms that arise are based on how well the meets outdated interpretations of a good woman perpetuates the Republican motherhood standard. However, perhaps the most telling application of Republican motherhood ideals comes from the individuals who are married to the presidential candidates themselves. As candidate surrogates and individuals who have a lot personally at stake in the election, the spouses of presidential nominees participate in their mate's campaigns in numerous ways. They fundraise, they sit for interviews, they sometimes give speeches and hold rallies, and they often appear beside their candidates at major events. Since Barbara Bush's speech to the Republican National Convention in 1992, all nominee's spouses have also given an address in one fashion or another at the national nominating convention where their mate officially becomes the party nominee. In those speeches, most have reaffirmed their embrace of Republican motherhood ideals. The women in particular have tended to define themselves in terms of their relationships, focus on the maternal attributes and downplay their other accomplishments, and emphasize their interest in traditionally feminine topics or perspectives. Now, this is particularly important because with convention speeches, it's the speech that the spouse gives is viewed as the opportunity for the woman, usually the woman, to introduce herself to the nation, and so the way that she defines herself becomes very important. And we see that with two distinct exceptions, the women tend to define themselves by their relationships. It makes a little bit of sense to define yourself as a wife because you're speaking as the spouse of the nominee, but they take it to a bit of an extreme and they really play up the idea of being mothers. We see this in 2008 when Michelle Obama at the beginning of her DNC speech says that she says, I come here tonight as a sister, as a wife, as a mom, and as a daughter, and talks about what each of those roles means to her. You notice she doesn't say she comes here as a citizen, she doesn't come here as an individual with her own interests. It's really tied to her relationships. Her authority becomes part of, tied to her relationships with others. And Romney takes this a step further in 2012 when she defines all women relationally. In a speech that she said was intended to sing women's praises and celebrate womanhood, she defined all women saying, we're the mothers, we're the wives, we're the grandmothers, we're the big sisters, we're the little sisters, we're the daughters. But she never talks about women in terms of any other attribute. She does talk about men as political figures, as business people, as providers, as excellent providers for the family, but that she never talks about women in any kind of role other than one that is relational. Interestingly, Elizabeth Dole provides an example that's really kind of complex. She blends the idea of defining herself by her relationship and also downplaying her other attributes other than being a spouse. Elizabeth Dole was not a mother, and she married later in life than most of the other spouses that are looked at in this book. But she largely ignores her lifetime of professional accomplishments and defines herself as a friend to the members of the audience and as a dedicated wife to her husband. She shares lots of stories about how she helped Bob to engage in lots of charitable activities. And she only at one point in time talks about her own professional career, and it was in a story that she was telling to try to highlight Bob's sense of humor. She said that when she was at her confirmation hearing, and he was introducing her for the hearing for Secretary of Transportation, that he jokingly said, I regret that I have but one wife to give for my country's infrastructure, which is kind of a fun uptake on the Nathan Hale quote. But at the same time, if you really think about what she's saying there and what he's saying there, here is this husband who is giving his wife to service for the government. And even though it's meant to be funny, there's a serious undertone in terms of how she's portraying herself in that approach. And she doesn't actually talk about her work in the government at all, she just mentions that's the one line mention. We see a lot of these one line mentions that sort of disappear about women's careers. We see the same thing with Michelle Obama in 2008. We see the same thing with Elizabeth Dole and with Tipper Gore. We see the same little throwaway lines that don't really amount to much of anything. In terms of highlighting their own maternal or spousal attributes and downplaying there are other credentials, Cindy McCain basically took every effort and every self reference and turned it into a discussion of her role as a wife and mother. She started her RNC speech with her seven children on stage with her and she pointed to them and said they were the seven reasons John and I later she argued that nothing has made me happier or more fulfilled in my life than being a mother. When she does finally talk about her work outside the home, her philanthropic work, she turns the story into a story about how she adopted her daughter. So even then it becomes a question of her motherhood. McCain takes it a step further though and she actually starts defining other women by their maternal attributes. She described Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin as a reform minded hockey mom, basketball shooting, moose hunting, salmon fishing, pistol packing, mother of five. So there are six descriptors in this quote and two of the six actually have to do with being a mom. None of them have to do with being a governor. I think that kind of stands out a little bit as an interesting point. We also can look to Michelle Obama in 2008 for the same idea. She didn't talk about her career very much but she did talk about how her daughters and all children's future were her stake in the election. So it wasn't about her, it wasn't about other women, it was about children. Casting her as sort of the nation's mother. And then of course in 2012 she embraced the mom-in-chief role saying that being the mom-in-chief was the most important job she would ever have. And again she only mentioned her other credentials once in a very brief line in 2008 to get her to talking about the importance of being selfless and the importance of advocating on behalf of others. We also see the idea of Republican motherhood reinforced by these individuals when they actually talk about their interest in feminine topics. Almost all of them talk about things like child care and education for example Barbara Bush, Laura Bush, Cindy McCain, advocated for education and literacy, Hillary Clinton, Tipper Gore, Theresa Hines-Carrie, Ann Romney, Michelle Obama, all advocated for mental and physical health and healthcare and all of the women discussed children's well-being in one capacity or another. I think most recently we looked to Melania Trump and her comments about trying to combat cyberbullying and generically helping women and children. She talked at the RNC in 2016. Women who didn't follow this pattern which was mostly Theresa Hines-Carrie to be honest with you. She matched some of them but not all of these attributes. She actually talked about her time as a political activist. She never cast herself as a mother in her speech and she was soundly pilloried by the press and by everybody else who was talking about her speech. Also Bill Clinton, the lone male to deliver the spouse's address had a convention. He followed a few of the trends. He cast himself as a father. He cast his wife as a mother. But he also frequently linked his wife to traditional feminine traits and underscored his own masculinity and his leadership skills. He talked at length about how as governor he had given Hillary this particular opportunity. As president he had given Hillary this other opportunity. A lot of what he was talking about ended up sounding like he had given her opportunities that made her who she was. Which was kind of a little bit disconcerting to be perfectly honest. But he was not chastised for it. People didn't complain that he didn't fit the traditional mold of a spouse. For some of the spouses of presidential candidates such as Barbara Bush, Laura Bush, Tipper Gorn and Romney Republican motherhood rhetoric offered an easy shorthand way of describing their lived experiences. For others like Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Dole and Michelle Obama the trope provided strategic insights into how each could shape her public image in order to broaden her appeal. The applications of such techniques were more or less effective for these three women. Clinton having considerably less success than either Dole or Obama. But the various chapters of Moms in Chief illustrate how each used the conceits to guide efforts of image formation and in some cases rehabilitation. So it's important to note that the Republican motherhood ideal is a complex rhetorical trope that has been used to both empower and disempower women in the political sphere. The conceit draws positive attention and gives value to the contributions women have traditionally made through their domesticity and acknowledges the importance of caregiving in our society. However, it also hampers women's political strength by rhetorically silencing, discrediting or even demonizing women who do not meet the purportedly natural criterion of women as a self-sacrificial nurturer. The rhetoric of Republican motherhood encourages people to view women through a very limited frame, turning complex individuals into simplified caricatures of their true selves. Moms in Chief examines seven election cycles and 11 different individuals with various backgrounds, interests and abilities. The specific pairings involve a grandmotherly first lady and a progressive career woman, two professionally successful women, two stay-at-home mothers, a traditional wife and a powerful, wealthy woman, an affluent white mother and an accomplished black woman, the first African-American first lady and a conservative well-to-do mother of five and a former president and an immigrant fashion model. The people studied include two women without college diplomas, several people with advanced degrees, four Ivy League educated attorneys and a Rhodes Scholar. They're white, black, Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, native-born Americans and immigrants. These people have worked as stay-at-home mothers, librarians, teachers, lawyers, philanthropists, models, governmental agents and the president of the United States. They do not fit into a single box. However, comparing the treatment of female spouses to that of Bill Clinton demonstrates that in American politics, being a husband and father is considered something men do while being a wife and mother is treated as something women are. This disparity in perspectives is not fair and problematic specifically for the female spouses of presidential nominees and for women generally. The tendency to interpret candidates' consorts based on their perceived ability and willingness to behave in a gender normative fashion creates understandings of womanhood that perpetuate the idea that women are or should be contingent citizens whose rightful focus is on the needs of others rather than on behalf. Because some of the most visible women in politics are often the spouses of presidential nominees, when the press, the parties and the mates themselves embrace Republican motherhood ideals, the use of them as measures and use them as measures of effectiveness for high-profile women, it robs candidates' consorts of their ability to show ambition and self-interest, prevents them from freely engage of topics, and encourages them to downplay their own strengths and experiences. These potential role models are then modeling behaviors that undercut the perceived efficacy of females by encouraging all women to embrace more self-sacrificing, subservient, domestic-oriented points of view. In addition, public support for more conventional women and scorn for adox ones encourages female citizens to espouse and embrace more traditional perspectives. Women will never be able to establish themselves as autonomous members of the polis, effectively assert their own interests or acquire equal standing with their male counterparts if they are continually expected to fulfill other centric roles that force them to downplay their broad range of skills and talents. As long as Americans continue in public and private life to widely subscribe to the oppressive and antiquated interpretation of womanhood proffered by the Republican motherhood ideal, all women will be denied the power and dignity granted to full and autonomous citizens, power and dignity that are rightfully theirs, and they will perpetually struggle to be perceived as anything other than wives, daughters, and moms-in-chief. So we have a bit of time for our question and answer. So if you have questions, there are microphones on either side. And so if anybody would like to please come to the microphone and ask what you would like. And then afterwards I think we're moving to a book signing upstairs. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. Very interesting compelling presentation. There are a number of women running for the nomination on the Democratic Party. They are certainly not running as mothers or daughters. Do you think this has some effect on the way people view women in politics? Yes, I think it hopefully will open up a lot of opportunities for looking at women in different kinds of ways. For example, with Elizabeth Warren having a lot of different kinds of policies that touch on a lot of different topics, I think that will be very beneficial to expanding our perception of women and how women what women are considered expert on and what the real, the true realm of women's interests are. I think that's really good. One of the things that I will say though is I was a little personally after having written this and doing all of this kind of research when Kirsten Gillibrand made her initial announcement for her run she actually did emphasize being a mother and that became a big focal point of what she was saying. I think she was on the late show with Stephen Colbert and he asked her why should we elect you president and she said well as a young mother and that was the first credential that she put out which made me think oh look at that Republican mother had still alive and well but we've moved away from that since then. But what we are seeing some of though is the conversations about the spouses of the nominees are starting to really shape up some of this rhetoric as well. We've got in some cases where there was a CNN report where they talked about all of the male spouses of the female candidates and they did keep talking about them in the ways that women had been talked about in the past are they giving up their jobs are they being supportive and so that was on the one hand endearing because it was sort of saying well okay it's not just being applied to women anymore. On the other hand it's also a little frustrating because you're talking about individuals and it's still kind of homogenizing them into sort of this small pocket and the small range so I'm hoping that it will broaden our ability to view women as more capable more broad minded political actors but it still will remain to be seen. The other parts to that too is who's actually getting the attention. The media is paying much much more attention to the male candidates so far as we've seen. Answer your question. Anybody else? Thank you very much.