Michelle, Cindy, and Us

Thin and elegant, smart and maternal, Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain, you might think, would be popular figures with an appeal that went beyond that of their dueling husbands. But that's not the case. Polls show that neither is particularly popular, nothing like the beloved Laura Bush or, before that, Barbara Bush. I have a couple of theories as to why that is, and it reflects more poorly on us than on these impressive women.

Historically, first ladies have been liked, even beloved, figures. There have been divisive ones, sure. Eleanor Roosevelt was a hero to many with her advocacy for the common man and civil rights, but she was as loathed by the right as was her husband. Mary Todd Lincoln was considered too highbrow. But for the most part, first ladies have been warmly embraced by the public and seen as above party. No one went negative on Mamie Eisenhower. Even in modern times, their woes have tended to make them more popular. Betty Ford was more revered after her struggles with addiction became known. Barbara Bush was more beloved after she wrote candidly about her depression.

For whatever reason, Hillary Clinton was famously more divisive. Part of it was that she took the most active policymaking role of any first lady ever, and some of her comments when she was first being introduced to the public didn't help. In 1992 she was defending her work as an attorney on behalf of a failed Arkansas Savings & Loan when she uttered her line about how she could have stayed home and baked cookies.

Hillary became a first-name in a way that Barbara and Betty never did. Everyone managed to project his or her fantasies onto her. For the right, she was a leftist Madame Defarge. She was a closeted lesbian. She was having an affair with Vince Foster. Even on the left, any number of feminist writers blew a gasket over her failure to leave Bill over his infidelity or her seeming to be an enabler. She became a Rorschach test for prurient fantasies of all kinds. Bill Maher, the comedian, this year said that he was voting for Barack Obama but added that he couldn't fathom Hillary-hatred. If you hate Hillary the problem is with you, he said. She is not a hateful person.

I buy that, and not just because my wife, from whom I'm separated, played a senior role in her senate and presidential campaigns. You can dislike Hillary for any number of policy reasons or the way she conducted her campaign. But for some people, she's like Kryptonite.

The Hillaryifcation of First Ladydom continues. Teresa Heinz Kerry took her hits in 2004. Once the floodgates are open and a first lady is no longer seen as removed from politics, no one is safe. Thus the right already pillories Michelle Obama.

Granted, Mrs. Obama's ham-handed line about being very, very proud of her country for the first time in her adult life over the presidential bid of her husband struck many as off-putting. But the right making her into a latter-day Angela Davis has twisted that bit of spousal hyperenthusiasm. A cover story on Michelle in the National Review made her out to be a grievance monger. They've made much of her senior thesis at Princeton, where she wrote with great pain about feeling alienated on a campus surrounded by white privilege. Hmmm, you're 21, the daughter of a Chicago water-works man, who, in a great American success story, produced two Princeton kids who went on to remarkable careers (Michelle's brother is the coach of the Brown University basketball team.) You get to Princeton and somehow amidst the eating clubs like Tiger and Ivy and the like, you don't feel totally at home. I'm shocked.

The left hasn't pilloried Cindy McCain in the same way, but there's a lot of whispering. She's plastic. She's a crazy heiress--and worse. But here is what we know: She's worked her tail off to help poor kids around the world, adopting one herself. She came back from a prescription-drug addiction and a stroke that sapped her faculties of speech. She's by all accounts a devoted mother to her own kids, those from McCain's previous marriage.

In a world where the spouse is fair game, the spouse becomes an object of vilification, unhinged from any reality. None of this is meant to deify the woman who will be first lady, but they're points worth considering on their own.

Get a daily fix of how politicians, business leaders, and others in the news are faring with the Portfolio.com Capital Index.