Melania Trump really does care, after all.
The president tweets his rogue declarations; his wife takes another route and issues official statements. On Monday, there was a huffing and puffing response from Melania Trump's spokeswoman to Michelle Obama's remark that Trump ignored Obama's offer to help navigate the role of first lady. Then Tuesday, there was the announcement that the (apparently unpopular) deputy national security adviser with whom the first lady had clashed no longer deserved "the honor" of serving in the White House.
Disseminating this sort of statement through a legitimate channel may seem preferable to early-morning thumb-tapping transmitted to the globe via iPhone. But is the first lady using her White House perch in a more professional manner than her husband - or just disguising personal grievances as professional?
Some have compared Melania Trump's involvement in a matter of state to the efforts of previous first ladies to push beyond the traditional hostessing role. Liberals on Tuesday invoked Hillary Clinton's health-care crusade to call conservatives two-faced: They criticized Clinton's foray into policymaking, and now they ignore Trump's much less defensible attempt to direct West Wing hiring and firing.
But that argument cuts in the other direction, too. If Democrats welcomed Clinton's so-called meddling as a sign of modernity having made its way to the White House, why are they knocking Trump for refusing to sit silent and pretty?
The answer, of course, is that Clinton's attempt to insert herself into policy rather than remain only adjacent to it, along with the less ambitious initiatives of first ladies before her, was actually about policy. By all accounts, that's not the case with Trump. She was upset about an argument she had with the deputy national security adviser over seating on her airplane to Africa, and she did something about it.
Trump's insistence on making the kerfuffle as public as possible, essentially cornering the White House into a firing, a PR crisis or both, does no favors to anyone who wants to see the role of first lady enter this century. By commandeering the platform that comes with her role to carry out a grudge, Trump makes her office look even less modern than when it was merely decorative. Though men certainly also launch power plays based on bad blood that have little to do with job performance, women will always receive more scrutiny. Trump plays right into the false belief that those of her sex will inevitably make the professional personal.
This is analogous to the clothes conundrum that has also defined Trump's first ladyship. Trump's team has complained that the press cares too much about her outfits. That might be a fair critique - if Trump herself were not sending very public messages through what her staff claims is too private a medium to pay attention to. By wearing an "I REALLY DON'T CARE, DO U?" jacket on the way to visit children separated from their parents at the border, or a colonial-style pith helmet in Kenya, Trump prods people to focus on fashion. And that only reinforces the tired notion she claims to reject: that a woman's wardrobe defines her.
Writing about a first lady will always be fraught; traps of sexism and stereotyping seem to lie at the end of every sentence. Melania Trump makes them only more difficult to avoid.
Molly Roberts | The Washington Post
Molly Roberts writes about technology and society for The Washington Post’s Opinions section.
