Presidential politics: All in the family
Presidential candidates, 2016
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 Date: November 8, 2016 |
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February 16, 2016
Less than a week before the pivotal South Carolina Republican presidential primary, former President George W. Bush (R) appeared on Monday night at a large campaign rally in North Charleston to give a boost to his brother Jeb’s flagging campaign. It was the first time that the 43rd president waded into the 2016 race in such a high profile manner. CNN carried both Bush’s speeches, live.
Who better to vouch for a candidate than family member? They are, after all, the people who know you best. But it wasn’t always thus, that presidential relations took on public roles in campaigns.
We think of the dutiful wife at the side of her husband, but even this is a relatively new phenomenon. Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the most politically prominent First Ladies in American history eschewed the campaign limelight. According to the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, Mrs. Roosevelt’s political efforts on behalf of her husband were “done behind the scenes” and she did not stump for FDR in 1932 or 1936, “because first ladies did not accompany their husbands on the campaign trail.” She relented to requests from FDR’s political advisers and made some appearances at the end of the 1940 campaign for her husband.[1]
Perhaps the first great family “validator” to hit the presidential hustings was Jimmy Carter’s mother, Miss Lillian. In 1976, Carter was a little-known former one-term governor from Georgia and a central theme of his campaign in the first post-Watergate presidential election was that he was a leader who would restore trust in the White House. What better confirmation could a candidate have on that fundamental human dimension than mom? When she died in 1983, Miss Lillian’s obituary in The New York Times noted that she gave “hundreds of speeches” on behalf of her son in his successful quest for the presidency. And in the forward to a biography on his mother, Lillian Carter: A Compassionate Life, former President Carter wrote, “Mama became one of the Carter campaign’s most formidable public relations weapons.”
Over time, presidential spouses graduated from campaign accessory to asset. As the modern presidential nominating process became a grueling exercise of organizing supporters in the early caucus and primary states, spouses became a valuable campaign tool. Since the candidate couldn’t appear at every small town in Iowa and New Hampshire, the candidate’s spouse was often a campaign’s most valuable surrogate.
In the 1992 presidential election, the candidate’s spouse assumed a higher function in Bill Clinton’s campaign. Clinton regularly noted that when people supported him, they were getting “two-for-one,” because his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, a high-powered attorney and policy advocate in her own right, would be at his side advising him in the White House. Mrs. Clinton also assumed the very public role of defending her husband against allegations of infidelity when she famously appeared with him in a high-profile interview on the CBS News program 60 Minutes right after the 1992 Super Bowl, which also aired on CBS. Roughly 34 million viewers tuned in to watch the Clintons passionately defend their marriage. One of the emotional high points of the interview came when Hillary Clinton declared, “You know, I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by man like Tammy Wynette. I’m sitting here because I love him, and I respect him, and I honor what he’s been through and what we’ve been through together.”
The message from the future First Lady was powerful and clear: If I can forgive him, you can too.
Four years later, another high-powered spouse would vouch for her husband in a slightly different way. At the 1996 Republican National Convention, Elizabeth Dole, a former Federal Trade Commissioner and Secretary of Transportation, took center stage the night before her husband, Bob Dole, would formally accept his party’s presidential nomination. A number of tributes that evening were paid to the World War II veteran who heroically overcame crippling battlefield wounds to serve his country in Congress and become Senate Majority Leader, but none was more effective than Liddy Dole’s.
In a break with tradition, she walked down from podium to address delegates on the floor of the convention. Her husband’s life story was the main theme at the convention that night, but Mrs. Dole’s presentation evoked the human side of the powerful and sometimes distant politician. “I think Bob’s sensitivity to the problems of others certainly was deepened as well because he’s been there, he’s been through adversity, he’s known pain and suffering,” said Dole. Her performance was a ten-strike and likened to those of daytime television talk show impresario Oprah Winfrey.
By 2000, prime-time convention speaking slots for the nominee’s spouse who was not already First Lady became regularized at conventions. Both Laura Bush and Tipper Gore gave highly effective speeches on behalf their husbands. In 2008, the spousal roles were reversed and former President Bill Clinton became Hillary Clinton’s most valuable surrogate. On the opening night of the 2012 Republican Convention, Ann Romney, a woman who tended to shy away from the campaign spotlight, nonetheless delivered a speech for her husband and GOP nominee Mitt Romney that many observers said “stole the show.”[2] Indeed, when political insiders were asked to compare the impact of her remarks to those of the convention keynoter, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Romney won in a landslide.[3]
Today we have the first brother of a former president seeking the Oval Office, setting the stage for George W’s appearance last night in South Carolina on behalf of the Jeb Bush campaign. Just a couple of days earlier—in what couldn’t have been anticipated by the Bush campaign—the elder brother became a focal point in a GOP presidential debate when Donald Trump savaged the former president for erring in the invasion of Iraq and not anticipating the 9-11 terrorist attack.
Ironically, Trump's attack on Saturday night probably elevated Monday’s remarks by the former president: It established a slightly different narrative for the brotherly intervention. Instead of being viewed as simply a last ditch attempt to bail out his brother's struggling candidacy, it also became a story about the 43rd president, his popularity in the GOP, Trump’s attack, and how Jeb had defended his brother and his family in the debate.
It remains to be seen whether George W’s validation of brother Jeb marks a turning point in the younger sibling’s presidential fortunes. But in assessing the latest Bush-Trump conflict, New York Times reporters Ashley Parker and Maggie Haberman wrote it was “one of the most vivid and powerful confrontations in the presidential primary campaign so far.”[4] That story line is probably one welcomed at the Bush campaign headquarters.
James A. Barnes is a senior writer for Ballotpedia and co-author of the 2016 edition of the Almanac of American Politics. He is a member of the CNN Decision Desk and will be helping to project the Democratic and Republican winners throughout the election cycle.
See also
- Presidential election in South Carolina, 2016
- Presidential election in New Hampshire, 2016
- Presidential Nominating Index: Clinton rules, but Sanders also rising
- Presidential Nominating Index: GOP elites tilt to Trump
- Presidential candidates, 2016
- Presidential debates (2015-2016)
- Presidential election, 2016/Polls
- 2016 presidential candidate ratings and scorecards
- Presidential election, 2016/Straw polls
- ↑ GWU, "Question: How did Eleanor Roosevelt contribute to FDR's four presidential campaigns?" accessed February 16, 2016
- ↑ CNN, "Ann Romney stole the show on opening night," August 29, 2012
- ↑ Battleground Watch, "Survey of Insiders Say Ann Romney Bested Christ Christie," accessed February 16, 2016
- ↑ The New York Times, "Bush Brothers Swipe at Donald Trump," February 15, 2016
