Peer review told me using quotation marks for phrases in writing. Here is an example http://www.peggynoonan.com/
The historian Michael Beschloss, completing his decadelong work on his coming book, “Presidents of War,” took time to think aloud about the role’s essentials.
It is not a constitutional role and in a way the drafters, as they often did, left it to President Washington to figure out. “George made it George and Martha,” Mr. Beschloss said. “She was his friend, wife, partner, hostess.” She helped build the public stage. “They created at Mount Vernon a setting that was up to the standard of what a great leader’s home would be—a proper frame for George Washington. ” The first ladies who followed, Abigail Adams and Dolley Madison (Jefferson was a widower), “were conscious of being like Martha—the national mother.” Had Washington not had the wife he did, “history could have unreeled differently.”
A baseline necessity of the role: “Trying to ensure the happiness and tranquillity of the president.” One heroic example: Lady Bird Johnson. Lyndon B. Johnson suffered mood swings. He got “too excited and too upset about things that are a moderate political problem,” and too depressed about serious problems. “She was enormously sensitive to his moods. She pulled him up when he was down and back to earth when he was up.” When first spouses perform this role well, “it’s not only good for the president, it’s good for the republic.”
Next, “helping the president achieve in his chief-of-state role.” A first spouse must be able to do ceremony. Here Jackie Kennedy set the standard. “Many of the ceremonies that are now associated with the White House—formal welcoming events on the South Lawn, fife and drum, people in colonial costume—were begun by her.” Mrs. Kennedy “was sensitive to the importance of ceremony in the U.S. being seen as a great power. Why should the French do it better?”
Another part of the job: policy influencer. Mr. Beschloss cites Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosalynn Carter and Hillary Clinton as “great political partners.” For others the depth of their involvement becomes clear to historians with time. Nancy Reagan famously had an impact on her husband’s view of staff and appointees. History has come to understand Jackie Kennedy did too.
