Author researches first ladies’ importance to White House

First ladies are an important asset to modern White House communications strategies, Lauren Wright told a National Press Club Book Rap May 12, as she promoted her new book, "Presidential Spouses and White House Communications Strategy Today."

“There is no doubt that presidential spouses are media superstars,” Wright said, noting that Michelle Obama’s 2012 convention speech had more views than any of the speeches at the Republican National Convention.

The book is an academic, political-science study so Wright only went back as far 1992, when all of the speeches made by the first ladies started to be put on the White House website. “It was really important to me that I had a consistent record and that only exists from 1992,” she said.

Wright undertook a “hard empirical approach” to a subject that previously had been considered “fluff” by political scientists, she said.

“The powers of the president’s spouses are informal, but they are formidable,” Wright said. “First ladies have more access to the president than any single White House staff member or government official.”

Wright continually referred to the first ladies she studied – Hillary Rodham Clinton, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama – as presidential spouses. As spouses, these women can vouch for the character of their husbands, she said.

“The private relationship that spouses have with the president actually makes them more effective public messengers because when the president’s spouse says, ‘this matters to the president’, ‘the president cares about this’ or ‘the president cares about you’ that message comes off more authentically, more genuinely, more honestly than the same message coming from a Capitol Hill colleague or even the president himself,” Wright said.

Former President Bill Clinton, who could become the first presidential spouse to not be the first lady, fulfills the role on the campaign trail of making his wife seem more authentic, as Hillary, tries for the second time to follow her husband to the Oval Office, Wright said.