With a nation divided, an acrimonious presidential rematch underway between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump, Biden testing positive for COVID-19, and last weekend’s attempted assassination on Trump’s life, American politics is drawing extra attention. With the Republican National Convention wrapping up Thursday night in Milwaukee and the Democratic National Convention slated to start Aug. 19 in Chicago, voters are tuning in to see what the candidates — and their partners — have to say.
Conventions provide the chance for spouses to humanize candidates, said Deborah Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “We’ve seen these roles evolve as women’s roles have changed. Hillary Clinton was clearly on the front line of that [in 1996] and took some real heat for saying she ‘could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession,'” said Walsh.
Democrats first staged a convention in 1832, and Republicans followed in 1856, but first ladies didn’t play a role until 1912, when President William Howard Taft’s wife “Nellie” was said to be the first first lady to attend a political convention. In 1940, Eleanor Roosevelt’s speech at the DNC — a historic moment for a first lady — was a pivotal point in making first ladies’ voices heard. Seeking a third term at that time, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had opted to skip the convention, b.