Today first lady Michelle Obama embarked on her first foreign trip without her husband in tow, and even before her scheduled arrival in Mexico, the junket has yielded a surprising development — an unannounced stopover in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The side trip comes on the heels of the three-month anniversary of the devastating earthquake that claimed the lives of thousands of Haitians and displaced many more from their homes.
Still, critics of the Obama White House have brushed aside the benign-seeming aims of the junket — to promote “youth engagement” across the U.S.-Mexico border with Mexico‘s first lady, Margarita Zavala de Calderon — to deride Mrs. Obama’s political priorities. In one of the most prominent of several such attacks, conservative blogger Michelle Malkin singled out Michelle Obama’s supposed support for “illegal alien shamnesty” and added that it’s “too bad she has no interest in showing ‘engagement’ with American families plagued with far bigger problems than obesity.”
The first lady, who is traveling with Dr. Jill Biden, will stay on in Mexico City for two days.
And while the trip is noteworthy as Michelle Obama’s first goodwill foray abroad, it is by no means exceptional — most modern first ladies have traveled to foreign countries and touted their pet agendas. Hillary Clinton, for example, went to Africa, China, Russia, Ireland and the Balkans during the 1990s, promoting greater global recognition of women’s rights and hailing economic and political progress in the developing world. And Laura Bush traveled extensively — visiting some 76 countries, stressing public awareness of HIV/AIDS and malaria, as well as women’s issues and literacy.
Commentators outside the more partisan reaches of the blogosphere say that Michelle Obama is well positioned to continue in this tradition. Bonnie Angelo, author of “First Families: The Impact of the White House on Their Lives,” told Yahoo! News that the present first lady “is, in my view, splendidly qualified to do this sort of thing.”
“Many first ladies have been reluctant to step out of nontraditional roles, and they were very careful to avoid controversy,” Angelo observed, adding that Michelle Obama has the potential to “really, really move the role of first lady forward.”
But it can also be a delicate balancing act for first ladies making their mark on the world stage. Hillary Clinton sparked a controversy during one of her visits to China by denouncing the country’s poor record on women’s rights. And during a visit to Prague, Laura Bush condemned the treatment of women in some predominantly Muslim countries in an address on Radio Free Europe that was broadcast to 28 countries.
Even when they aren’t traveling alone, first ladies, as Robin Givhan notes in the Washington Post, “have a long history of ruffling feathers” on foreign trips. Angelo says that when Jackie Kennedy traveled with her husband to Mexico in 1962, some Mexican commenators were put off by what they felt was the first lady’s regal bearing. Rosalynn Carter, Pat Nixon and Eleanor Roosevelt all drew fire for traveling to dangerous places and speaking a little too freely at times. Michelle Obama has already had her induction into this particular trial by fire, breaking royal protocol and hugging the queen during a trip to England.
There seems little risk of such a breach on this trip — the first lady will be meeting mostly with Mexican youths, who presumably won’t bristle at a hug or two. Still, she’d be well advised not to try to hug Michelle Malkin on her stateside return.
