Top 5 First Ladies More Qualified to Be President than Hillary Clinton
by Aya Katz
Hillary Clinton is all set to become the first woman president of the United States. Her list of qualifications is long: attorney, Secretary of State, Senator — but seemingly the biggest reason she is even being considered at all is that she was the First Lady to President Bill Clinton. There are so many other, better qualified women (and men) today who will never have the opportunity to run for president, because they do not have the clout of the Clinton political machine behind them.
But was Hillary even that great of a First Lady? Did she stand up against injustice, or did she help to whitewash the misdeeds of her husband? For someone who wants to be the first woman president, Hillary has a long record of covering up abuses against women in the name of political expediency.
As First Ladies go, Hillary has not set a very good example. Here is a list of five First Ladies who would have made better presidents than Hillary Clinton.
1. Abigail Adams
Abigail Adams was one of our most intelligent, well-educated and knowledgeable First Ladies. She was the first Second Lady and the second First Lady of the United States, as her husband, John Adams was our first vice president and our second president. She is also the mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States. She was the first First Lady to occupy the White House.
Intelligent, articulate and a fluent writer, Abigail Adams advised her husband privately on those matters that she felt to be of importance to the nation. She spoke out against slavery and was an advocate of women’s rights. In a letter to her husband in 1776, she wrote:
[R]emember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.
Though Abigail Adams may have been a better writer than John Adams, she understood that her role as First Lady was to advise him in private, not to speak for him in public. It would never have occurred to her to take over the presidency, as Edith Wilson did when President Wilson fell ill, because Abigail Adams understood the Constitution and honored its provisions. It is equally certain that had her husband used his high office to abuse or harass women over whom he exercised power, Abigail Adams would not have condoned or excused this behavior. She understood her role as First Lady as being a supportive one, and her husband relied on her in matters of personal conscience.
If it had been possible at that time for Abigail Adams to have run for president, she would have done so on her own power and not because of her connection to John Adams. She understood the difference between the role of a first lady and the duties of a president.
2. Dolley Madison
Dolley Madison was our most down-to-earth, clever and courageous First Lady. An excellent hostess, she served in that role first under Thomas Jefferson, who was a widower while in office and hence had no First Lady of his own. While Dolley Madison was not nearly as well educated or intellectual as her husband, James Madison, she had a great deal more common sense and social acumen than he did, and President Madison relied on her discretion. It was Aaron Burr who had introduced Dolley to her future husband. Madison and Burr had gone to college together, and Dolley Payne Todd was a widow living in the same boarding house as Burr. Prior to meeting Dolley, James Madison had been a confirmed old bachelor. He was 43 years old when they married. She was 26.
During the War of 1812, when the British approached the city of Washington in August of 1814, James Madison and his military advisers fled the city first, leaving Dolley and her servants to preserve national treasures, such as silverware and paintings, from the approaching British, who then proceeded to sack and burn the Capitol and the White House.
If Dolley Madison had run for president, she would doubtlessly have been a better candidate than Hillary Clinton.
3. Sarah Polk
The wife of James K. Polk, the 11th president of the United States, Sarah Childress Polk assisted her husband with his speeches, gave him advice on policy matters and helped him with his campaigns.
While she took an interest in politics, and even stood up to Andrew Jackson in the matter of the Petticoat Affair prior to becoming first lady, Sarah Polk understood that her role as the president’s wife was that of a confidante, not a politician.
Sarah Polk outlived her husband by many decades. Though she lived in Tennessee, Mrs. Polk remained officially neutral throughout the Civil War, though she expressed the wish for the Union to be preserved, when she was visited in her home by Ulysses S. Grant.
Whatever criticism we may have against Sarah Polk, she would have made a better president than Hillary Clinton.
4. Abigail Fillmore
Abigail Fillmore’s first role in the life of her future husband was to serve as his teacher. Their lifelong love of books and knowledge was what drew them together.
Born Abigail Powers, the future First Lady was educated at home in her parent’s library, and she excelled to such an extent that she took the post of teacher at a new academy in 1819 when she was twenty years old. Her first pupil was nineteen-year-old Millard Fillmore. Their love of learning eventually blossomed into romance, although they were not married until he was 26 and she was 27.
When Millard Fillmore became the 13th president of the United States in 1850, unlike most First Ladies, Abigail Fillmore left the social duties to her daughter Abby, while she herself selected books for the White House library. She was more interested in the pursuit of knowledge than in being a social butterfly.
A well-educated woman, and the teacher of her own husband, Abigail Fillmore did not choose to intervene in the job of governing the nation in her husband’s place. But if she had run for president herself, she would have been more qualified than Hillary Clinton.
5. Edith Roosevelt
Although they had been childhood sweethearts, Edith Roosevelt became Theodore Roosevelt’s second wife in 1886, after the death of his first wife, Alice. They went on to have to have five children of their own, in addition to Roosevelt’s daughter Alice by his first marriage. When in 1901, Teddy Roosevelt became the 26th president of the United States, Edith Roosevelt found that the White House was not big enough for their large family. The Roosevelts secured permission and funding from Congress to extensively remodel the White House, and the West Wing, which separates the family quarters from the presidential offices, was their contribution.
An intelligent woman with powerful connections of her own, Edith Roosevelt helped her husband while he was president to learn about international events. She corresponded privately with Cecil Spring-Rice, a junior British ambassador who had been the best man at her wedding, and Teddy Roosevelt used information from this correspondence to negotiate an end to the Russo-Japanese War, which earned him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1906.
While Edith Roosevelt stayed in the background during her husband’s presidency and did not attempt to govern, she did have strong political opinions. Long after her husband had died, Edith took to the political stage in 1932 to campaign on behalf of Herbert Hoover — and against Franklin Delano Roosevelt! A proud Republican, Edith Roosevelt spoke on behalf of Herbert Hoover and free enterprise at Madison Square Garden.
If Edith Roosevelt had been called upon to run for the presidency, she would have been better qualified than Hillary Clinton.