In `` The Obamas , '' the new book causing a stir with its speculation about the extent of the first lady 's political influence , author Jodi Kantor recounts an anecdote : A young schoolgirl tells Michelle Obama that she hopes to someday become a president 's wife herself one day . `` Does n't pay well , '' Mrs. Obama wittily cracks . Truth be told , pay is the least of the drawbacks of being a first lady . The unelected , unaccountable and unofficial position has been challenging presidential spouses for more than two centuries now . I 've spent years researching and interviewing first ladies , but it was Hillary Clinton who best crystallized for me the essential reality of what it means to be first lady : `` Who I really am as a person is ultimately less important to the public than what they want me to represent as a persona . '' This was as true for mental health care reform advocate Rosalynn Carter in the 1970s as it was for the happy hostess Julia Grant a century earlier . Michelle Obama articulated her own frustration with this the other day , for seeming , she said , to have been cast as `` some kind of angry black woman . '' There is truth in Mrs. Obama 's observation ; her historic status as the first African-American first lady has made her at times a target for unfair stereotype and very ugly treatment . But casting the first lady as `` the other '' -- that is , outside the concept of the Anglo-Saxon as acceptably `` American '' -- has a long history . Almost a century ago , when the press widely reported that Edith Wilson was from the `` Red Bolling family , '' as the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Princess Pocahontas , even serious journalists ignored the fact that it meant only one of her 512 ninth-generation ancestors was a Native American . Instead , it prompted members of the public to send her Native American items like a beaded belt and write to government officials warning that it was illegal for the first lady to be served alcohol . As late as the 1960 election , when the Catholicism of Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy finally broke through the nation 's historic anti-papist sentiment , the campaign of his opponent , Richard Nixon , soft-pedaled his wife 's ethnic and religious background . Not only was Pat Nixon the daughter of a German immigrant mother , but also of an Irish Catholic father . Kennedy 's campaign may not have been able to conceal that Jacqueline Kennedy was Catholic too , but at least her `` Bouvier '' maiden name offered legitimate exotic cover for the larger reality of her background : She had only one French paternal great-grandparent , and her `` Lee of Virginia '' mother was not of the famous blue-blood clan , but rather had briefly lived in the Old Dominion for a college term and was as Irish as the Kennedys . Mamie Eisenhower ? Despite her widely distributed Swedish Christmas cookie recipe , even she never acknowledged her grandparents as immigrants from Sweden . At other points , societal judgments of the first ladies served well as veiled partisan attacks on their husbands . In an earlier time , the worldly , abolitionist Mary Lincoln of the wealthy Kentucky Todd clan would have been idealized as a Southern belle hostess . But married to the Union 's president during the Civil War , she was maliciously caricatured as a racist secretly loyal to the Confederacy . And William McKinley , realizing that disclosure of his wife Ida 's epilepsy would fix her with a label of `` insanity , '' avoided the ignorant presumption by asserting that she was an `` invalid , '' as evidenced by her use of a wheelchair or cane . The 1828 campaign editorials shaming Rachel Jackson as morally unfit because her first marriage had ended in divorce were central to the character attacks on her husband , Andrew Jackson . Nearly 100 years later , such judgment was still so strongly feared for its political liability that Florence Harding outright lied to the press with her claim of having been widowed by her first husband , not divorced . By 1976 , however , Betty Ford 's first marriage ending in divorce was not an issue , and neither was the earlier divorce of presidential candidate Ronald Reagan . As time moves on and American life and demographics evolve , so too will the perceptions of wives in the White House . However , hurtful remarks or hateful racism aimed at the current first lady may feel to Americans of many different backgrounds so shaming as to force a tipping point in history . One can hope it will finally help reduce the rhetoric of future generations about presidential spouses based on their origins , appearance -- even gender . Join CNN Opinion on Facebook and follow updates on Twitter .
Carl Anthony says a new book about the presidency points up tough job of first lady . He says job is societal norm ; Michelle Obama worries she 's seen as an ` ` angry black woman '' He says first ladies have long endured abuse , been used for political jabs at their spouses . Anthony : Hurtful books about wives may shame men into leaving first ladies alone .