Melania could have struck a diplomatic pose
One of the quainter features of the US presidential inauguration is the First Ladies’ tea. It is customary for the outgoing president’s wife to invite her successor for a “tea and tour” at the White House. The tradition dates back to Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower’s meeting in 1952. Admittedly, it’s not always the warmest or easiest occasion. Betty Ford was spitting mad when her husband,
Gerald, lost in 1976 to Jimmy Carter. Mrs Ford twice cancelled the tour she was giving to Rosalynn Carter and, when it happened, it was “a brief but cordial walk-through”. I bet. Cordial is English for rude but done with exquisite politeness.
The sting of defeat can make things hard. Yet all First Ladies of the modern era have managed to swallow their pride and be the bigger person for the sake of what Lady Bird Johnson called “the great quadrennial American pageant”.
Not Melania Trump. At the time of writing, the woman who ceases to be First Lady this very day has not extended the hand of friendship to Jill Biden.
One of history’s most conspicuous narcissists, the bratty boy Donald Trump never grew up to accept that other people exist, let alone matter.
I thought better of Melania who, aided by her Slovenian parents, seems to be trying to raise her son to be a different sort of man. In a final speech this week, she spoke of her responsibility as a mother to teach her child respect and the “values of kindness”.
If Michelle Obama could manage a superglued smile in 2017 as she welcomed the Trumps to the White House – a situation she must have found as congenial as a Klansmen’s klambake – there is no reason why a supermodel could not strike a pose of civility for the sake of a peaceful transition of power.
Taking Michelle on her tour of the White House eight years earlier, Laura Bush headed straight for the bedrooms overlooking the Rose Garden, which she thought would work best for the Obamas’ young daughters. Political opposites, the two women became firm allies through love of family. The hand that rocks the cradle can steady the world.
A viciously divided America needs that common ground of humanity more than ever today. What a shame that the most beautiful First Lady to hold that title leaves behind such an ugly legacy.