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On Inauguration Day, Melania Trump echoed Jackie Kennedy’s style in powder-blue suede gloves and a demure Ralph Lauren cashmere skirt suit that would not have been out of place in 1960. Aside from her obvious nod to Jackie, we know very little about how she will approach the difficult position of being first lady, a role that comes with no job description and endless expectations. When asked in 1999, when her husband was seeking to run as the Reform Party candidate, Melania said she would want to be a “very traditional” first lady, like Jackie or Betty Ford, so the outfit was not altogether surprising. Melania could also be channeling something less well-known about one of the most revered first ladies of all time — Jackie’s initial reluctance about becoming first lady, her fierce desire for her own personal privacy and the privacy of her children, and her refusal to allow tradition to dictate her life.
The public is hungry for images of a happy family living in the “people’s house.” Photos of a smiling couple and their children are politically advantageous, and the inherent struggle between the personal and the public goes back to the very earliest first ladies (Martha Washington once told her niece that she felt "more like a state prisoner than anything else"), but Melania, like Jackie, seems to have no desire to simply give the people what they want, especially if it means pushing her child into the spotlight. In an interview with Parenting magazine Melania said, “I am a full-time mom; that is my first job. The most important job ever.” It is not far from Jackie’s declaration: “If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.” For months, in 1963, a photographer from Look magazine requested photos of the beautiful Kennedy children, but every time, Jackie resisted. President John F. Kennedy told his press secretary Pierre Salinger, “Now, you tell Look magazine that I’ll reconsider it, and we’ll reconsider it, and why don’t you ask me the next time Mrs. Kennedy goes out of town?” It wasn’t long until Jackie took their daughter Caroline on a trip and the president seized the opportunity. He told Salinger to summon the photographer, and within 10 minutes, the photographer was there snapping the iconic photos of John Kennedy Jr. poking his head out from under the president’s desk in the Oval Office. When Jackie found out, according to JFK’s assistant White House press secretary Christine Camp, “all hell broke loose.” It is a scene that is not hard to imagine with the current president and first lady.
Despite the rumors that Melania and Barron would never move into the White House — a move that would demonstrate self-determination Jackie might have envied — her senior adviser Stephanie Winston Wolkoff said that’s not the case: "Mrs. Trump will be moving to D.C. and settling in to the White House at the end of the school year, splitting her time between New York and D.C. in the meantime,” she said in an email. “Mrs. Trump is honored to serve this country and is taking the role and responsibilities of First Lady very seriously.” And yet Melania’s decision not to uproot her life and her son’s, at least for now, echoes Jackie’s unwillingness to bend to public expectations.
Melania also seems to be in no rush to hire her staff, despite the questions as to why she hasn’t moved more quickly in that area. She has named Wolkoff, a former Vogue public relations manager best known for her work on the Met Gala, as a senior adviser, and this week, announced the appointment of Lindsay Reynolds as assistant to the president and chief of staff to the first lady. But that’s it. Even Jackie had her social secretary, the now legendary Letitia Baldrige, in place before the inauguration. Michelle Obama had announced her chief of staff, Jackie Norris, by that point too — Norris had been her husband’s Iowa state coordinator and the two women got to know each other on the campaign. Of course because Melania was not as involved on the campaign trail, it may be harder for her to find staff who understand politics, but who also understand her and her family’s needs. The former modeling agent, Paolo Zampolli, who introduced her to Donald Trump at a 1998 party at New York’s Kit Kat Club, said Melania is taking the long view. “The job of the first lady is not judged for the first 100 days. It’s judged on four to eight years.” He quickly added, “And I think it will be eight years.”
Regardless of when Melania officially moves to Washington and fills the roles in her office, she may borrow another of Jackie’s tricks and lean on the wife of her husband’s vice president, Karen Pence. Karen has experience in politics as the wife of a former governor and six-term congressman who is a true political partner to her husband. “Everything we do in public life, we do together. I can’t imagine it any other way,” Vice President Mike Pence has said. Karen Pence even had an office in the State Capitol where she kept regular business hours, according to former Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller. “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a first lady of Indiana have an office on the ground floor of the Capitol,” Zoeller said in an interview. “She was a player, not just as a consultant and an adviser to the governor, but she had an office right down the hall from mine.”
Karen Pence could play the role for Melania that Lady Bird Johnson often played for Jackie. When Jackie wanted to go horseback riding in Middleburg, Virginia, she often enlisted Lady Bird’s help. Lady Bird eagerly took on the photo ops and events that Jackie didn’t want. In fact, Lady Bird took Jackie’s place at the White House more than 50 times. Jackie even referred to her dereliction of her duties as PBOs, her own acronym for “the polite brush-off,” and Jackie’s staff was so grateful to Lady Bird that they nicknamed her “Saint Bird” because she so often filled in at the last minute and without complaint. It remains to be seen if Karen Pence will do the same but it is certainly a possibility. And Melania can also enlist the help of her stepdaughter, Ivanka Trump, who has moved her family to Washington. Though Ivanka has called speculation that she would fill in as first lady “inappropriate,” images of her accompanying the president to Dover this week to receive the remains of a Navy Seal killed in action — a somber duty usually reserved for the first lady — shows just how unapologetic Melania seems to be about the expectations set before her.
A recent Gallup poll found that Melania’s approval rating is just 37, but there’s certainly still hope for her to find her place in the White House. Jackie surely did. Long before President Kennedy traveled to Paris with his wife and famously said, "I do not think it altogether inappropriate to introduce myself ... I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris,” Jackie felt out of place in his world. During the 1960 campaign, she said she considered herself “the worst liability” to her husband because she was too rich (she went to Vassar and the Sorbonne, and her sister Lee’s 1959 marriage to Polish Prince Stanislas Radziwill didn’t help) and too shy, and she was often pregnant during the height of his campaigns. She even apologized to JFK before he became president and told him, “I’m sorry for you that I’m such a dud.” But when her husband asked her to stop wearing head scarfs because she looked too much like a celebrity, she stood her ground. She refused to change her style and soon millions of American women were copying her. It remains to be seen with our current first lady whether her willful approach will help her or hurt her.
Kate Andersen Brower is the author of First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies and The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House.
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