Monday open thread: Remaking what a First Lady does

You know the old saying: Behind every great man, there's a great woman doing a lot of the work. That's been never more true than when considering the role of the First Lady in American politics. American history is replete with First Ladies, some great, some middling, some forgettable.

Before, say, the 1980s, it was not even considered controversial that the president's wife would continue to do as they had done for decades: devoting themselves exclusively to promoting their husbands' work. A First Lady had no role outside of that of helpmeet to her chief executive husband. That was no different than the history of politics for most of our time as a settled species.

Then with Hillary Clinton, you got something you didn't expect: A woman married to the president who had had a brilliant career of her own before her husband was elected to the land's highest office. We saw this again with Michelle Obama. Even Laura Bush had had a solid career as a librarian. [Insert heart emoji here.] People began to ask why the role of the First Lady should be limited to basically volunteer work in her husband's administration. Perhaps a First Lady should be more than an adjunct to her spouse.

Well, we're about to see how that works out beginning this month:

Starting the week of Labor Day, Biden will be spending every Tuesday and Thursday for 13 weeks on the Alexandria campus of Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), according to a class schedule available to students. When she taught remotely last semester, she had a similar schedule and blocked off most of her day — 8 hours, from early morning until after 4 p.m., for two three-hour lectures per day and a lunch break in between — to concentrate on teaching. She’ll even have office hours, just like last semester. But this time around, instead of talking into a computer, she’ll be commuting to work from the White House by motorcade, will be teaching in a mask and will have a phalanx of Secret Service agents with her.

As the article says, she taught classes the previous semester. But that was done in a remote environment, due to COVID restrictions. We're about to see Dr. Biden punch a clock and go into work twice a week for three months. Needless to say, this is something this country has never seen.

As impactful as the tenures of Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama were, this is the first wife of a president insisting that her professional life doesn't end once she becomes First Lady. This is shattering a sort of glass ceiling: the idea that a First Lady can maintain autonomy and be something in addition to the person at the side of her husband.

Good luck, Dr. Biden. You're one in a long line of Democratic women breaking molds.