ACCORDING to Victor Davis Hanson at National Review Online, Hilary Rosen’s recent criticism of Ann Romney for being a mother who does not work was improper. Rosen’s comments were wrong, according to this supposed conservative, not because they were an attack on the institution of the family, but because wives of presidential candidates should not be judged unless they put forth a specific political platform of their own.

He writes:

In other words, whether first ladies or would-be first ladies are or are not legitimate political targets depends entirely on their own political choices — not the fact per se of their marriages to presidents or presidential candidates. Some are more adroit politically or more willing to sound off on political matters; some are more valuable if they become nonpartisan national icons. Often presidential handlers help make the choice of how best to maximize an asset or to minimize a liability.

Those first ladies who like politics and play an active role should expect to be both praised and hammered by the political classes and the media; those who do not, should not be.

The culture war has entirely escaped Hanson’s notice. That there is a whole body of laws, regulations and attitudes based on the notion that non-employed mothers such as Ann Romney should not exist or be given any form of encouragement has escaped his notice. To him, Ann Romney and Martha Washington are simply private people who have nothing to do with politics unless they make an explicitly political speech.

But then aren’t most of  us private people who have nothing to do with politics?

His point that First Ladies should not be judged as wives and mothers is a bizarre thing for a conservative to say and, at any rate, it is an idea that is entirely impossible to realize without radically altering human nature. I suppose he would say that if a president had a live-in girlfriend who had had affairs with rock stars (Gee, that sounds like Carla Bruni, Nicolas Sarkozy’s third wife), she should not be praised or criticized for her personal choices as long as she was not advancing her own political views.

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