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This week’s episode of The West Wing focuses on the tensions that can arise when a First Lady - particularly a highly educated and hard-working First Lady - expands her role beyond that of wife, mother, and hostess. Sound familiar? In the show, the First Lady, a medical doctor portrayed by Stockard Channing, becomes involved in two issues that have ramifications for the President’s agenda: child labor in third world countries, and the selection of a new Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

As the show opens, the White House Staff has been working hard to secure passage of a trade bill that is a cornerstone of the President’s political agenda. Because it appears that the trade bill will pass easily, with 14 or 15 votes to spare in the President’s favor, Toby, the White House Communications Director, is openly disdainful of meeting with certain members of Congress to woo their votes. (Josh, the Deputy Chief of Staff, is more interested in the meeting in order to build a relationship with these members, who could be helpful for future legislative issues.) The vote count - and Toby’s complacency - are threatened when the First Lady goes on national television to plead for action on child labor issues in third world countries. Her call to action prompts another member of Congress to decide to attach an amendment to the trade bill to protect against child labor. The controversial amendment threatens a loss of the bipartisan support for the bill, including possible defeat. The bill survives only when the President’s staff prevails upon the First Lady to convince the member of Congress to drop her amendment in exchange for visibility on the issue in the future.

At the same time, the long-time Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board suddenly dies of a heart attack. The President hesitates in naming his successor, apparently in part because the most likely candidate was a former boyfriend of the First Lady’s. When the White House Press Corps receives a tip - presumably from someone on the First Lady’s staff -- about the First Lady’s support for the candidate, it not only catches the White House press secretary off-guard, but also puts the President in the position of either having to reject his wife's preference, or to appear to be following her lead in filling such an important post.

The West Wing’s First Lady is very similar to our current First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has been an active participant in the West Wing and is -- for all practical purposes -- an unpaid senior White House staffer. In fact, Mrs. Clinton is the first First Lady to actually occupy office space in the West Wing. Until this administration, the First Lady’s office was located in the White House residence, and the First Lady’s small staff, whose primary purpose was organizing social events, was housed in the East Wing of the White House. Until the Clinton Administration, no First Lady had presented herself so publicly as a policy advisor to the President.

In this week’s West Wing, the First Lady’s involvement in public affairs illustrates the potential conflict inherent in the evolution of the role of First Lady from first hostess to visible policy maker, with a full staff that assists in the shaping and promotion of an agenda distinct from that of the President’s. As the show reflects, the results can be a White House that - intentionally or not - speaks with more than one voice.

The show also raises the issue of how the President and First Lady, and their staffs interact. The President himself is wary of "handling" the First Lady, preferring instead for his staff to do it. In one scene, Sam, the President’s Deputy Communications Director, intends to confront the First Lady’s chief of staff in person, but finds himself face to face with the First Lady instead. Momentarily taken aback, Sam nonetheless is very blunt with the First Lady - telling her in no uncertain terms that she must run her agenda through the President’s staff to avoid similar conflicts in the future. While it would not be completely unbelievable for a member of the President’s staff to speak so directly to a First Lady, it would certainly be a risk. The First Lady tends to have great influence, especially with the President. In this case, Sam’s risk paid off, and the First Lady acquiesced. One certainly wonders whether that would be the case in real life.

There was one glaring factual error in the show. At the end of the episode, the President and First Lady have an argument in the Oval Office, during which the President threatens to resign. He walks over to his desk and dramatically picks up the telephone and tells the First Lady that he is going to call the Speaker of the House and have Congress called into session so that he can carry out the resignation. Under our Constitution, the President of United States does not resign the office to the Speaker of the House or to anybody in Congress. The President of United States resigns his office to the Secretary of State - just as President Nixon resigned in a one-sentence letter to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Maybe the writers need a fact-checker. Or maybe the television President knew all this, and was just bluffing.

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