Drafted into the Mommy Wars
First Lady Michelle Obama weighed in with a tweet: "Every mother works hard, and every woman deserves to be respected."
Rosen's one-liner, by contrast, pinched the same mommy-war nerve that Hillary Rodham Clinton sparked in her remark during the 1992 campaign that instead of working as a lawyer, she "could have stayed home and baked cookies." Them's fightin' words --and not just in Sarah Palin Land.
It is always hazardous to talk about an opponent's relatives, Rosen surely knows, unless the opponent has made them an issue. Romney did that when he began to refer to his wife, whose ease with crowds makes up for many of her husband's weaknesses, as his advisor on women's concerns.
Rosen's point, which she unfortunately stepped on, was a valid one to make. Ann Romney undoubtedly worked hard at being a mother, and her children appear to be excellent examples of her wise parenting. However, her experience is far from typical of the pressures most mothers face, whether they work outside the home or not.
The issues of women's health, equal pay, education, day care and other concerns that have won favorable support for Democrats call for a better connection by Mitt Romney to the concerns of women who don't have "two Cadillacs," as Mitt once reported about his own wife.
Most American women don't have the choices that Ann Romney could make in deciding whether to work outside of her home or stay home with her kids. That's not a knock on her. It's a description of the challenges that her husband and President Obama face in connecting with the lives and problems of American women. They make up more than half of the electorate. They need to be heard.
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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage(at)tribune.com.
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