The perfect first family. Damnit. Salon

Quoted via Salon:

Are the Obamas creating a nationwide inferiority complex? An article in the Times Styles section marveled over the pair’s recent “date night” in New York, where they ate at a restaurant and took in a Broadway play. "How do they make the time?" a reader might ask. There are children to raise, a mother-in-law to house, a puppy to walk and, oh, a superpower to run. Author Jan Hoffman assesses the nation’s “romance envy” and imagines slighted wives glaring and elbowing at the breakfast table and henpecked husbands feeling “betrayed by the commander in chief.” Meanwhile Sean Gregory, in an article in Time titled “Obamas, Stop Ruining My Marriage,” attempts to console such anxious couples: “But in the relationship department,” Gregory writes, “no one should ever wonder why they’re not meeting a standard set by the Obamas.”

It’s true that the Obamas appear to be an intimidatingly functional pair, with their constant affectionate winking at each other, their enlightened, considerate “Michelle time” and their adorable, well-behaved daughters – the legacy of the Obamas' studied, reasonable parenting – who perform “first chores” and are always, without exception, in bed by 8. In the White House, we haven’t seen many such ideal models of marriage and family, but rather numerous examples of blazing dysfunction. Think of the retrograde Reagan marriage (he called her “mommy”), or the florid infidelities of Bill Clinton. As for the first children, they provide a virtual parade of maladjustment: the sullen, tomboyish Amy Carter; the rebellious, disaffected Reagan kids; the hard-partying Bush twins, and poor Chelsea, who often seemed a sort of first prop. Not since JFK was in the White House has there been a political marriage Americans have envied to this extent, a first family they might actually like to emulate. more