It was inauguration day, and, let’s be honest, there were few eyes on Doug Emhoff.
The former entertainment advocate was there to support his wife, Kamala Harris, the first woman, the first black American, and the first South Asian American to become vice president of the United States. He was there to celebrate the inauguration of President Joe Biden, the first president not to be Donald Trump in four very long years. He was there with bodies from the Obamas to the first poet Amanda Gorman, and she and Harris ‘mixed family, including his daughter Ella Emhoff in sparkling Miu Miu tweets and adorable granddaughters Amara and Leela Ajagu, who wore matching leopard coats in’ a tribute to Harris and her sister Maya.
Emhoff was wearing an overcoat and a gray suit. Ralph Lauren, if you were wondering.
It’s good if you were not. Emhoff made it clear that he is comfortable being a supportive player; his Twitter in recent days has been full of sweet exclamations to Harris, making Emhoff the countless subject “Woman old” jokes (although the meme originated to describe men trying to gain fame by talking about their wives, it evolved to include guys who, like Emhoff, just like a lot of their wives).
The day before the inauguration, Emhoff wrote to GQ about the experience of joining the Biden-Harris campaign: “I almost overnight changed from a lawyer to a member of a team fighting for justice and trying to turn the page. chapter in the history of our country. ”
But he should have known this day could come from the moment he met the woman who is now his wife. After all, on their first date, Harris was already California’s attorney general and widely regarded as a rising star in the Democratic Party. It is indeed a kind of political marriage that Americans have not seen before, at least at this level of government.
This is an example of ‘professionals who came together later in life and are there to support each other’, Farida Jalalzai, a professor of political science studying women leaders, told Vox.
For Emhoff, it’s an investigation into former second ladies to find out how he should approach his role. And for America, it’s going to mean seeing a professionally successful white man step back from his career during his years of service to help his wife achieve her goals – and, at least according to his recent statements, to dedicate himself to public service. . Doug Emhoff is not currently the center of attention, and in a way it is important as well.
When they met, Harris was already a powerful politician.
Emhoff and Harris first met in 2013, on a blind date through a mutual friend. Harris has served as attorney general for two years, after spending six years as a San Francisco district attorney. She was already well-known on the national scene, discussed as a possible replacement for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and praised then-President Barack Obama (who drew criticism for calling her ‘the most beautiful attorney general’).
Emhoff was successful in his own right, a partner at the law firm DLA Piper. His previous clients included, in a funny way, the advertising agency behind the Taco Bell chihuahua, and, less amusingly, a club owner accused of sexual battery and a company that sold AK-47s. Divorced since 2009, he had two children, Cole and Ella, then in their teens.
He should have known from the beginning that a relationship with the Attorney General of his state would lead to a serious investigation of his personal and professional life. But according to his account, he was completely in it.
“I did not want it to end,” he told CNN about their first date. “And the next morning, for the next four months, including long weekends, I sent an email with my availability.”
The two were married in 2014 and were apparently very happy. “Doug and Kamala together are like almost vomit-cute and cute,” Cole Emhoff recently told the New York Times. “I’m like, ‘When is it going to expire? ”
They are also a different kind of political couple than the Obamas, Bushes or Clintons, who all married relatively young when the men involved were still building their political careers. (Donald and Melania Trump were married when she was 35 and he was a 59-year-old TV host.)
Norms are changing: Michelle and Barack Obama met when she was his mentor at a law firm, and she maintained her own very successful career for many years, and only stopped when her husband entered the White House. Hillary Clinton, of course, became a senator and secretary of state after her husband’s presidency. After all, there is an expectation that the family life of politicians should follow a kind of 1950s model – early marriages, 2.5 children, all of whom support the politician’s career. And usually that politician is dad.
Harris and Emhoff, on the other hand, were both about 50 when they were married. Harris had no children. They formed a mixed family with children who now call her ‘Momala’. Both spouses kept their respective surnames.
“This is a snapshot of America,” Jalalzai said. “We do not all look the same.”
Now Emhoff can be a new role model for men
And for Emhoff, it means he’s married to Harris to retire so his wife can shine. He said goodbye to DLA Piper in August to help with the campaign and presumably to avoid concerns about conflicts of interest. He left the firm in November and said he would teach at Georgetown Law School this spring. That would make two teachers in the executive branch, as Jill Biden said she would continue her teaching career as a first lady.
And while Jill Biden breaks down some barriers by keeping her job, while previous first ladies quit theirs, Emhoff also breaks new ground by scaling back his career for his wife.
In his GQ essay, he makes it clear that her campaign for the vice presidency was a team effort in which he wanted to play his part. “It quickly became clear that it was not just about my love for my wife, but also about my love for this country,” he writes. “Retiring from my career as an entertainment advocate was a decision we made together – it was something bigger than one of us.”
He reportedly threw himself into a campaign and became a major asset to his ability to adapt to different environments. “Of all people, Doug was born random for this,” Cole Emhoff told the Times.
And while Emhoff and Harris may be a team, she’s just become vice president – and he was graceful about his supportive status. It extends to jokes about his title. “Look where we are now,” he said in September. “It’s going to be a lot of work for President Biden, Vice President Harris, First Lady Jill Biden and whatever, Douglas Emhoff, that will be my title.”
Since announcing that he will use the title second lord, he has been rolling with the fact that ‘first second lord’ is not exactly rolling off his tongue. “You can call me Doug,” he reassures CBS Sunday Morning‘s Jane Pauley in a recent interview.
And rather than disregarding the contributions of second ladies who came before him in any way, he took time to learn about it, and he visited the Library of Congress to examine second spouses of the past.
Emhoff said he hopes his time in the role will be an example for his family and the country. He wants his children to ‘grow up in a world where it’s not news that a loving partner – of any gender – supports them in everything they do,’ he wrote at GQ. And he concluded: ‘I may be the first second lord, but I know I will not be the last.’
The marriage of Harris and Emhoff challenges not only the stereotype that a wife should play a supportive role for her husband, but the idea that one person in a marriage should dominate in careers, Jalalzai said. Of course, Harris remains in the spotlight, now as vice president, but her marriage appears to be a partnership of equals. This has also been true for the Obamas to a large extent, Jalalzai noted, but ‘the executive has not had such a healthy relationship for the past four years.
Only time will tell how well Emhoff inhabits his new position. If previous administrations have taught us anything, it is that we do not always know what is going on in the private lives of public figures. But for now, he and Harris set a new standard.
America is still struggling with the assumption that it enchants men to be with powerful women – even the jokes about Bill Clinton possibly becoming ‘first man’ in 2016 are proof of this fact. Emhoff, if nothing else, shows the whole country what it’s like to be a man who’s on a date with a female attorney general and, far from being afraid, sends her his calendar for the next four months. . If he defines the role of second lord, he starts well.