The White House is seeking to draw a line under what to many seemed a bizarre verbal attack on the president’s daughters by insisting that the “first children” should be firmly off-limits to public criticism.  But the resignation on Monday of Elizabeth Lauten – the Republican communications staffer who sparked the furore by criticising Sasha and Malia Obama’s behavior during a Thanksgiving event – has also served as a reminder that children of the president are rarely free of some scrutiny.  The Obama daughters were slammed by Lauten on her Facebook page for allegedly dressing inappropriately and seeming to roll their eyes at their father during a White House turkey-pardoning ceremony, something the spokeswoman for Tennessee congressman Stephen Fincher claimed they had failed to take seriously enough but most other commentators felt was entirely deserving of some teenage “side-eye”.  But if Malia and Sasha, aged 16 and 13 respectively, need any reminders not to take mean-spirited jibes on Facebook too seriously, they may wish to revisit an open letter they received from George Bush’s daughters when the Obamas first moved into the White House in 2009.  “If you’re traveling with your parents over Halloween don’t let it stop you from doing what you would normally do. Dress up in some imaginative, elaborate costume,” advised the oddly prescient letter from Jenna and Barbara Bush.  The twins were a decade older than the Obama daughters when George Bush was elected but also experienced the glare of the White House during the presidency of their grandfather, George HW Bush, and were adamant the constant attention should not deter anyone from making the most of the experience.  “Go to anything and everything you possibly can: the Kennedy Center for theater, state dinners, Christmas parties (the White House staff party is our favorite!), museum openings, arrival ceremonies, and walks around the monuments,” added the Bush twins.  Despite declining an offer to pet the Thanksgiving turkey, the Obama children do still seem admirably game for most things required of them, posing for photographers in recent days during the receipt of the White House Christmas tree and at a Washington bookstore at the weekend while their father showed off his reading list during a holiday-themed buying spree.  In fact very little that the children do outside the White House with their parents present can ever be truly private due to the omnipresent pool reporters who follow the president around.  This reporter remembers vividly the awkward experience while on pool duty of following the president travel to watch Sasha perform a dance recital in the Washington suburbs one Saturday evening. Fortunately the journalists were kept in the carpark but the nervousness that any teenager would have had performing on stage in front of her parents cannot have been helped by the presence of a 20-vehicle secret service convoy and media vans outside.  Fortunately, so far, neither Obama daughter has experienced anything like the furore that followed reports of the Bush twins allegedly trying to buy a beer at the age of 19.  And the uncomfortable public scrutiny of their personal appearance is sadly also something experienced by both Chelsea Clinton and Margaret Truman, the only child of president Harry Truman and first lady Beth Truman.  The NFL player Darnell Dockett, who plays for the Arizona Cardinals, proved there may be more awkward social media encounters to come this week by posting an admiring but wildly inappropriate instagram caption of Malia on Tuesday that seemed to forget she is still only 16.  For now the backlash against Lauten’s criticism has been so intense that it may yet buy the Obama daughters a precious few months more of relative protection.  “I was taken aback that there was a political operative on Capitol Hill who did use the occasion of a Thanksgiving-themed event to criticise members of the first family,” admonished White House spokesman Josh Earnest at a press briefing on Monday.  “I think all of us – and I think when I say ‘all of us’ I mean me and all of the people in this room – have the occasion to speak publicly with some regularity, and I think there’s a reason that when we do that we choose our words very carefully and we try to be mindful of how those words and messages will be received.”  Asked if first children should, in general, remain “off-limits”, Earnest agreed: “I think a lot of people observe that a principle like that is I think pretty much common sense.”
Downfall of Elizabeth Lauten reflects unspoken rule that the children of presidents should not face untempered public scrutiny