Wickham: GOP aide's sneak attack on Obama daughters

Elizabeth Lauten's resignation doesn't surprise me. As a Republican Party communications specialist, she was more of a bull in a China shop than an artful word merchant. Her undoing was her clumsy attempt to strike a blow against the president through a social media attack on his teenage daughters.

In a Thanksgiving Day Facebook posting, Lauten slammed the first daughters — Sasha, 13, and Malia, 16 — for the way they dressed and behaved during a televised ceremony in which Obama pardoned the official White House turkey.

In the best tradition of the GOP's long-running personal assault on the nation's first black president, Lauten — the communications director for Rep. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn. — turned the children's appearance at the ceremony into an opportunity to bash Obama. What she wrote, understandably, caused a lot of people to demand that Fincher fire Lauten.

"Dear Sasha and Malia," she posted, "I get you're both in those awful teen years, but you're a part of the first family, try showing a little class. At least respect the part you play. Then again your mother and father don't respect their positions very much, or the nation for that matter, so I'm guessing you're coming up a little short in the 'good role model' department."

Then, in an ever cheaper shot, Lauten offered this advice to the Obama children: "Rise to the occasion. Act like being in the White House matters to you. Dress like you deserve respect, not a spot at a bar."

Attacks on the children of presidents are nothing new. Margaret Truman, then the adult daughter of President Harry Truman, was attacked for the food choices she made at restaurants and the clothes she wore in public. President George W. Bush's twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, became the focus of some criticism when they were 19 and charged with violating underage drinking laws in Texas. But the attack on the Obama daughters – both minors – was pernicious and undoubtedly political.

Posting that diatribe must have been an exhilarating moment for Lauten, who once held the lofty post of media director for the Republican National Committee. In the GOP's incessant war of words with Obama, Lauten probably thought she had scored a successful sneak attack on the president while his defensive shields were lowered — and his children exposed — for a non-partisan holiday tradition.

For that bad act against the family of Obama, a Democrat for whom many in the Republican Party struggle to contain their personal dislike, I think Lauten eventually will be treated as a GOP war hero and rewarded for her honorable and faithful service to her party's efforts to derail Obama's presidency.

For now, though, she has to fall on her sword.

As it turned out, the half-hearted apology she offered up hours after her Scud-missile-Facebook attack on Obama's daughters didn't quiet the pressures for her dismissal. "After many hours of prayer, talking to my parents, and re-reading my words online I can see more clearly just how hurtful my words were," Lauten wrote.

Then, in what sounded more like a verbal dance than real contrition for her mean-spirited words, Lauten added: "I'd like to apologize to all of those who I have hurt." Anyone not hurt by her Facebook attack on the president's children, she seemed to infer, can continue to celebrate the damage done by them.

Lauten is not a GOP loose cannon. She's someone the Republican Party's national organization and a Republican congressman have used as a spokesman. Word usage, for her, is the coin of the realm. It's hard to imagine that what she wrote wasn't a well-thought-out strike at Obama's daughters and that the real purpose was to inflict damage on the president.

So don't expect Republicans to cut their ties with Lauten. She's a good soldier in the war of attrition they're waging against Obama.

You can bet she'll be defended by many GOP activists. And at the proper time, Lauten likely will be given her party's equivalent of a Good Conduct Medal for her Thanksgiving Day sneak attack on the president's children.

DeWayne Wickham, dean of Morgan State University's School of Global Journalism and Communication, writes on Tuesdays for USA TODAY.