President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, are trapped in role model hell, what with her off-the-rack dresses, his new international humility, their intact African-American family, the rescue dog search and, of course, the vegetable garden.
And now Alex Lee would like them to add a clothesline.
The founder of Project Laundry List, an effort to get Americans to give up their clothes dryers and the energy it takes to run them, hopes the Obamas will hang out their laundry - not dirty, just like household linens - along with the rest of the country next Sunday on National Hanging Out Day.
"A picture of Sasha and Malia playing among the sheets blowing in the wind would touch the hearts of all Americans who have their own memories of wash hanging on the line," said Lee, of Concord, N.H.
"Even if they put their clothesline behind a fence, it would send a signal to other institutions that laundry can be done like this - restaurants, hospitals, hotels, universities."
Lee is hoping that an Obama clothesline would have the same impact on the country's consciousness as the Obama vegetable garden. Homeowners - and city officials - are planting vegetable gardens like mad this spring in places you never thought you'd see vegetables grow.
But hanging out the wash - as charming as it might be to see the Obama children frolic in the billowing sheets - carries a lot more social baggage than a victory garden does.
There are jurisdictions where hanging out laundry is not permitted at all, probably because it has a low-class reputation. And there is the objection to seeing our neighbor's undergarments on the line - if she doesn't happen to wear Victoria's Secret.
"Ten states are working on right-to-dry legislation," Lee said. "Colorado passed it, and the governor signed it. Maryland had two competing bills, and both failed."
And there are racial overtones to the suggestion that the African-American first lady hang out the wash from "The Big House," as it were. Lee has heard critics call it a demeaning reference to slavery.
"The Obamas of all people would sort of say, 'Hey, if this is the right thing to do, who cares what other people are thinking,' " said Lee. "Unfortunately, I think there are people around them that will not let this issue get in front of them."
Lee began Project Laundry List in 1995 while a student at Middlebury College in Vermont upon hearing environmentalist Dr. Helen Caldicott say, "If we all did things like hang out our clothes, we could shut down the nuclear industry."
