Initial observations: Al and Tipper Gore look depressed. George H.W. Bush would rather chat with Bill Clinton than with Jimmy Carter. Hillary‘s royal blue coat is a winner. Do I like Michelle Obama‘s chartreuse dress and jacket combo, with contrasting green gloves? I can’t decide. Malia and Sasha though, in their brightly colored little skirts and dress coats and perfectly folded scarves? To die for.

—Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.