In 2012, President Obama said he didn’t have a lot of patience for commentary about the spouses of political candidates.

During the interview, the president said he knew how hard mothers work and that pundits should limit their focus to candidates, not “civilians” in their family.

Obama was addressing controversial comments made by a Democratic strategist about Ann Romney, the wife of his Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney. Hillary Rosen, a political consultant and pundit, had criticized Ann Romney for being a trusted adviser of the senator even though “never working a day in her life.”

Rosen apologized to Ann Romney a few hours later, stating her words were “poorly chosen.”

In a separate interview, then-Vice President Joe Biden called Rosen’s comments “outrageous.” He said that his daughter has a master’s degree, is a social worker and is getting married but that no one should question her if she says, “I’m staying home and raising my kids.”

Once upon a time, members of both political parties had an informal agreement that the minor children of politicians, particularly presidents, were also off limits.

But today’s new wave of ramped-up personal attacks by liberals against first lady Melania Trump and son Barron are becoming more frequent.

Last week, during the Democratically controlled House Judiciary Committee’s first impeachment hearing, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat, drew a parallel between President Trump and a monarch and asked Pamela Karlan, one of four legal experts called to testify on the constitutional grounds for presidential impeachment, for her opinion.

Karlan, a highly partisan constitutional law professor at Stanford Law School who has given money to a number of prominent Democrats, said that the president can name his son Barron but he can’t make him a baron. Democrats in the hearing room snickered but first lady Melania Trump was not amused.

“A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics,” the first lady tweeted. “Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it.”

Karlan tried to diffuse the criticism with an apology, but made sure she blamed the president “for the things that he’s done that’s wrong.”

Any conservatives and Trump allies were incensed.

“Only in the minds of crazed liberals is it funny to drag a 13-year-old child into the impeachment nonsense,” Kayleigh McEnany, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement. “Pamela Karlan thought she was being clever and going for laughs, but she instead reinforced for all Americans that Democrats have no boundaries when it comes to their hatred of everything related to President Trump.

“Hunter Biden is supposedly off-limits according to liberals, but a 13-year-old boy is fair game. Disgusting.”

On a more bizarre note regarding the first lady, Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse suggested that Melania Trump may have been sending “messages” with her fashion choices. In her upcoming unauthorized biography “Free, Melania,” Hesse acknowledged that she relied largely upon other people’s accounts as well as speculation.

Hesse said she’s wondered whether Melania Trump is a genius, an idiot or “why I wonder about her at all.”

The writer need not worry about Melania. The first lady is fluent in five languages, has a savvy business sense and, being a former model, is a great beauty with impeccable taste.

So why don’t we see Melania on any magazine covers?

Michelle Obama made the cover of Vogue magazine three times and Hillary Clinton not only made the cover during her first lady days but she also received the magazine’s first and only political endorsement when she ran against Trump in 2016.

When it comes to dealing with the first family, the media biases are obvious. Even actor James Woods realizes there’s a double standard and tweeted that if the Trumps were Democrats, “Melania would be on every cover of every chic women’s magazine in the world every month.”

Those in the media marketplace, whether in hard news or magazine fluff, still can’t get past the 2016 election … and the fact that someone as brilliant and photogenic as Melania has the last name of Trump.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com