It’s still true that with the Clintons, we get “two for the price of one,” but that’s the last boast Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton is likely to make these days as she criss-crosses America trying to make history.
Running on her own qualifications and record as a senator from New York, Mrs. Clinton now keeps plenty of daylight between herself and her controversial husband, who’s so far maintaining a low profile in her campaign.
When pressed about how she would use Bill’s experience in her own administration, Mrs. Clinton says the First Laddie, as her husband has suggested he be called, would make a “great global ambassador.”
So far in this political season, Bill Clinton is the best known and least interesting potential First Spouse in the ’08 race. As he struggles to play second fiddle to his wife, the rest of us are fascinated by a covey of smart, savvy and outspoken wives standing by their men – and occasionally outrunning them – on the stump.
Eleanor Roosevelt, Roselyn Carter and Betty Ford understood that raising their influential profile for the public good trumped playing with place cards any day of the week.
Elizabeth Edwards and Michelle Obama lately have been grabbing as many headlines as their husbands John and Barack, respectively. Emerging as the free radicals of our current body politic, both are poster-perfect for potential First Ladies who are professionally successful in their own right, and also are mothers of young children as well as their husbands’ most trusted advisors.
Mrs. Edwards and Mrs. Obama are both lawyers used to eloquently arguing their case; each also claims the right to speak publicly without first clearing her remarks with her husband or his campaign staff.
At a recent rally in her hometown of Chicago, Mrs. Obama bluntly asked the audience: “We’re still playing around with the question: Is he black enough? Stop that nonsense.”
She was responding to critics who’ve accused Obama – whose mother was white, whose father was Kenyan, and who was raised in Hawaii – of not fully understanding the African-American experience.
She added that such an allegation against her husband sent a confusing message to children.
Mrs. Edwards, who is living with incurable breast cancer, impulsively telephoned a television talk show earlier this summer to confront conservative pundit Ann Coulter about her frequent attacks on John Edwards. Mrs. Edwards said she was particularly outraged about Coulter’s denigration of the memory of their son Wade, who was killed in a car accident.
The four-minute exchange between Mrs. Edwards and Coulter proved that the candidate’s wife could give as good as she got, and prompted her to subsequently tell a reporter for The New York Times:
“When I express an opinion with vigor – and I do – I sometimes forget that they are looking at me as a spouse, as someone in an elevated position… But I like it when somebody expresses their view with clarity and force…”
“There’s a reason to talk to me separately,” she told the Times reporter. “You’re paying more attention to me (now), but I was always sitting there in the corner.”
Don’t look for many First Wives in this presidential race to stay in the corner. Some already have already come out swinging, not just on behalf of their husbands, but also for the right to be themselves, political correctness and protocol be damned. Others will raise their voices in their own style, in their own way.
The days of a silent spouse gazing adoringly up at her husband, but never revealing what's on her mind or in her heart, are over. Republican or Democrat, every declared candidate's wife in this current presidential race has a history of volunteerism and, in several cases, professional employment. Anybody who's ever sat on a church or school board, been affiliated with the Red Cross or Salvation Army, or run a rummage sale knows how to speak her mind.
It’s an unfair fact that we judge women differently than men – their clothes, their cleavage, whether they’re real blondes, if they do Botox, if they work outside the home, if they are community volunteers, how their children feel about them, how they feel about themselves.
We’ve never elected a First Lady, but because she’s automatically part of the package, we expect her to be nearly, if not quite, perfect; a traditional helpmate who’s simultaneously a contemporary partner, an outspoken advocate of important causes who never offends. We want her to be just like us, only better – and with more humility.
The world has enough information about the Clintons. What we want is to know more about the character and values of the men competing against each other to beat Hillary. We can do that by paying close attention to the women they married.
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