Focusing on candidate wives

This seems to be the weekend for shining a focus on candidates' wives with a piece on Jeri Thompson in the Washington Post, a rehash of the Vanity Fair piece on Judith Guiliani in the New York Times, and a Chicago Sun Times series on Michelle Obama.

First of all, we're electing the candidates, not their spouses. Face it, would Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton have been elected twice if the vote had been focused on their spouses? As Peggy Noonan wrote on Friday,

It is also true the press is paying attention to prospective first ladies because in an age in which presidents are always in your face, first ladies are often in your face. It actually matters if people like them, and it can hurt, on the margins, if they don't. And these days wins are marginal.

The challenge for the spouses of modern candidates is that what is expected of women in general has changed. This is reflected in the first lady's role, and the role of the candidate's spouse.

She recommends that prospective First Ladies model themselves on Laura Bush.

While I certainly respect Laura Bush and do regard her as a model First Lady, it's very hard for people to pretend to be someone that they are not. These women will all have to find their own style. And they'll have to accustom themselves to the microspcopic attention of the press.

With that being said, it is clear that Michelle Obama is receiving better press than the two Republican spouses. Since I don't know any of these women, it could be well-deserved coverage. Mrs. Obama represents everything that conservatives admire - someone who worked hard to achieve what she has achieved as a graduate of a top law school, successful lawyer, and an apparently devoted wife and mother. The theme of the Sun Times article was how she keeps getting questions of whether she and her husband are "black enough" and she answers those questions well.

"The truth of the matter is that as I was growing up, talking too proper, going to certain schools, people told me that. We are still struggling as a people with what is black," she said.
"The thing that I worry most about . . . is not what it says about me and Barack. What does it say to our children? [T]hat somehow Michelle Obama is not black enough? Well, shoot, if I'm not black enough and Barack's not black enough, well who are they supposed to be in this world?

"I did exactly what leaders in my community told me to do. They said do your best in school, work hard, study, get into the best schools you can get into and when you do that, baby, you bring that education back and you work in your communities," she said.

Mrs. Thompson has not been well-known before. The articles that talked about her as a "trophy wife" were demeaning and uninformative. The Washington Post piece tells us a lot of new information and most of it is not very positive. They go into her life living with a guy in Tennessee and the debts that she left behind there. I'd seen her referred to as a successful and smart GOP operative, but it seems, from this article, that her rise in GOP circles coincided with her romance with Fred Thompson. She has also received attention for her role within her husband's campaign and for purportedly having a say in the staff and direction of the campaign staff. The Thompson campaign should have been ready for such a piece and have been out in front of the media instead of depending on "friend of Jeri" type quotes to establish her image with the American people. They should recognize that she is an unknown to the American public. If the only glimpses we have of her are photos of her in an evening dress and negative reports in the media, she's going to get a negative image that she may never turn around. They could have put her out there for some soft interviews early on so that we know more about her and get to hear her own voice before the political press gets hold of her. If she still creates a negative impression after being interviewed by the likes of Larry King or morning talk show hosts, then so be it. But at least we would have been able to form our opinion using our impression of her own voice and appearance rather than the media's take on her personality.

While the Giuliani campaign did try to introduce Judith Giuliani in a soft focus sort of way, that task failed when she got negative coverage for smooching with her husband during a Barbara Walters interview. I was one of the people who was put off by such "public displays of affection" or PDAs as kids call it. And she talked about her big macho Rudy and his level of testerone. It just seemed tacky to me. Sometimes the tactic of having a soft rollout for the spouse won't work and it might just be the spouse's own fault. Those of us who are old enough can remember all the negative stories about Nancy Reagan before and during his presidency. It really didn't change for her until the public saw her care of him during his declining years. There was little she was able to do to change that first public impression that she had. There were also all those stories of her interfering in her husband's choices for political appointments.

Noonan recommends that spouses hide their involvement in political campaigns and strive to appear above it all. I don't mind spouses being involved in the campaigns - after all, they will accompany their husbands (or wife) into the White House and will be in our faces for the next four or eight years. And, in many cases, their opinion will be the one opinion that their spouses receive that doesn't have some alternative motivation than his or her best interest. And they'll have to be ready for those that perceive that they lost jobs due to a wife or husband whispering in a candidate's ear to go public with their criticisms.

One Republican spouse who is getting good press is Ann Romney. She had an interview in People Magazine recently and one earlier this year on ABC that allowed her to talk about her struggle with MS and to show another side of her husband. In fact, I've never seen anything about Ann Romney that was the slightest bit negative. She's definitely a strong plus for her husband's candidacy.

If Jeri Thompson and Judith Giuliani aren't fulfilling that same positive roles for their husbands, perhaps the fault lies not in their media coverage, but in themselves. In the end, I'd like to think that we'll vote for the one whose name is on the ballot and not the spouse. But with Hillary Clinton in the race, that won't be true, will it? There will be those who will vote for her because they still love Bill. And there are those who will not vote for her because of her husband. And lots of people formed their opinion of Hillary when she was First Lady and won't be changing it any time soon. I still think that there is a lot of Clinton fatigue out there. I've talked with some liberal friends who expressed their dread of having four or eight more years of the whole Clinton sordid saga playing out again. Will that stop them from voting her against a Republican? Who knows?

Clearly, the spouses will remain a focus this election season. Perhaps, we could follow up with a proposal I heard on a Fox News Sunday roundtable - let's have a debate among the political spouses. That would be an interesting event and would probably get higher ratings than the debates among the candidates.