The Clinton Dynasty

Steven Stark wonders how there has been so little debate about Hillary Clinton's claims for experience when that experience is mostly acquired in her role as a spouse.

The idea that spouses gain qualifications through their partners' jobs is a radically new idea in this country. And no one seems to be debating it -- at least not publicly. It's not really about Hillary per se. We don't name CEO spouses the next head of the company when their partner steps down, any more than we let the wives or husbands of doctors perform brain surgery because they happen to be married to someone who does.

Yet that's the Clinton argument: Bill's record is Hillary's record. In the press, it's being couched as a form of feminism meets 21st century new-age thinking: if husbands and wives are becoming their spouses' closest political advisers, why not make the unofficial official and let the spouses run on their own? That's why, in part, reporters have spent a good portion of this campaign analyzing the wives of all the contenders, on the theory that what we're now electing is a co-presidency.

There's only one problem: there's a word for a spousal co-presidency in the English language, or at least a system where one can ascend to higher office on the basis of marriage:

It's called a "monarchy."

Perhaps this is the new feminism - to argue that spouses so share in each other's achievements that they gain qualifications simply through marriage. Does that mean that the job of First Spouse has now become an extraconstitutional office sharing in the powers and responsibilities of the presidency? This is a concept well worth discussing and deciding if we're all comfortable with explicitly establishing that precedent.

Opponents will point to Bush's ascension to the presidency which perhaps would never have happened if his father hadn't been president. Many were uncomfortable with that pattern. The first President Bush has been very careful to keep out of the limelight as the First Father. There has been little indication that he was working behind the scenes as a co-president with his son. Does anyone have any confidence that Bill Clinton would demonstrate a similar delicacy?