Just before Election Day 2000, I recall watching George and Laura Bush being interviewed by Ted Koppel (if memory serves; I might be mistaken) for one of those "day in the life of the candidate" pieces. At the end of a long day of campaigning, Koppel asked Mrs. Bush if she ever got tired of all the handshaking and nodding and gazing up adoringly at her husband as he gives the same speech she's heard a hundred times before. After the briefest of pauses, Stepford smile tattooed on her face, she said in a creepy monotone, "I love every minute of it."
How being the spouse of a presidential candidate could be anything less than an outright horror show is something I struggle to understand. And now, according to Politico, some potential GOP first ladies are not working so hard to hide their feelings, with women like Cheri Daniels and Marsha Barbour making it clear they aren't looking forward to the campaign trail. We do hear John Thune saying his wife Kimberley is "a real trooper," so she'd suck it up and suffer through a campaign for the good of the country if need be.
But when Politico writes, "The increasingly prevalent and open expressions of spousal doubts suggest campaigns have altered their expectations for spouses and are moving toward more realistic and authentic expressions of their family circumstances," it's hard to believe that's really true. It would be nice if we saw the presidency as the job it is, and after all, when you apply to be the VP of sales at a widget company, they don't say, "Your application looks great, Bob -- we'll just have to bring your wife in for her interview, and see whether your kids are cute enough." But in America, the president is both prime minister and king, and we reserve the right to reject him or her if we don't like the family moving into the White House.
But reporters and editors make choices about what to cover. They can decide to lay off the spouses, and that in turn would mitigate the pressure they're under and the degree to which the public cares about them. How about it?
