OPINION: When it comes to campaigning, some spouses are not inclined to hide their ambitions
IT’S NOT often a political wife presents herself as The Decider.There’s too much danger of straying into Lady Macbeth territory, as Nancy Reagan and Hillary Clinton discovered when some sniped that they were wearing the pants.
But as Iowa reaches a crescendo, three Republican wives say they are forcing their humble, self-effacing mates to sacrifice themselves to save the nation. That might be believable if the mates were not Romney, Gingrich and Trump.
Ann Romney told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer she insisted to her reluctant spouse: “You know what, Mitt, you’ve got to do this again.” Mitt resisted, she said, because “he remembered how difficult it is and what the hurdles were going to be”.
Mittens, as her not-so-cuddly mate is called by reporters, knew he was not a natural with voters. According to Mitt, their pillow talk sounded like a political advert. “She said, ‘Look, no one else can beat President Obama. No one else has the background to actually get the economy going, understand the economy in a very fundamental way’.”
We have seen political wives, like Michelle Obama and Alma Powell, who grimaced at the thought of their husbands running. And those like Nancy Reagan, who gazed adoringly in public and strategised in private. But this campaign season, some spouses are not only the power behind the throne, they are the propulsion out front. As one top Republican here put it, if Ann can go all out to persuade Mitt to run, even though she has to endure the rigours of campaigning with multiple sclerosis, then voters may begin to believe there is more to Mittens than a glossy bank roll and glossy hair (especially compared with Newt, who left two wives facing illness).
At Iowa campaign stops, the elegant Ann introduces her husband by describing how steadfast he has been as she fought her disease. In the post-Elizabeth Edwards age, candidates cannot risk looking as if they are placing their ambition ahead of a spouse’s health.
Like another animatronic candidate, Michael Dukakis, Romney uses his wife as a way to convey passion; Mittens also dwells on patriotic songs and poems, and stories about travelling the country with Mom and Dad in a Rambler, to humanise himself and quell evangelical voters’ fears that Mormonism is an alien cult.
Newt Gingrich credits his wife’s “stubbornness” with keeping him in the race. “There were several critical moments where I said to Newt, ‘If we can just get to the debates, if we can just get to September,’ ” Callista told the Christian Broadcasting Network.
Their relationship was born in sin and hypocrisy. Devout Catholic Callista, an aide on the House Agriculture Committee, had a six-year affair with married Newt, at a time when he was trying to impeach Bill Clinton for lying about an affair with an intern.
But now Newt promotes himself as a man reborn. According to the latest Peoplemagazine, Callista has played Henry Higgins to Newt's Eliza Doolittle, remaking him into a more docile man who plays golf, loves opera, worships at a Catholic church, and, for the first time, shares his calamari.
At an event for Iowa mothers at a coffee shop here on Friday, Gingrich was asked how he could prove he had really changed. “I would say I am a sadder and slower person than I was 25 years ago,” he said, noting that back then, “I thought if you just kept moving fast enough, somehow everything would always work”.
Gingrich was emphasising the influence women have had on him when he broke down as he described his mother’s battles with bipolar disease and depression. His interest in brain science, he said as he wept, is “not a theory. It’s, in fact, you know, my mother”. He also said he would consider women for his running mate.
You would not think Donald Trump, who routinely says stuff like, "I mean, part of the beauty of me is I'm very rich," would need much connubial coaxing to picture himself in the Trump White House. But a Globeheadline this week reads: "Wife Melania Tells The Donald: America Needs You!"
Melania also appears to talk like a political adviser’s fantasy. Trump told the tabloid his striking Slovenian-born wife recently told him: “Darling, you know you’d win if you ran, don’t you? You could win and maybe even easily. People really want you. I see it on the streets. People want you and they really need you.”
From Sammy Glick to Al Gore, men who seem too nakedly careerist are off-putting. You do not become president without clawing your way into the Oval Office, but voters prefer pols like JFK, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama who wear their ambition lightly.
The key to ambition is the ability to cloak it. Better yet, attribute it to your wife.
