The Official US President Election Thread

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Tiptoeing around offended Rian (you look extra angry to me because those smilies are red )...

I find it odd how much attention politicians' wives get. It seems to be entirely a question of image, because surely the wives don't actually have any influence when their husbands are elected. Is this focus quite a new phenomenon, i.e. media-created? I don't know anyone who cares what Cherie Blair does unless she's being especially annoying...

A British perspective from today's Telegraph:

Look at the last four Tory leaders' wives: Norma Major, Ffion Hague, Betsy Duncan Smith and now Sandra Howard. Truly lovely women, all of them – gracious, charming, elegant – and silent.

Absolutely, eerily silent. Not for them, the pushy, openly political partnership of the Blairs. They are (or try to give the impression of being) old-fashioned, supportive, stay-at-home wives. In fact, Ffion had a flourishing career of her own, but almost never alluded to it in public. If these women do give political advice or counsel to their husbands, they keep it a dark secret.

And voters say that they like it. Norma and Sandra particularly score highly over the pro-active Cherie. But do not be fooled for a minute. In a fit of sentimental nostalgia, people may say they prefer the image of the diffident Tory wife. But it is not the reality of their lives.

Memo to Tories: women do more than arrange flowers these days. (You may have noticed this when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.) However much people may say that they find the Blairs' ménage distasteful, when voters look at them, they see something they recognise. Most wives, once their children have reached secondary school (and many before that), are working, if only because it is damn near impossible to afford a mortgage on one income.

So the lives of the Blairs - the two-career family, the worry over childcare, the need to balance home and work pressures – are the way it is for almost all of us now. Tory leaders, with their ethereal, perfectly groomed wives, look like something out of a 1950s television advert.