America's next top spouse

A guide to the brassy, opinionated, loud, difficult and plum-crazy partners on the arms of their president-running partners. Who says the campaign season is dull?

By Rebecca Traister

Read more: Presidential Race, Rudy Giuliani, Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Dennis Kucinich, John McCain, Bill Richardson, Mike Huckabee, Tom Tancredo, John Edwards, Duncan Hunter, Politics Features, Rebecca Traister, Barack Obama, 2008 election, Life, Mitt Romney, Chris Dodd, ron paul, Mike Gravel

Photos: AP

(Back row, l-r) Carolyn Paul, Jackie Dodd, Ann Romney, Barbara Richardson, Jill Jacobs Biden, Jackie Tancredo
(Middle row, l-r) Jeri Thompson, Whitney Gravel, Janet Huckabee, Elizabeth Edwards, Cindy McCain
(Front row, l-r) Judi Giuliani, Elizabeth Kucinich, Michelle Obama

Nov. 13, 2007 | Presidential candidates, all too regularly, are people whose entire lives have been clipped and trimmed and buffed to meet polling specifications. But their spouses, their children, their siblings! If we're lucky, these dapper power brokers are surrounded by far less perfect and conventional characters: blissfully untamed bohemians, wack-jobs or deliciously unreconstructed nogoodniks. When a candidate has a partner with texture, with flair -- with an arrest record -- there is the chance that she or he will leaven the weighty wonk of the endless campaign season. These rogue spouses have the potential to entertain us through the made-to-order claptrap of the debates, cheer us when we can't bear to hear the word "Rasmussen" again.

Most important, the weirdest and most wonderful of them remind us that behind their mates' pearly veneers and ill-tailored pantsuits lie the beating hearts of actual live human beings who once -- possibly many moons ago, maybe at Shirley MacLaine's house -- abandoned their talking points and just plain fell in love.

Sadly, compelling stump marriages have historically been rare. Far too many contenders seem to have selected their better halves from the Political Helpmate Bin made available to eighth-grade boys who already know they want to be president. I often wondered if these guys were spirited away during gym class and presented with a kick line of apple-cheeked, god-fearing, pearl-wearing, cookie-baking girls willing to sacrifice independent thought, sensuality and their postgraduate education in service to the highest office.

But in recent decades, these cookie-cutter expectations have begun to change. (Thank you, Jesus, and Hugh and Dorothy Rodham for producing a child so desperately ill-suited for her wifely destiny.) In a post-Hillary universe, as the second wave and children of the second wave grow up and form more egalitarian partnerships, there are more brassy, opinionated, loud, difficult, plum-crazy partners on the arms of their front-running partners. Just consider that Clinton was the first first lady ever to have earned a postgraduate degree. But in recent years, the primary fields have been lousy with lawyers and doctors and professors.

In the 2004 election, the spousal uprising hit another peak with the rocking Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean, who caused much consternation by refusing to give up her job as a doctor and join her husband, Howard, on the campaign trail. Apparently, she felt that helping sick people might be a more vital commitment than addressing every bridge club in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

And then -- and I confess, my heart skips a beat just thinking about her -- there was Teresa. Oh, Teresa. I still dream about you, in your scarves, with your abiding love for your long-dead husband, and at least one son who had become a Buddhist blacksmith of medieval armor and no longer spoke to you, and your tendency to tell reporters to "shove it." You crazy old super-smart coot who was fluent in five languages, come back! Just don't bring the husband with you! Sigh.

Political spouses: When they are good they are very, very good, and when they are bad they are awesome!

Of course, everyone loves to blame these colorful birds for the troubles their ill-fated partners encounter on the electoral market. But that's face-saving hogwash. Terrible Teresa and Dr. Dean Medicine Woman didn't sink their husbands' candidacies; the boys took care of that just fine on their own. No, in addition to thrilling and entertaining us with their inappropriate behavior or unseemly show of intellect, nettlesome spouses also serve as a release valve for all the blame that frustrated campaigns and the media like to throw at anyone but the actual ham-fisted, saluting, yelping, straying, triangulating candidates. Realistically, no out-of-control spouse is actually going to sink a winning campaign. Unless, of course, he or she is a Vicodin-popping, intern-diddling, tongue-pierced, vegan puppy-killer! Bwahahahaha!

Welcome to the end of 2007. Before the field clears, let's look at the brave man and women who've been hitting pancake breakfasts all over this great country of ours (or at least Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina), trying their damnedest to push their partners across the primary victory line so they can spend another year eating chili dogs in Ohio. Is there anyone with real Teresa potential out there? Might any of them become America's next top spouse?

THE ALSO-RANS: I'm not saying these spouses are dull, but...

Barbara Flavin Richardson, wife of Gov. Bill Richardson: A New Englander (Concord, Mass.) transplanted to the Southwest, Richardson is an immensely likable figure who recently told a luncheon crowd in South Carolina about how whenever the presidential spouses are in the same place, they get separated by organizers, "like we're going to get into a catfight or something." Richardson, a graduate of Wheaton College, is committed to standard first lady causes like "Read Across America," "Big Brothers/Big Sisters" and improving the childhood immunization record in her state, and she was instrumental in the establishment of New Mexico's Office of Domestic Violence czar. She also brokered a deal in which Disney donated 20,000 Baby Einstein videos to low-income New Mexico families. These are all wonderful choices, but they do not put Richardson in hot contention in the race to be most scintillating political partner. She did offer a whisper of potential when she told the South Carolina lunch that when you're married to a candidate, people are always coming up and telling you what "a wonderful man" your husband is. "Well, while Mr. Wonderful is out there campaigning, or doing whatever he does," Richardson said, "the rest of us as spouses are still schlepping through the airport to get to the commercial plane with kids in tow, missing our connections, standing in line at the grocery store, just trying to keep body and soul and house and home and family together while they go out and make nice." So it sounds like she's already having a great time!

Dr. Jill Jacobs Biden, wife of Sen. Joe Biden: Jacobs married Biden 30 years ago, after the death of Biden's first wife, Neilia Hunter, and their young daughter in an automobile accident. Together, the couple has raised Biden's two sons from his first marriage and the daughter they have together. Biden is an English professor at Delaware Technical and Community College, about whom one of her students has eloquently written, "great teacher, straightforward and to the point. Very Smart. Dresses nicely." MSNBC host Chris Matthews was even snazzier in his praise earlier this summer, when he opened an interview with Biden by calling her "the best-looking campaigner." Stay classy, Chris!

Whitney Stewart Gravel, wife of Mike Gravel: It is very difficult to find any information at all about Whitney Stewart Gravel, except that she married Mike in the mid-1980s after his marriage to his first wife, Rita Jeanette Martin, ended. In 1958, his first wife was named Anchorage's "Miss Fur Rendezvous," an honor that would almost certainly have catapulted her to one of the more interesting categories in this story, except that she's not married to him anymore.

Jackie Tancredo, wife of Rep. Tom Tancredo: Jackie met her husband in junior high school; they have two children and five grandchildren, and since her husband has discussed avoiding "the siren song of multiculturalism," it's pretty safe to say they're all as white as the driven snow. Jackie is a pretty ideal political spouse, telling Time magazine that as first lady, when asked about her "signature issue," that she feels "very strongly that child safety, whether it be physical safety in the school or protection from other predators such as those on the Internet, are vital to the well-being of our children." But alas, when asked by Time if she would expect to have a say in presidential politics, she answered succinctly, "No." Oh well. As conservative pundit Jane Chastain once wrote, in a column called "Run, Tom, Run!" Jackie's husband has charisma that "fills a room and literally oozes out the doors and onto the street." Literally oozes. Lucky, lucky Jackie.

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