Global Breaking News - Thursday, May 8, 2025

Do We Need to Hear From the Candidate’s Spouse?

Remember when the candidate’s spouse simply smiled and waved at political conventions? You probably don’t if you’re under 50. For the past 20 years, the spouse’s speech, like Michelle Obama’s on Tuesday night and Ann Romney’s last week, has been an anticipated feature of most conventions. Should that be so? What role should spouses of the nominees play at presidential conventions? Is it appropriate (or useful) for them to give speeches endorsing the candidate?
* wave at(to) = ~을 향해 손을 흔들다/ political convention = 정치대회/ endorse = (공개적으로) 지지하다

 대통령 선거 정당대회에서 후보들의 부인들의 역할은? 그들이 후보자를 지원하는 연설을 하는 것이
적절(도움이 되는)하나요?

1. It Depends on the Candidate and the Partnership
With every step toward more diverse leadership, the question of what a partner’s role should or could be will be different.
 
2. Not a Prop, or a P.R. Problem
“Political wives” are used to being depicted as caricatures. That doesn’t mean their husbands don’t get an earful about it on occasion.
 
3. The Inherent Sexism in a Spouse’s Speech
These party addresses assume that voters care more about whom a candidate married than what he or she will do for the country. Voters are smarter than that.
 
4. For Better or Worse, Politics Is Show Business
There's no choice for spouses anymore but to play their best supporting role on the national stage at party conventions.

Sample Essay

It Depends on the Candidate and the Partnership

The answer to this question depends entirely on who the nominee is and on who his or her spouse is. The notion of what marriage means and what role partners play in each other’s private and public lives is not fixed; it’s changing as quickly as the definition of who can lead and what kind of partnership (if any) they might enjoy.

Ann Romney was sent on stage to offer a personal endorsement on behalf of her husband, a man who’s battling a reputation as a cold, socially awkward businessman who sticks his dog on the roof of his car during family vacations. That Mrs. Romney's testimonial feeds a national appetite for personal narrative isn’t a good thing or a bad thing, isn’t appropriate or inappropriate; it’s just the way of the world in a story and personality-driven political marketplace that has existed, really, since politics became televised. Of course, Mrs. Romney’s speech -- while officially having nothing to do with policy -- was also used as an ideological tool to convince viewers that Republicans understand women and their roles in the world.

But Ms. Romney's view of women’s roles -- “we’re the mothers, we’re the wives, we’re the grandmothers, we’re the big sisters, we’re the little sisters, we’re the daughters” -- leaves out the women who are the intellectual, professional, economic or political peers of their husbands, let alone the women who are the candidates themselves. (Here's a related question: Will we ever hear a political spouse woo men to his wife’s ticket by bonding with them as “the fathers, husbands, grandfathers, big brothers, little brothers and sons”?)

The scenario of the women being their candidate partner’s equals has already happened -- with Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Dole, Michelle Obama, and if you want to cast further back, with Eleanor Roosevelt, who addressed a Democratic convention in 1940 (and again in 1952, though she was no longer first lady).

Most recently, in 2008, I was disappointed when Michelle Obama -- whose academic and professional credentials are comparable to her husband’s and who at the start of the campaign was eloquently opinionated on subjects like the shrinking middle class -- gave a speech in which she all but erased herself in an effort to reassure listeners that, in accordance with Ann Romney’s traditional vision of femininity, she was a mother, a wife, a daughter and a sister.

But that maneuver was built out of a complicated moment in this country’s social evolution, one we’re still living through: the nation was getting used to the idea of a black president and (perhaps just as threatening) a black first lady who until her husband's Senate career, had had as much public, intellectual, professional and economic power as he had. Michelle Obama’s job that night wasn’t to reassure us about her husband, who at that point was already an inspiring and well-liked campaigner; her job was to reassure Americans that she herself was not going to be too powerful, too new, too different from the first ladies who had come before, even though her education and professional achievements did differentiate her from most of those who had preceded her.

The equation is always changing. And that’s a good thing, even when it prompts disappointing results.

With every step toward more diverse leadership -- with every marriage of equals; with every Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin, Nikki Haley, Susana Martinez, Elizabeth Warren, Barney Frank, Tammy Baldwin; with every Condoleezza Rice, who does not have a spouse to endorse her at a convention -- the question of what a partner’s role should or could be will be different.