I Don’t Care About Ann Romney’s Life Experiences (And I Shouldn’t Have To)

First, dear reader, I will have to apologize for the very light blogging this week.  It’s not for any bad reason.  For instance, just this week I obtained a solid court victory over the convicted terrorist (bomber technically) and perjurer Brett Kimberlin (and if you don’t know about my struggle against this cretin, you should catch up here—it might be very important in the coming days).  And my parents are in town taking up pretty much what little spare time I had.

And bluntly you should pay attention to this space.  Big, original reporting might be in the offing depending on how things work out.  But I will have to be vague on this point.

Let's just say you might have a need to get out the popcorn.

But I have been watching in the background all week as we have seen this silly dustup where first Hilary Rosen and then various other liberals criticized Ann Romney for being... a stay-at-home mom.

And I could go into how this used to be the ideal.  Or how millions of American women would prefer to be a stay-at-home mother, but because of finances couldn’t afford it.  Indeed many feel guilty for not being a stay-at-home mother.

I could point out that feminism has created this situation.  By increasing the number of women in the workplace, they increased the supply of labor.  If you increase supply, you reduce prices—a.k.a. wages—and so soon the wages of men and women are depressed until many lower income women have no choice but to work.  And that is in the classic nuclear family.  The sexual revolution has accelerated the rise of rise of single motherhood and other non-traditional living situations, increasing the financial pressure that very often forces women to work when they might prefer to be a full-time mom.

And before you get all huffy and say that I am blaming feminism for forcing women into choices they might not prefer I will emphasize that there is a difference between causation and blame.  There was nothing wrong with the many women deciding that they were not destined to stay at home.  Lord knows I don’t want people dictating my career choices to me, and I will be damned if I do so for anyone else.  So long as you can do the job, it’s not my business to stop you and I generally prefer to figure out if a person can do a given job by letting them try and succeed, or fail.  But I can’t deny that there has been a cost to feminism.

But more fundamentally than all of that, I don’t care about Ann Romney’s qualifications, politics or anything.  The job of the first spouse not to do anything that matters.  So you take up some cause that no one can get too bent out of shape over, like Nancy Reagan asking kids nicely not to do drugs, or Michelle Obama asking kids nicely to get in better shape.  Yeah, I apply the rule equally to Michelle Obama, too.  Yes we might suspect that Michelle Obama’s request might later become Barrack Obama’s demand, but the fact is as far as I can tell Barrack is his own man and to the extent that they think alike it is simply the mind meld you expect happily married couples to have.

It’s really a bargain.  The candidate promises to make their spouses irrelevant and in exchange we promise to treat them as irrelevant.

Or well, mostly, irrelevant.  I do admit I consider it a “plus” if a given candidate has the support of a loving spouse.  But by all evidence Mitt and Barrack are roughly equal in this and I have to say after the drama of the Clinton White House it is good to be confident that we will have an unbroken string of faithful and loyal husbands all the way to 2016 setting an example for the men and women of America.

But it is a hidden unsaid bargain and it is exactly why I think it is fair, should Hillary Clinton run for President to hold her spouse against her.  Hillary was the one who broke this deal when she said that if we elected her husband we would get “two for one.”  Feminists squealed at the thought, but I always thought that was a poor example.  The fact was she was basically saying she was a good choice not to run for president on her own, but to marry into the job.  Feminism is about women pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps; “marrying well” is about something else.  Indeed I am hard pressed to think of a worse example for young women to follow.  She allowed her husband to continually humiliate her in public by his constant cheating.  She said that she "wasn't some little woman 'standing by my man' like Tammy Wynette" which mischaracterized both Wynett’s song and Hillary’s true disposition.  Tammy Wynette didn't advocate staying with a guy no matter how badly he treat you, but that is precisely what Hillary did.  And is that the lesson we should teach our daughters: that if a man cheats on you, take it?  Of course some would argue that this is not a real marriage, that it is a marriage of convenience.  I suspect that is true but it is no less awful.  A good role model is one who knows what she wants and obtains it, not someone who settles for a loveless marriage.

And you may find it indecent to talk in that much detail about the Clinton marriage.  And I agree.  But here’s the thing.  She broke the deal.  She decided she didn’t want to just make cookies, but wanted to be co-president so all of these issues became relevant.  Her politics became relevant.  Her exact relationship to the man became relevant.

And it will continue to be relevant if she runs for President in 2016, or anytime thereafter (perhaps Cyborg Hillary for President in 2146), only it will be flipped.  We will be wondering how much influence Bill will have on her and whether it will be a good thing or a bad thing.

But I don’t have to worry overly much about the relationship between Ann and Mitt, or Michelle and Barrack.  I am generally glad to see that they love each other and that both men will have their women to fall back on.  There is nothing wrong with a woman saying this...

…if at the same time the man is saying this:

And you get the sense that this is true in Barrack’s and Mitt’s respective marriages.  And that and their little innocuous campaign for some voluntary act of self-improvement is all I want from a first spouse.  That allows me to vote for the person seeking the office and not for the person married to him or her.

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