WomenHillary ClintonpresidentMichelle Obama

Why Are Presidential Candidates' Wives All the Same?

Are All Presidential Wives The 'Same'?
Nina Bahadur
By 

Deputy Editor, HuffPost Women

FILE - In this Sept. 20, 2011 file photo, first lady Michelle Obama gestures before introducing her husband President Barack Obama at a DNC fundraiser at Gotham Hall in New York. She's mingled barefoot among Aspen's elite, stirred a Vermont utility executive to tears and bucked up disenchanted New Yorkers. The 2012 presidential campaign is well under way for Michelle Obama, and the first lady is promising to put herself into the election effort like never before. More than a year from Election Day, she is hauling in millions in campaign cash and sketching a portrait of her husband drawn with an intimacy that no one else could duplicate. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)
FILE - In this Sept. 20, 2011 file photo, first lady Michelle Obama gestures before introducing her husband President Barack Obama at a DNC fundraiser at Gotham Hall in New York. She's mingled barefoot among Aspen's elite, stirred a Vermont utility executive to tears and bucked up disenchanted New Yorkers. The 2012 presidential campaign is well under way for Michelle Obama, and the first lady is promising to put herself into the election effort like never before. More than a year from Election Day, she is hauling in millions in campaign cash and sketching a portrait of her husband drawn with an intimacy that no one else could duplicate. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

When Michelle Obama took the stage at the Democratic convention earlier this week to play the role of Barack’s wife, her carefully crafted public persona came with her. It’s not just that Obama’s digs at Mitt Romney were subtle and functioned simultaneously as praise of her husband, allowing her to avoid being labeled Mrs. Grievance as she was in 2008. It’s also that, like virtually every successful first lady or wannabe first lady in recent decades, she has now perfected the narrative of a candidate’s wife who is reluctant, self-sacrificing, and humbled by her political experience.

Did she want to run back in 2008? She did not. (“I loved the life we had built for our girls,” Michelle told the crowd.) Did she go along out of loyalty, but was filled with misgivings? She did and she was. And does she now see why it was precisely the right call—not just for their daughters, but for the country—why “my husband, our president” is the only man for the job? You bet.

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