Married to the job

America may obsess about its First Lady but in India, we simply don’t care about political spouses

Last week I devoured the controversial new book, The Obamas, by New York Times correspondent Jodi Kantor, in one greedy gulp. But even at the half-way mark I could understand why the book had so upset the White House. The story may ostensibly be about the Obamas as a couple and the dynamics of their relationship but its focus is undoubtedly the First Lady – her resistance to her husband’s joining politics; her difficulties in adjusting to life in the White House; her extravagance; her stormy relationship with her husband’s staffers; her struggle to find a meaningful role for herself other than that of First Mum; and so on.

But what intrigued me was not so much that Kantor had spun a book – and a very readable one at that – out of meeting the Obamas for about half an hour several years ago (as the White House bitterly pointed out). What really leapt out at me as I raced through the chapters is how important spouses are in American politics.

They may not be running for office themselves but political wives are subjected to much the same media scrutiny as their husbands. Their every move is analysed, every statement mined for sub-text, and every wardrobe choice picked over. Whatever the merits of the men, they inevitably end up being judged by the women they married – and if they managed to stay married to them. And wives can often make or break a political career.

Remember how Hillary Clinton was pilloried for making dismissive remarks about stay-at-home moms who baked cookies when her husband was running for President? Such was the backlash that she had to turn up on a television show with some home-baked cookies she had rustled up herself to prove that she – a high-flying lawyer – was a regular mom like any other. When the ‘bimbo eruptions’ hit Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign, it was Hillary who gave a joint interview with her husband to shore up his image. And again, when the Monica Lewinsky story hit the headlines, it was Hillary who came up with the infamous phrase, ‘a giant right-wing conspiracy’ to defend her beleaguered husband.

Yes, wives have the power to shore up their husbands’ political careers if they so choose. President George W. Bush’s image as a warmonger was softened by the gentle presence of his wife, Laura, the school-teacher turned librarian, who spent all her time doing good works and reading to children. And more recently, when Barack Obama’s ratings plummeted to abysmal levels, his wife’s soaring popularity helped to even the score a bit.

Now, as the scrimmage over the Republican nomination for the next US Presidential election continues, political wives merit more coverage than ever. Mitt Romney scores by the simple expedient of staying married to his high-school sweetheart, Ann, with whom he has five strapping sons. Newt Gingrich hasn’t been so lucky. Last week, Maureen Dowd devoted her entire New York Times column to eviscerating Gingrich’s current wife, Callista. Describing the third Mrs Gingrich as a ‘tranformational wife’ who wants her husband to go out there and conquer the world, Dowd wrote, “Draped in Tiffany diamonds, Callista is the embodiment of the divide between Gingrich’s public piety and private immorality.” Ouch!

This American-style spotlight on political wives has now even spread across the Atlantic, with the wives of British Prime Ministers playing a more visible public role. Nobody either heard or saw Norma Major when her husband was Prime Minister. But you couldn’t possibly say that about Cherie Blair now, could you? Even the more low-profile Sarah Brown was pulled out at the Labour Party conference to introduce her husband Gordon to the delegates in a speech aimed at ‘humanising’ him.

Now Samantha Cameron is a visible presence on the British political scene, supporting her husband at political events, flying the flag for British fashion, or hosting a gaggle of political spouses on the sidelines of major conferences. On the Continent, it is Carla Bruni who is flying the flag for the political wife, making joint appearances with her husband, Nicolas Sarkozy, to give his image a much-needed dose of glamour.

Thankfully, we in India are still holding out against this trend of making political spouses part of the political narrative. The only time we see Gursharan Kaur, wife of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in the papers is when she accompanies her husband on some foreign trip. Otherwise, she stays very much in the shadows, preserving her privacy behind the ramparts of Race Course Road.

Of the putative Prime Ministerial candidates on offer, Rahul Gandhi does not have a spouse (though it’s probably fair to say that she would get a fair amount of media attention if she did, in fact, exist). But even among the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidates, it is hard to put a face on the spouses of any of them. It has been rumoured that Narendra Modi has a wife, but I can’t seem to recall a single picture of her being published in the media. And I doubt that most people could identify Arun Jaitley’s wife or Sushma Swaraj’s husband if their lives depended on it.

No, in India, political spouses are just not part of the political discourse. We don’t care what they think about the political issues of the day; what they do to earn a living; or even, what they wear. And long may it stay that way.

The First Wives Club

It doesn’t really exist in Indian politics – and long may it stay that way

Who would have thought that being in London as the British chose their new government would make me nostalgic for politics, Indian style? And yet, strangely enough, that’s exactly how I feel.

I could have made my peace with the cheesy, stage-set like ambience of the electoral debates, which created a lot of sound and fury while signifying very little. Even Bigot-gate – when Prime Minister Gordon Brown was overheard calling a life-long Labour supporter a bigot on a live microphone after she quizzed him about immigration policies – seemed like par for the course in an era when non-stories are spun into pivotal media events. But in the end, it’s the wives who really got to me.

No matter which newspaper you opened – broadsheet or tabloid – or which news channel you watched, there was no escaping the First Wives Club. Here was Samantha, dutifully trotting behind David Cameron, all peachy skin, luminous smile and baby bump. There was Sarah Brown, trying hard to hide a tense look behind a rictus grin as husband Gordon did his own awkward take on man of the people. And bringing up the rear was the redoubtable Spanish spouse of Nick Clegg, Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, who bravely built a dry stone wall with her bare hands before falling over in a supermarket and breaking her elbow.

It wasn’t all photo-opportunities, though. The First Wives had speaking parts as well on the campaign trail. Sarah Brown held forth on how her husband was “her hero” and how only he could save Britain from economic meltdown (barn doors, bolting horses anyone?) when she wasn’t tweeting every inconsequential detail of her day. Samantha Cameron was all about the Bump – how happy she and David were, when the baby was due, how she was feeling these days (tired but great, if you really want to know). And Miriam was all bolshy and defensive about how she wasn’t as prominent a presence on her husband’s election campaign (“I don’t have a job that I can just abandon for five weeks, and I imagine that is the case with most people in this country,” she snapped at one point, though she insisted this was not a dig at Samantha Cameron, whose job at Smythson appears to have rather flexible hours.)

And then there were the obligatory public displays of affection. Samantha and David were pictured on the tour bus, with her head nestled in his lap while he cradled the Bump (by now a supporting member of the Cameron cast). Gordon and Sarah fetched up on the GMTV sofa, sitting far too close together as Gordon held forth on how much he loved her. (“Thank you,” gushed Sarah, looking deep into his eyes even as the rest of us groped around for a sick bag.) And Clegg clung on to his wife’s arm and made inappropriate cooing noises whenever he could coax her away from her high-powered lawyer’s digs.

No detail of any of these men’s private lives was too trivial to share with the voting public. We heard about their love stories, how they met their wives, how they fell in love, how they got married, how much they loved their children; where they liked to holiday; what breakfast cereal they started the day with. And then, there were the personal tragedies: the death of the Browns’ first-born daughter, Jennifer, who had been born prematurely; the recent demise of the Camerons’ first-born son, Ivan, who was born with cerebral palsy and died at six; the fact that Browns’ younger son, Fraser, was born with cystic fibrosis.

While all of this was compelling viewing – and fascinating reading – what possible connection could any of this have with the General Election? You could argue at a pinch that such stuff goes towards building up character – which it does – but does it make a man a better or worse Prime Minister? Surely to suggest that you can only understand the problems of people in tragic circumstances if you have experienced tragedy yourself is to demean the human capacity for empathy and to diminish us all as social beings.

But while I can understand the impulse to humanise our politicians, what I simply cannot fathom is this relentless focus on their spouses – on what they are wearing; what they feed their kids; where they shop; the list of mindless tripe goes on and on.

Of course, it is all dressed up as political commentary. Why was Sarah Brown wearing a silk Erdem dress worth 600 pounds and Jimmy Choo shoes at 400 pounds a pop? Didn’t she understand that she is a Labour wife not a posh Tory bird? Did you know that Samantha Cameron’s M&S dress was actually made to measure for her because the store had run out of her size? What was she trying to prove by wearing M&S? We all knew that she was a fully-paid up member of the designer set. And why was Miriam Clegg shopping for lingerie at Rigby and Peller during her lunch hour anyway?

But however you dress it up, all this focus on the wives is just trivia. And it makes me grateful that we don’t have to endure it in Indian politics. We don’t really know or care what the wives of Manmohan Singh or L.K. Advani wear. And long may it stay that way.