What do you have when you have two intelligent people who are married to one another and are suddenly in the White House and it’s 2008 not 1778?
I think you have some amalgamation of at least a president and a half, if not a dual presidency.
Can one reasonably expect in this day and age for high profile spouses to suddenly become just gravy for the biscuits? Rather than one of the Entrees?
Bill Clinton will be as much President as Hillary Clinton, in terms of advice, policy development, insight, contacts, savvy, strategy, support, and one of his greatest gifts… humor. Though there’s been some criticism of him overshadowing his wife with his own intelligence on this campaign, I think it must be difficult for a sharp player to show up in some diminished version of himself. Though that’s been the tack of most First Ladies of the past, I doubt whether we’ll see that “Oh just ignore little ol’ me'” again in any President’s spouse, regardless of gender.
Michelle Obama will definitely be as much President in her own way as Barack Obama. I think if we note how spouses are conducting themselves on the campaign trail right now, those are the indicators of how the spouses will be and even more so, once in the White House.
Regarding Co-President Mrs. Michelle Obama, we’d likely see what we see now;
she has her own ideas on matters, lobbies her ideas, speaking on all matters that arise as well, and is seen side by side most all the time with her husband, speaking, he and she, in tandem, as one force with two developed minds.
Mrs. McCain, is quite younger than her husband, by 18 years (she’s 53 this month), and is not of his generation’s roots. She was a teenager in the 1960s when saying what one thinks was considered the new normal. Cindy McCain, though seemingly deferential in public, speaks her mind, like Mrs. Reagan. She’s critiqued President Bush, and also countered Mrs. Michelle Obama’s remark about being proud of America for the first time in her life.
Mrs. McCain would be a cookie-mommie/ executive/ co-President. She’s inherited 100M from her family, sits on national boards, and is head of her own family’s foundation. As co-President, and as a person formally addicted to painkillers and also suffering a near-fatal stroke four years ago, and also as a former teacher of special needs children, she will be particularly strong in shaping policy to help the downtrodden.
What used to be called “pillow talk” between spouses, one of which occupied high office, is now ‘policy talk’ in full daylight. Observe the spouses now to see the co-Presidents you will be accepting/ electing later.
correction: Mrs. McCain may have inherited less than 100M. This is, according to various sources, what her ‘worth’ is financially.