About Howard Dean’s wife: political geeks and now the New York Times today are making a big deal about her invisibility: she’s been to one campaign event thus far—his official announcement. This, from the Times piece:
“I do not intend to drag her around because I think I need her as a prop on the campaign trail,” Dr. Dean said last week in Iowa. “If she wanted to do it, it’d be great, but she doesn’t want to do it, and therefore if she does do it, it won’t be great. I just think she should do what she needs to do for her own happiness and satisfaction.”
I gotta say, that’s probably not an all-bad model for the modern political wife. I much rather the wife stays home (i’m consistent!) than be…Hillary Clinton. I’m not sure how it all shakes out if, heaven forbid, Howard Dean became president—would Mrs. Dr. Dean really stay home and practice medicine and pick up the dry cleaning? I doubt it. (And I’m not sure that’s completely desirable—in the context of a man who you’d want to be reasonably well-adjusted considering his job and his family, for one thing, but that’s another conversation.) But, that said, better she stay home than try to create a new health-care system.