I was watching a video stream of Barack Obama’s recent speech in New Hampshire, and I was struck less by his ease and eloquence than by his participation in the old “my wife is better than me” tradition of politicking—a trope that I’ve always found irritating. It’s good politics, I guess, but it’s fairly bogus. It’s a way for male politicans to pretend that they’re not the egotistical, messianic glory hounds they so obviously are. And it’s condescending to their wives.
Obama’s first joke along these lines came about a minute into his speech. He was complimenting the governor of New Hampshire, who’s a man, and then finished it off by suggesting that his success is
partly a consequence of him choosing wisely in marriage. The governor and I share the basic theory about marriage—that we’re trying to improve our gene pool. So we choose someone superior to us and hope that it rubs off on our kids.
Then, a few minutes later, addressing the question of whether he’s running for president and what he thinks about all the press he’s been getting, he says, “Obviously it’s flattering to get a lot of attention, although I must say it’s baffling, particularly to my wife.”
I understand that this plays well with most audiences, who aren’t hyper-attuned to the nuances of sexist condescension, and that the tiny minority of people who find it objectionable are, almost without question, going to vote for Obama anyway if he ends up as the Democratic candidate for president. Still, it’s annoying.
I’m particularly sensitive about this, I think, because I happen to be enough of an egotistical glory hound with a streak of messianism to know what it feels like to be such a person, and a) you really don’t walk around thinking about how superior anyone’s gene pool is to yours, and b) no one who knows you well and loves you is baffled by the attention you get.
I’m sure that Barack Obama’s wife is super-smart, and if they have a healthy marriage, which it sounds like they do, then I’m sure that she’s bemused by the adulatory attention her husband is getting—if you’ve seen your partner through hard times, or brushed your teeth next to him while he’s taking a huge dump, you’re likely to be bemused when the world’s treating him like the second coming of Jesus.
Michelle Obama sure isn’t baffled, though. No one marries Barack Obama—an exceptionally talented and charismatic person who clearly wants to save the world—and is then baffled when people pay attention to him.
Anyway, I’ve been trying to think of a male politician who doesn’t use his wife as a punchline in this way, and I can’t really think of one. Bush certainly does it. I have a feeling Kerry did (though I thought that the wonderful performance of his daughters at the national convention was indicative of the fact that he’d done a good job raising strong women). I don’t remember whether Clinton does (it would be interesting if Clinton, the womanizer, was actually good about speaking respectfully of Hillary – it would explain, in part, why he wasn’t abandoned by feminists despite the Lewinsky mess; they liked the way he talked about women).
