Battle of the political wives: pushing the spouse into the spotlight?

BELLA COUNIHAN April 15, 2010

The UK election is heating up - policies announced, campaign trails blazed and naturally... toe inspections. We're not even looking at the toes of a candidate here, but in fact a candidate's wife. Mrs Sarah Brown, wife of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was apparently at a Hindu temple in North West London and, in accordance with the rules, removed her shoes and revealed as one English tabloid dubbed it an ''unsightly'' toe.
This toe was newsworthy stuff as it apparently put her ''in second place behind the Tory leader's wife''. The UK press are taking the competition between Mrs Brown and Samantha Cameron, wife of Tory candidate David Cameron, to new heights, or lows depending how you see it. But would we ever inspect Therese Rein or Margie Abbott's toes in quite the same way? Indeed, silly as this story is, nestling between tabloid gold like ''Twincredible; meet the British mother who gave birth to two sets of twins in 12 months'' and ''Smith: I dropped a dress size on soup diet'', Sarah's funny looking toes do point to something more serious - why we care at all about the wives of candidates, especially it seems during election campaigns.
It seems to have started in the US; there is something oddly presidential about a good ''battle of the wives''. As elections in Australia become more ''presidential'' - more about the candidate and less about the parties - personalities of candidates are the focus. The easiest way to look wholesome and good in front of the cameras is to push the spouse out into the limelight so voters can take a good look.
In the UK, SamCam, as she is described in the tabloids, and Sarah Brown have both become essential parts of the campaign, their behaviour and fashion in particular analysed to within an inch of sense. Political campaigners for all candidates have privately acknowledged that it would be much easier to ''sell'' the wives than the candidates themselves. SamCam's recent pregnancy even prompted one journo to upgrade Mrs Cameron from ''the Tories' secret weapon'' to their ''nuclear weapon''. It's almost as though wives of candidates are used in the same way as a good baby kissing picture opportunity in a supermarket or a visit around a hospital - it doesn't really mean anything about what the candidates will do in office but us voters all come away with the warm fuzzies.
In Oz, often the wives (not yet any husbands on the campaign trail, although who knows with a Mr Gillard potentially in 2013?) are seen as off limits although they are more and more pushed out in front of us. Greg Sheridan, foreign affairs writer for The Australian, declared on Q and A that it is a universal rule in Australia that the partners of pollies are much nicer than the politicians themselves. Therese Rein, Rudd's wife, has been one of the most high profile spouses thus far, becoming an essential part of Rudd's image to the public during the '07 campaign and beyond - there's even a "meet Therese Rein" bio section on the Prime Minister's website. It's no Hillary and Bill Clinton campaigning package but I suppose it's as close as it comes in Australian politics. In contrast Abbott's wife, Margie couldn't be more irrelevant to Abbott's politicking. One of the few times she's been involved in anything media or politics related was Abbott's interview with The Women's Weekly earlier this year where she confirmed that she wanted politics out of sight and out of mind.
A partner used to be a nice campaigning trinket, showing the pollie as family oriented but now from the UK example, we could see them as possible weapons of mass political destruction, capable of blowing the competition away. In campaigns here, wives have always been around and about, but there is still a line of privacy where feathers ruffle whenever it is crossed. Although Therese is probably our most public ''first lady'' yet, for now at least, one can't imagine the PM's missus toes being cross examined in quite the same way.