Opinion: Suddenly, a GOP spouse appears

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For quite a while now we’ve seen the spouses of Democratic presidential candidates--Bill Clinton, Elizabeth Edwards and Michelle Obama--on the primary campaign trail. The Republican spouses have been virtually invisible--until this week.

Enter Ann Romney.

The 58-year-old wife of Mitt Romney just completed her first solo bus tour, a two-day swing through South Carolina. Reaction in print, on TV and online here and here has been favorable to the mother of five, the grandmother of 10 and possibly the next First Lady. The obvious theme of her travels to round up conservative support was family values. And to underline that she had by her side daughter-in-law Mary and 16-month-old grandson Parker, whom she describes as ‘the biggest drooler ever.’

Spouses are very useful campaign tools as surrogate speakers and fundraisers, attracting softer, generally positive media coverage wherever they go while their partner campaigns elsewhere.

It’s a smart move by the Romney camp, which has also dispatched all five sons on the trail too, one visiting every Iowa county in a Winnebago. Ann Romney’s talk of ‘the Yankee governor with Southern values’ and the high school sweethearts who’ve now been married 38 years can help defuse Baptist concerns over his Mormon religion. And her mere presence at each event underlines the absence of other GOP wives.

Rudy Giuliani always travels with his wife, Judith Nathan, but she stays in the background. Her campaigning could raise the issue of the candidate’s three marriages, messy divorce and estranged son. Fred Thompson’s second wife, Jeri, is personable and beautiful but 24 years his junior and has two small children to tend to.

As Ann Romney becomes more comfortable....

campaigning on her own, she is talking more about her personal struggle with multiple sclerosis, which was diagnosed in 1998. As a USA Today story describes, she credits mainstream medicine and alternative therapies for putting the disease in remission. She has talked to Elizabeth Edwards about her courage in confronting the return of her cancer.

According to the newspaper, Romney had a long internal debate about bringing her disease into the campaign but decided ‘this is our personal life.’ It also helps humanize her picture-perfect husband, who supported her thoroughly through the darkest days when a wheelchair seemed in her imminent future. She says everyone carries ‘a bag of rocks’ -- some personal challenge -- in their life. ‘Everybody has problems,’ she says. ‘Everyone has issues. And this (MS) happens to be a surprise thing that came in my life and I didn’t count on.’

The only limits on her are few late nights and the need to rest after two or three days on the road. Riding her horse Baron relaxes her and helps maintain muscle tone, she says.

She spends a lot of time before female crowds touting her husband’s record as a businessman who built successful companies before salvaging the Salt Lake City Olympics and as a governor who tapped into market-based incentives to create universal health care in Massachusetts without raising taxes.

Then she interrupted the campaign to lead the United States to buy an ice cream cone for Parker.

--Andrew Malcolm