Sneak Peek: Uncontemplated

The overlooked, under-estimated spouse.

For Better or For Worse

Richard Nixon, George McGovern, Ron DeSantis, and I did not run for office alone. We had Pat, Eleanor, Casey, and Douglas. Each, in their own way, supportive spouse’s who put their dreams on the back burner and pulled more than their fair share of weight at home as we pursued our dreams. There is no one more important to a candidate than the person who loves them the most and knows them the best. And when the bottom drops out, no one picks up the pieces better. 

Eleanor McGovern (1921-2007)

Spouses provide a window into the inner workings of a candidate. It’s true they are commonly used as campaign props to humanize a candidate, but the cues they give voters go beyond scripted ads. We’ve all seen, for example, the stunned spouse standing behind the apologizing candidate. A scene that begs one question - what does it say about a person who would ask their spouse to stand stoically on camera for all the sorted details? That is the kind of glimpse into emotional intelligence that should not be ignored by voters. Admittedly, that’s an extreme example, however, off-script or hot mic moments aren’t rare at all. The split-second moments between the two people. The glare. The correction. The rejected embrace. The interruption. Maybe it was just the stress of the moment. Maybe it is a pattern.

Spouses are often forced to demure. To ignore or even cover up bad behavior. After all, they aren’t on the ballot, nor do they play any official role beyond ceremony. Their only job, especially on the campaign trail, is to make sure the candidate is perceived in the best light possible. Behind the scenes, however, they often engage in matters of governance. Without Eleanor McGovern, George McGovern wouldn’t have uttered “Come Home, America” in his 1972 acceptance speech. Pat Nixon’s celebrity abroad softened her husband and allowed him to achieve some of the very things that ultimately helped rebuild his standing at home. Casey DeSantis is widely known as her husband’s top advisor. Her work on mental health has given important resources to Floridians post-pandemic, post-natural disaster, and post-manmade disaster.

Thelma Catherine "Pat" Nixon (1912-1993)

For better and for worse, spouses don’t always win the battle. While John Adams was in Philadelphia, his wife, Abigail Adams, wrote a historically significant letter asking him to “remember the ladies” as he worked to craft a new nation. “Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.” 

He responded with, “I cannot but laugh.” A month later, the Framers took up the matter of voting with James Sullivan, arguing that if voting rights are exclusively the right of landowners, eighty percent of colonists-turned-citizen would have no say in their government. Adams argued that non-landowners, like women and children, are overly influenced by the land-owning men in their lives and would, essentially, create a voting block for those men. The wealthier the man, the larger the voting block. 

According to historian Jane Hampton Cook’s detailed piece in the Journal for the American Revolution, Adams had actually reflected on his wife’s request. In the end, he offered his solution; make the new nation more equitable for both men and women. “The only possible way then of preserving the balance of power on the side of equal liberty and public virtue, is to make the acquisition of land easy to every member of society: to make a division of the land into small quantities, so that the multitude may be possessed of landed estates.” 

Political spouses often plant seeds of shade trees they will never sit under. In the case of Abigail Adams, her attempt to secure Constitutional recognition “for the ladies” was arguably the first challenge to the new world’s wholesale adoption of British coverture laws.