We’re awash wi’ electioneering at the moment, on both sides of the Atlantic. But while we in the still extant UK are cantering breezily towards the finishing post (past which the first person across the line is increasingly unlikely to be the ultimate winner), the other partner in the Special Relationship is just beginning to feel the force of the oncoming political tsunami. Candidates are declaring all over the place, manifestos are being published, rallies are being staged, families are being trotted out, dirt is being dug. Obama? Who he?
But greater matters are afoot, with the long-expected entrance into the race of Hillary Rodham Clinton. You might have heard of her.
So firmly is the smart money on her to take not only the Democratic Party nomination but the prize of the Oval office itself that the finer points of future presidential etiquette are already being openly discussed.
So far, a lot of the gossip has been not about Hillary’s hawkish foreign policy stance, her links to big money in the States and beyond, whether or not she threw a book or a lamp at Bill and drew blood after the Lewinsky affair came to light or even if America (in the 21st Century!) is ready for its first female head of state.
Nope. The scuttlebutt’s all about what Hillary’s spouse in da White House is going to be called. What will they call Bill? A lot of things, I imagine, many of which would not be fit to be etched in stone on Mount Rushmore or inked on any official document. But it’s not often that you find someone in public life who will literally be more presidential than the president.
Here in Britain, the presence of the Queen makes sure that any political wives (Denis Thatcher notwithstanding) can never aspire to First Ladyhood, even if we had such a title or even an official role for a leader’s spouse.
Trickily, in America, the First Lady has no set duties but since the days of the longest-serving incumbent, the formidable Eleanor Roosevelt, another woman with a strained marriage and a political point to make, it has been a highly visible and active role.
So what is Bill to do? And what will he be called while he is doing it?
He could follow in the velveteen footsteps of Pope Benedict and become President Emeritus. But I suspect, if she makes it to the top, Hillary may well put her foot down about sharing the hard-won title of president with anyone, especially someone who’s had his turn. And especially since she would not only be a working leader but a symbol – the woman who could and did.
So is it to be First Spouse? First Gentleman? First Mate? First Ladies’ Man has connotations that might suit the personality but that don’t exactly have the gravitas to allow him to be left alone in the same room with other presidential/prime ministerial halves. Close, but no cigar, as they say.
First Husband is just too confusing although apparently there are 22 female national leaders in the world at the moment, albeit only three in the west, and some of them do indeed have husbands. And just not first ones, either.
You’d like to eavesdrop on a cosy conversation between the First Whatever and Peter Murrell, husband of our own First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Or Stephen Kinnock, husband of Danish premier Helle Thorning Schmidt. Both gents have independent careers in politics themselves, as (respectively) chief executive of the SNP and Labour Party candidate for the Welsh seat of Aberavon in the forthcoming May 7 scrap. (Sexist sidetrack: I bet no-one on the constituency selection committee asked him about his childcare arrangements. After all, he has the flexible, affordable and widely available Danish system to fall back on; the one many in power here reckon isn’t workable). But I digress…
Quantum chemist Joachim Saur is married to Angela Merkel and so far as we know has no political links at all, except to his wife.
She of course, to confuse the issue even further, kept her first married name, making him the First Second Husband. Hell, it’s complicated.
And I speak as a woman who once had to describe someone to a friend as my step-daughter-in-law’s step-mother. Not to mention the gentleman I later discovered to be my former sister-in-law’s second husband.
It’s all getting a bit Dynasty, isn’t it? You’d think their surname was Bush. It’s kind of like having a monarchy, in fact. First Bill or Bill the First? Or if Hillary has any say in it, Second Fiddle…