The NYT gushes: "Hillary in History/Win or lose, she is the perfect transitional figure."

That's the teaser on the front page, leading to the Gail Collins column, "Hillary in History."

No sooner did I write "The NYT gushes" than I began to doubt whether it is gushing. Yes, "perfect" sounds like high praise, but: "transitional figure." It's almost an oxymoron. If it's perfect, why are we progressing through this stage, transitioning? She's not the fully formed female President, but she's perfection as a way station on the road from here to there. She isn't where we really need to be, and so the perfection is imperfection.

[O]ne of the running subtexts in this story... is that when it comes to women winning political office, there’s a long line of wives in the cast of characters. [Elizabeth] Dole is married to the former presidential candidate Bob Dole. Margaret Chase Smith was both wife and office manager for Congressman Clyde Smith of Maine, and she took his seat after he died.

The first woman governor, Nellie Tayloe Ross, won a special election in Wyoming to succeed her husband in 1925. The first female senator was Hattie Wyatt Caraway of Arkansas, who was initially appointed to succeed her husband....

Collins had Hillary Clinton on the telephone, and Hillary told the old joke about a "successful businessman" who tells his wife that if she'd married her old boyfriend she'd be the wife of that gas station attendant and the woman says — as Hillary flattens the punchline — "No, if I’d married him he’d be a big success like you." Is that what Hillary thinks of Bill? That's my question. Collins didn't ask that and she sure didn't ask my next questions: If Bill got to be President because of you.  wouldn't electing you now be like giving you a third term as President? Haven't you already had your full constitutional share of presidential terms?

Clinton — the wife of a former president, with the longest résumé in the room — is a perfect transitional figure, whether she wins or not. Maybe there had to be a heroic Senator Smith with a muffin recipe, too. Maybe — and this is taking a really huge jump — there also had to be a “Ma” Ferguson, who became the first woman to be elected governor of Texas in 1925 after her husband was convicted of financial corruption. Ferguson did promise voters “two for the price of one” long before Bill Clinton thought of the phrase.

So the perfection Collins flogs is status as a wife of a former President?! In that framework, Hillary is only "the perfect transitional figure" if you believe America is mired in its travels on the road to female equality in some godawful backwater town where a woman cannot make it on her own. Did Mary Tyler Moore throw her hat in the air for nothing?



That was Minneapolis in 1970, and I am not buying that a woman in 2015 needs to make it by riding alongside her successful husband. That's not where we are, and I can't believe Gail Collins isn't embarrassed to talk about the United States that way.

Ivana Trump said "Yes, but the problem is, what is he going to do with his third wife?"

The "yes" was a response to someone telling Ivana that she would have made a great First Lady. The "third wife" is Melania Trump. According to Ivana, "She can’t talk, she can’t give a speech, she doesn’t go to events, she doesn’t (seem to) want to be involved." Ivana nevertheless thinks Donald will be "a great President": "He’ll surround himself with the right people. He was always meant to be a politician."

Ivana said that she "suggested to Donald that he should run for President in the ’80s... Then he got involved with Marla Maples and America hated him."  Maples was the second wife, the one who made him need to wait 30 years to do that run for President and to need to have to do it with a wife who can't even talk and doesn't want to be involved instead of the wife who would have been a first wife and would have made a great First Lady.

And that's the way the first wife tells it.


(Photo source.)

"At age 48, Frank [Fiorina] decided to retire to (gasp!) to support his wife's career as well as take care of his two daughters..."

"'...something that even her own father didn't quite understand at first."

"As [my father] got older and realized how important a role Frank played in my success — and my happiness, beyond that — he came to really appreciate him,' [Carly Fiorina] said.

Frank has donned several different hats while running his wife's team. While she was CEO of Hewlett-Packard and later when she ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010, Frank would sometimes serve as her personal bodyguard. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Frank received a permit to carry a concealed weapon in 2000.

More in this WaPo article from last May, a time Carly Fiorina "hardly registers in national polls." The reporter follows Frank around as he pushes a shopping cart through the aisles of Costco for 45 minutes and buys "[b]ottled water, toilet paper, paper towels, cashews, Goldfish and a toothbrush."

Key tag: single-earner household.

"There’s a particularly mean meme about presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson and his wife, Lacena, aka Candy, circulating around social media."

Writes Demetria Lucas D’Oyley at The Root:

In the meme, President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are striking at the China state dinner Friday. President Obama is dressed in a well-tailored tuxedo, and the first lady has long, side-swept hair and an off-the-shoulder, custom-made Vera Wang gown. The contrasting picture of the Carsons was taken in May, on the day Carson officially announced his candidacy for president in Detroit. He is dressed in an unremarkable but still presentable blue suit. It’s Candy Carson’s appearance that makes the meme funny to some (but not me). She is wearing a hairstyle and patriotic ensemble that is unflattering, ill-fitting and dated. The meme caption is a play on a popular DirecTV commercial that clowns its cable competitors for being subpar...

[The un-P.C. part of my mind is] mature enough not to laugh at Candy Carson’s expense, but it’s still asking why she came out of the house looking like that when her man is announcing his presidential bid...