Running Mates

Thompson's entry into the race was briefly overshadowed by controversies over his wife's involvement in the campaign, and he was forced to spend time defending her. "It's understandable that American people want to see the spouse of who they are looking at as candidates," says Jeri Thompson, who notes that she was not at all surprised at the intensity and negativity of the news coverage about her. "It's part of the deal, part of the process." Nevertheless, she has tried to stay in the background since. She made her comments, in response to questions, via voice mail.

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Rudy Giuliani's wife, Judith, has also tried to stay under the radar following two unflattering magazine stories.

The political wife of decades past had a well-defined role as a behind-the-scenes helpmate. Pat Nixon barely spoke. Abigail McCarthy considered herself "excess baggage." Bess Truman dodged the public altogether, saying: "I am not the one elected. I have nothing to say to the public." Jackie Kennedy rarely campaigned. Mamie Eisenhower said, "Ike runs the country, and I turn the pork chops."

A 21st-century campaign doesn't allow much room for a candidate's wife to disengage. The lightning media turnaround coupled with a celebrity culture shines the same white-hot lights on the spouse that were once reserved for just the candidate. Elizabeth Edwards has been startlingly outspoken during this campaign, calling in to a live news-talk program to take on right-wing pundit Ann Coulter on national television and saying there was too much "hatred" of Hillary Clinton for her to win the general election. She maintains she's not behaving much differently from 2004, when her husband was the Democratic vice presidential nominee. "There's just a lot more coverage," says Edwards, who has received additional attention since revealing she is battling incurable cancer.

"What we're seeing is the collision and collusion of the news media and the need for celebrity," says Paul Costello, who worked for former first lady Rosalynn Carter and Kitty Dukakis, wife of the 1988 Democratic nominee. "There was never this much attention paid to wives during the primaries before."

Anthony, the author, says Republican candidates aiming to attract the conservative base have to be more careful about the image they present to a constituency looking for a more traditional marriage. Their wives are far less open about their influence within the campaign.

Cindy McCain, who is chairman of her family's business, an Anheuser-Busch distributor, and active in humanitarian causes, says she feels her platform is best used to soften her husband's image and to talk about family. "The public really does want to see you as a couple," she says.

But there is such a thing as too much coupling. Rudy Giuliani has been criticized for taking phone calls from his wife -- 40, the Wall Street Journal estimated -- in the middle of public appearances. Last month, he awkwardly answered a cellphone call from her during a televised speech to the NRA, leaving the audience uneasy. (Fox News actually polled on the subject, and found that only 9 percent of Americans thought it appropriate for a candidate to interrupt a speech to pick up a call from his spouse.)

Jeri Thompson, who initially was believed to be micromanaging her husband's campaign, says her primary role is to "unapologetically" take care of her two toddlers and her husband.

Janet Huckabee, whose husband, Mike, is trying to lay claim to the Christian right, is an executive with Red Cross and ran for secretary of state in Arkansas. Yet in an interview, she is careful to play down her influence and role. "I primarily support my husband," says Huckabee, who said she has kept her job for income, and travels on weekends with the campaign. "On a very simplistic level, I try to be a helpmate.

"My husband is the candidate. He doesn't need me to be as well."

Ann Romney said in an interview that her role as a mother, wife and grandmother is her most important one. Still, these days she doesn't spend all that much time at home.

Limited by a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis a decade ago, Romney says she nonetheless independently travels about three days a week for her husband's campaign.

"What I feel I can do is talk about his personal side," she said. "I can talk about the issues if I'm asked. But I like to let people know we're a family and he's a husband and a father."

Of course, that hasn't stopped her from getting in a periodic jab. Asked earlier this year at a campaign event what distinguished her husband from the rest of the field, this wife of nearly four decades replied sweetly, "He's had only one wife."

Research director Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.