Gentlemen First

But it's inane -- and, yes, sexist -- to focus on the ceremonial aspects of the job, with its smirking Real Men Don't Do Place Settings undertone:

Walters: If your wife becomes president, I don't suppose that you're going to participate in the Easter egg hunt or the Christmas decorations.

Clinton: You know, I'd actually like doing that.

Walters: You're gonna do the Easter egg hunt?

Clinton: If -- if that's -- if I'm asked to do it. I would love to do that.

If Bill Clinton is one of the 10 Most Fascinating People of 2007, surely there must be more interesting questions to ask him.

Bill overseeing the menus and seating charts for state dinners? Big deal. Do it or delegate it. Any working woman can tell you that it's perfectly possible to worry simultaneously about finishing up that appellate brief and icing the cupcakes for the second-grade bake sale.

The obsessive focus on Clinton as first gentleman ignores the fact that the job has evolved from its have-teas-and-bake-cookies days -- and that most first spouses have been significant advisers behind the scenes. Indeed, as Jennifer Senior pointed out in New York magazine, Clinton's post-presidential portfolio has a distinctly estrogenous air.

"One could even go as far as to say that Bill Clinton is already leading the life of an ideal First Lady," she wrote. "His foundation focuses on just the type of causes associated with presidents' wives -- fighting childhood obesity, urban renewal, stemming the spread of poverty and [AIDS] -- and his most recent book, 'Giving,' about the virtues and pleasures of philanthropy, is a First Lady topic if ever there was one."

So maybe someday we'll get beyond gender, past the point of tittering about women wielding power. Maybe in time for Dick Cheney's granddaughters.

marcusr@washpost.com