Let’s Ban Presidential Spouses from Running

I don’t think Presidential spouses should be able to run for President. This shouldn’t affect Clinton’s race. It’s not right to make a rule after the fact, but going forward, let’s nix the practice.

Here is the argument:

Marriage creates a politically and socially recognized unity. We can file joint taxes. Spouses don’t have to testify against each other in a court of law because it’s seen as forcing someone to testify against herself. The list goes on.

Spouses are also seen as individuals, e.g., spouses can’t call each other’s therapists to find out the dirt, although they used to be able to.

How this unity and individuality are mediated is a matter of politics. We changed laws to allow individual spouses to get loans without their spouse’s approval. Many of these laws came about to fight against paternalism and for freedom, but there is an adjustment period. The advent of no-fault divorces, for example, led to a few too many irresponsible divorces. It also emancipated a non-negligible number of spouses from bad marriages. It took a while for us to figure out when to divorce responsibly, making us think harder about marriage. This isn’t bad.

Patriarchy and paternalism also explains why the need to ban spouses has never been a real concern before. Until it was culturally acceptable for wives to be accomplished and women to run for the highest office, we didn’t have to worry about how the union of marriage causes political problems.

The first hint that this is an issue should have been in 2000, when Clinton picked New York. It’s not just that she had the ability to pick a state and run for Senate. It’s that she had name recognition and more importantly, the party clout, to run. She had access to all of the resources of the state party, and their discretion and their deference, through her position as First Lady, the non-elected unified member of the man who happens to be President.

If Michelle Obama wanted to be a Senator in two years, there are 30 states she could pick from and instantly be competitive. And in a Republican held state, I suspect she would be the Democratic front runner for the race through her connections with the state party.

I’m not saying Michelle Obama would be a poor legislator. I’m saying that marriage shouldn’t wield that kind of political power.

The argument against my worry is that we should let the voters decide. My point is that marriage distorts the party’s and the voter’s experience of the race. It’s not overwhelmingly distorting. Obama did beat Clinton in 2008, but it is a worrying distortion. When Hillary Clinton says on the campaign trail that she is going to put Bill Clinton in charge of the economy, I can’t help but wonder if this is a way of promising Bill’s third term? And didn’t we make a rule to avoid this?

I also think we should figure this out before we have separation of power issues. One person cannot serve in two branches of government at the same time. I’m not convinced a Senator married to a President should be able to serve at the same time, nor a President married to a Supreme Court Justice.