Spouses get the eye

McClatchy News via SacBee ^ | 1/2/8 | Margaret Talev, Jim Morrill and David Lightman

[SmithL]

They may not be on center stage, but voters' view of them colors impressions of the candidates.

DES MOINES, Iowa – Is your spouse an asset or a liability? Presidential contenders hope for the first and live in fear of the second.

With the Iowa caucuses, the first contests to determine which Republican and Democrat will face off for president in November, set for Thursday, most of the wives – and one prominent husband – are there now and on their best behavior. They're at the candidates' sides or making stops as surrogates in other locations. Here's a look at how many of them are coping.

Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of Democrat John Edwards, helps and hurts. Voters respond to her intelligence and down-to-earth style, and her ordinary looks offset critiques of his vanity.

But her diagnosis last March with treatable but incurable cancer created some discomfort over her husband's decision to go on with the campaign, despite her insistence that's what she wants. Part of her being in Iowa now, she said at a campaign stop in Vinton on Friday, is to show voters she's not near death.

"I think people actually need to see me, that I'm healthy," she said.

Rudy Giuliani's third wife, Judith, was not by his side as he shook hands over the weekend at his headquarters west of Des Moines before leaving Iowa and heading to New Hampshire, which votes next Tuesday.

That was fine with Linda Monserrate, a school psychologist who stopped by. She's "about 80 percent" sure she'll caucus for the former New York mayor. What gives her pause, she said, is mostly the couple's earlier affair and the ugly public breakup of Giuliani's second marriage.

[Bon mots]

"Spouses Get The Eye"

Indeed!

[rightinthemiddle]

[Mr. Jeeves]

I was going to say...Fred wins the “asset” game by a mile. ;)