The candidates’ wives club

Mark Sage on the US election campaign trail

So as the Democrats hoping to run for the White House toil on the campaign trail, many people are casting a glance at the women who stand beside their men.

The leading candidate, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, already has a high-profile wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Mrs Heinz Kerry inherited a vast fortune from the famed ketchup empire after her first husband, Senator John Heinz, died in a helicopter crash in 1991.

Mrs Heinz Kerry is outspoken in her views. Some commentators warn that it is only a matter of time before she puts her foot in it, especially now Mr Kerry is the frontrunner and much more prone to attack.

Multilingual Heinz Kerry has addressed a wide range of issues (Botox is good but Guantanamo Bay is bad, apparently).

When the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette asked what she thought of the current White House residents, she said: “This administration is the most cynical, most venal, most machiavellian administration in my 32 years in Washington.”

Perhaps the spouse who has suffered most from the election race so far has been Dr Judith Steinberg, wife of former frontrunner Howard Dean.

For weeks, while Mr Dean was leading the race, there was little interest in his policies, but the media was clamouring for the wife. Dr Steinberg was juggling a home life, with two children and a busy medical practice, but that didn’t seem to matter. Time magazine called her “the most absent spouse in the history of presidential campaigns”.

Days later she gave a joint TV interview with her husband, holding his hand and telling the viewing public what a wonderful president he would make.

The presence of a wife on the campaign trail is so important because it is thought to appeal to the voters of middle America. Author and Washington Post contributor Ann Gerhart said campaigning wives were “assets”.

“I think there’s an instinctual understanding that the job of President of the United States is arguably the most difficult and challenging of any job in the world. You want whoever is in that job to have a strong, stable relationship behind him or her,” she said.

But the demands are immense. Chicago Tribune columnist Louise Kiernan wrote: “The public asks more of the candidates’ wives than the candidates.”

The wife of former General Wesley Clark, a late entrant into the race, would fit happily into this role, it seems.

She has made it clear that she would prefer to be out of the spotlight altogether but to help her husband fulfil his dream, she is on the campaign trail.

“She has been a military wife for 34 years, moved 30 times in the course of that life, and really thought she was going to get her husband to go fly-fishing with her in retirement,” Ms Gerhart said. “And, lo and behold, here she is crisscrossing the country.”

Then there is the wife of Senator John Edwards.

Elizabeth Edwards, a lawyer like her husband, recently found herself speaking to supporters who couldn’t fit into a room where her husband was giving a speech.

So she gave them a speech of her own.