May 14, 2007

“Spousal” Videos: Dem Candidates’ Husband and Wives Speak

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The Hillary Clinton campaign has a killer new video out in which Bill speaks directly to the camera about his wife and why she would make a great president. It’s quite good.

Seeing this made me think about other “spousal” videos — videos in which a presidential candidate’s spouse talks about the candidate. The campaigns seem to think (rightly, I believe) that having a candidate’s spouse explain why he or she fell in love with the candidate is interesting and worthwhile political material, because voters are sometimes looking for the same things spouses are. For example, if Bill Clinton says that he loved Hillary’s passion for helping the poor, or Elizabeth Edwards says that she saw John’s honesty and decency when they first met, or Michelle Obama talks about Barack’s magnetism — these aren’t just crass exploitations of people’s private lives. The values and attributes on display are valuable in a spouse and a president.

So with that in mind I went hunting for other “spousal” videos. I found this one starring Michelle Obama — unfortunately it’s not on YouTube and I can’t post it here. You’ll have to follow the link, but it’s worth it. (And you can find video of Michelle Obama speaking at campaign events here.)

As for Elizabeth Edwards, she has her own history, and often the videos starring her cover her battle against cancer instead of her husband. The result is pretty impressive — you get a full picture of who Elizabeth is, a pretty full picture of who John is, and a sense that together they are a strong and amazing couple.

See for yourself. The first video here is Elizabeth introducing John at a campaign event; the second is Elizabeth thanking the people who have shown support in her fight against cancer. Judge which one is more powerful.

Wow, right? The second video almost brought me to tears.

The Democrats in this race are not only strong candidates for president, they all seem to have incredible people for spouses, too.

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