The Ladies Man

Round about election day I heard from one of the talking sitting heads on TV that if Harold Ford Jr. had been married he would have won his senate race in Tennessee.

The idea was that a married Ford would have better withstood the ad suggesting a rampaging appetite for blonde white women if he had had a wife by his side, sensibly dressed and suitably indignant.

Got "steak at home," why "go out for hamburger" -- you've heard it before.

In these times that's what a "political" wife is for, increasing the probability that a male politician is neither a bold seducer of young women -- nor of young men either, for that matter. It's no guarantee obviously, but it may move the odds.

Of course, there's a downside to having a staunch political wife. It means an unmarried woman can't fantasize about having the candidate for her own should she volunteer to faithfully work the phones during the campaign, meet the candidate, discover that the perfunctory handshake at the victory party has lasted one beat past perfunctory, etc. etc. and it's a Rose Garden wedding with no politically catastrophic divorce intervening.

And that's why Mitt Romney will make such a formidable candidate in 2008. He's got a wife, but, gals, you've still got a chance.

And thus I waltz around to Mitt's Mormon problem. I know I've been droning on about my Fundamentalist roots lately, but I remember the little pamphlet handed out in Sunday School listing all the most dangerous cults, and there was Mormonism at the top of the list.

All those souls waiting to be born. All those wives.

We young men were shocked, appalled, affronted, envious....

And that means resentful. And that means Mitt Romney has a problem.