One of the things that struck me about Romney’s concession speech on election night was when he declared that his wife Ann would have made a great First Lady. For some reason, I found the comment to be out of place. Maybe it was the way he said it or that it was one of the very first things he said. But, something was off. Then, I chalked it up to the fact that Romney had not prepared a concession speech and that he was customarily awkward in paying a small tribute to his wife for the long years of campaigning.
I remember that I was tweeting at the same time that I was watching the speech, and when I heard his comment, I sent out a tweet joking that what he meant was that she would have “looked great riding around in Air Force One eating caviar.”
Today, when I read the The Washington Post article about how the Romneys are dealing with his loss, this statement called my attention:
“By all accounts, the past month has been most difficult on Romney’s wife, Ann, who friends said believed up until the end that ascending to the White House was their destiny. They said she has been crying in private and trying to get back to riding her horses.”
If this is true, that Ann Romney is taking Mitt’s loss harder than he is (apparently he’s just bored), does it mean that she wanted him to be President more than he did himself? It wouldn’t surprise me if this were so. Romney’s candidacy always seemed to me to be an item on his life’s “To Do” list, another achievement to be checked off without real commitment or passion.
But, getting back to Ann, it has been reported that after his failed run in 2008, she did not want him to run in 2012. Is her “devastation” a result of going in all the way after her initial resistance, and now being understandably disappointed for her husband? Or, is it more a sign of an ambitious political wife who ends up lusting after power more than the husband who’s running for office?
I guess we’ll never know and it really doesn’t matter. We are fortunate to have a First Lady who is the antithesis of the ambitious political wife. A First Lady whose fear of what the presidency would do to her husband and to her family life kept her centered and him grounded to change things and give us hope. Real change and real hope, regardless of how difficult the road to achieve them has been.
And, in the end, in no small part because of this, President Obama’s presidency will go down as one of the best and most productive in the history of our nation. While the Romney’s, well, they’ll just be a footnote.
