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Bloggers' Notebook: Potential First Spouses
by Josh Gerstein
Tue, 23 Oct 2007 at 11:51 PM
updated Tue, 23 Oct 2007 at 11:51 PM
Five of the potential first spouses who could occupy the White House in 2009 were publicly auditioned Tuesday by California's first lady, Maria Shriver, at an annual conference she holds to discuss women's issues.
Ms. Shriver, a former NBC broadcaster, had done her homework and conducted modestly-pointed questioning of Ann Romney, Michelle Obama, Jeri Thompson, Elizabeth Edwards, and Cindy McCain, though as they bantered I sometimes thought I'd tuned in to a special installment of "The View."
President Clinton was invited, but decided not to turn out. More on that in my story for the Sun, which is or will be available here.
The audience of 14,000 (many of whom appeared to work for the corporate sponsors of Ms. Shriver's conference) seemed fascinated with the women's tales of life on the campagn trail. However, The New York Sun's unscientific sampling of attendees suggested that the chat swayed few votes.
The women I spoke with after the confab said they were most impressed with Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Edwards. Less glowing reviews went to Mrs. Thompson.
"She's a little green," Maria Rojas of Gardena, Calif. said. She called Mrs. Thompson, 41, "too young to be first lady." Ms. Rojas said she's a big fan of Mr. Clinton and will probably support Senator Clinton's White House bid.
"I found it quite interesting how they were juggling their lives being on the campaign trail," Joyce Douglas, an administrative assistant from Carson, Calif., said. "I did want to see Bill up there though," she added with a laugh.
An administrator at a new charter school in Long Beach, Christina Sbarra, said the session might have an impact on her vote. "It does matter, the person who is first lady," she said. Ms. Sbarra said she liked Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Edwards, but is pondering whether to vote for Senator Obama or Bill Richardson. Ms. Sbarra said she found Mrs. Romney "inauthentic" and detects the same trait in Mrs. Clinton.
One of the more amusing moments at yesterday's session came when Mrs. Romney fretted about the impact on children of "nasty" and "negative" campaigning, just after she joked about her husband, Mitt Romney, being trounced by Ms. Shriver's uncle, Senator Kennedy, in the 1994 Senate race in Massachusetts. "My kids were younger when my husband ran against your uncle," Mrs. Romney said. "You taught us all we know."
Another good laugh followed presentations by an actress, Jamie Lee Curtis, an actor and environmental activist, Ed Begley Jr., who pedaled to the stage on a bicylcle, and an executive from British Petroleum who went on at some length about a "green" gas station where employees lecture customers about how to reduce their carbon footprint. Ms. Curtis boasted that the boxed lunches for the gathering were "zero-waste" and would be fully recycled. However, the boxes contained bottles of trendy Fiji water, which has been decried by environmentalists because it is shipped across the ocean from the island nation, releasing substantial volumes greenhouse gases. (A non-recyclable lunch with tap water would probably have been friendlier to the environment.)
Fiji and other marketers at what the manic Ms. Curtis dubbed "the world's largest estrogen festival" seem to have decided that going green is a good way to appeal to women. Many of the big companies in the conference's exhibition hall, were touting their green cred. So too was Mr. Begley, who was hawking green cleaning supplies, as a celebrity chef, Martin Yan, whipped up some dishes on purportedly planet-friendly General Electric appliances.
Organizers of the long-planned annual event decided to go forward with it despite the dislocation of more than 300,000 people in the San Diego area by fires. The crisis prompted Ms. Shriver's husband, Governor Schwarzenegger to cancel his in-person visit at the last minute and subsititute an appearance via video link. Many of the sessions and speeches Tuesday opened with some expression of solidarity with the fire victims.
Related Topics: Dem Primary, General Election, GOP Primary
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