First Pardner

If Hillary Clinton becomes president there will be two firsts: the first woman president, and the first president’s husband. What will we call him? First Lord, as in lords and ladies? That’s too gender oriented, but then so is First Lady. From a more gender neutral perspective, the First Spouse? Or perhaps the First Significant Other?

Or we could use a term that annoys me, First Partner. It annoys me because it makes love sound like a business arrangement. The other problem with it is that we might assume that the couple sharing the bed in the white house is a gay couple from an old cowboy movie, call him First Pardner. I would have no problem with that, but it simply wouldn’t be accurate.

Along with the conundrum of what we call that fellow hanging around the White House with nothing really to do except maybe overhaul our health care system, it would be Bill Clinton. Imagine that. Bill Clinton hanging around the White House with nothing to do. What do they say about idle hands? Just imagine what a field day the tabloids would have! If you think we have a dysfunctional press corps at the White House now, every presidential press conference would start off with questions about what Bill was up to.

Actually, it almost makes you want to vote for Hillary. Almost. She’s still the one who was on the board of WalMart. She’s still the one who recently said of relations with Iran, “All options are on the table.” Does that mean an all out nuclear strike is on the table? That’s what “all options” means to me.

And Bill strikes me as a kibitzer, a back-seat president of the worst kind. Hillary might even make him ambassador to France just to get him out of the house.