LADIES FIRST.(The Talk of the Town; politics and presidential spouses)

The legal concept of the femme couverte, whereby a woman, upon marrying, was absorbed into the person of her husband, was described by the eighteenth-century British scholar Sir William Blackstone in terms that reached for the metaphysical. "The very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband, under whose wing, protection, and cover she performs everything," Blackstone wrote, in his "Commentaries on the Laws of England." The notion that a woman who marries is, as if by some peculiar biochemical process, transformed into something like an extra organ of her husband, as functional and compliant as a healthy kidney, has ceased to exercise much persuasive power among the general public. Few contemporary wives are expected to conform without dissent to the beliefs, interests, and preoccupations of their husbands, and standup comedy would be the poorer if they did. But there is one class of wife among which evidence of independent thinking is usually a cause for public comment: the small but influential population of First Ladies.

It is generally assumed of a Presidential wife that she has signed on to the full slate of issues upon which her spouse earned his office, and any public hint of a divergence from the manifesto is treated as a titillating instance of politico-marital discord--or as a clue to what the President really believes and would support, were he not beholden to interest groups. Nancy Reagan was the covered wife par excellence; although she is now known to have urged her husband to make nice with Gorbachev, the main public point of distinction between her interests and Ronnie's was an intimacy with Jerry Zipkin. Barbara Bush's pro-choice inclinations, consistent with the relentless practicality displayed by her heel height and sensible hairdo, was taken to be a much more significant indicator of her husband's true position on abortion than anything he might have said to pro-life voters. Hillary Clinton, a First Lady of a different order, was nonetheless understood to be in political lockstep with her husband: Cardinal Ratzinger to Bill Clinton's Pope John Paul II, the ideological collaborator always two steps behind the irresistible public figure.

Laura Bush has been remarkably successful in maintaining the impression that there are no notable differences of political opinion between her and her husband, largely because she has let it be thought that when she is with her husband political opinions, much less political arguments, are not something upon which she wants to spend a lot of time. "I've always done what really traditional women do, and I've been very, very satisfied," she once said. Whether or not one is to believe her assertion that her discussions with the President range from the latest news of their daughters' progress to the latest news of their pets' progress, the First Lady has done a good job of convincing observers that words like "North Korea" and "al-Zarqawi"--to say nothing of "health," "Social Security," and "the environment"--are not bandied about the White House residence.

But the quiet blandness of Mrs. Bush has always excited the curiosity of her husband's detractors, largely because of its ...