The View From Here . . .
By Bob Morgan, Jr.

While one hopes that the 2008 presidential election will primarily be decided on such issues as Iraq, Iran, the war on terror, the economy and health care, it is an unmistakable aspect of our politics that matters far removed from these cerebral topics often intrude into the debate. In particular, the families of the candidates receive substantial, even outsized, attention.

This is not a new phenomenon. For example, President Franklin Roosevelt's wife, Eleanor, was an extremely polarizing figure and President John Kennedy's wife, Jacqueline, an extremely popular one. It has been suggested that people want to be comfortable with a president who will be in their living rooms for the next four years and that a candidate's family is a part of the comfort factor. In the last election, for example, the public warmed far more to Laura Bush than it did to Teresa Heinz Kerry.

And no doubt much attention will be paid the candidate's families in the upcoming election. Already we have seen denigrating comments about Fred Thompson's wife on the Joe Scarborough show and rather too personal remarks about her husband by Michelle Obama (who otherwise gets high marks on the campaign trail). And, more soberly, there is Elizabeth Edwards, who was di-agnosed with a form of incurable breast cancer, but has remained very outspoken during the campaign season. Perhaps the best family-related quip of the campaign belongs to Mitt Romney who, speaking of some key members of the Republican field, declared that "the only one of these guys who hasn't had multiple wives is the Mormon".

But the family issues are most likely to manifest themselves in respect of the two frontrunners of the race, Republican Rudy Giuliani and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Giuliani's troubled marital history has certainly been frequently recounted, and in particular the end of his marriage to Donna Hanover Giuliani and subsequent remarriage to his pre-sent spouse, Judith Nathan Giuliani. More recently, there have been accounts of discord between Mr. Giuliani and his children.

Mr. Giuliani added to the problem in a flap that became public last week. In an apparent effort to show how close he was to his wife, he interrupted an appearance before the National Rifle Association to take a personal call from Judith. Apparently he has done this on a number of previous occasions. The normally supportive editorial page of the Wall Street Journal chided the former mayor for "odd behavior" and its conservative political analyst, John Fund, also similarly weighed in on the matter.

But if Mr. Giuliani seems to bring a lot of family baggage to the campaign, Mrs. Clinton certainly does as well, and not because of any personal indiscretion on her part. Voters will have to determine how comfortable they feel with Bill Clinton back in the White House, this time as First Spouse. Mr. Clinton's personal history in the White House is not at all reassuring, and there may or may not be much of an appetite for rumors of mistresses and potential discord between the President and her spouse.

Like it or not, candidates have to deal with the considerable interest in their family life. A campaign that cannot make the voters at least comfortable with the individual as a person, and not just the policies he or she espouses, will likely suffer considerably at the polls.