On Being a First Gentleman

If Hillary wins, what will we do with Bill? Finding a role for the First Gentleman could be as challenging for Hillary as finding a way out of Iraq. A lot has been written about the plight of the political spouse, who is usually a woman. With the rise of women in politics, there's a whole new genre, the male spouse, which places the man in the unaccustomed supporting role.

A recent Gallup poll found that seven in 10 Americans think Bill Clinton would be mostly helpful to his wife should she win the presidency. They welcome the idea of him giving her informal policy advice and representing the country at ceremonial events around the world. But they draw the line at President Hillary giving him an official policy role in the White House or having him serve out her Senate term.

Whatever Hillary finds for him to do, Bill Clinton won't be marginalized given his outsized gift of charisma. Other men are not so ideally situated. Daniel Granholm Mulhern, married to Jennifer Mulhern Granholm, the first female governor of Michigan, talks openly about the stresses and strains on a marriage that occur when the woman overtakes the man in professional recognition. The governor and her husband were in Washington attending the National Governors Conference, where he was elected chair of the spouses's group. That job normally falls to the spouse of the group's chairman, but Arizona's Gov. Janet Napolitano is not married. So his peers, who are mostly women, elected Dan Mulhern. (There are only eight women governors, out of 50.) "I have learned how to be a potted plant," he says, "and in a weird twist of fate, I get more attention because I'm a guy in a traditional female role."

The couple cemented their egalitarian union when each took the other's last name. But until she ran for statewide office, he was the bigger deal, known for his talents as a political organizer and speechwriter while she practiced law in a local county office. Then Granholm was approached to run for attorney general of Michigan. In August 1998, as Mulhern stood listening to his wife deliver her acceptance speech, which he had crafted, he realized their 1-year-old needed a diaper change. He thought he had dealt with his feelings of jealousy at having his wife thrust into the limelight, but as he walked what seemed a quarter mile in the cavernous convention center to find a men's room that didn't even have a changing table, he felt a little bitter over how he was experiencing this historic moment in his family's life. As he kneeled on the tiled bathroom floor changing his son's diaper, he could hear God say, "Somebody's going to lead here and somebody is going to hold this family together—and guess which job is yours?"

Mulhern recounted this story before an audience of mostly graduate students from American University's Institute of Women and Politics. He's now a leadership coach, and his talk was titled, "Women and the Courage to Lead in the Company of Men." He says he's bilingual when it comes to the gender experience because in his family of seven, he was among three girls, all a year apart. But he is still, like most men, "wired to think we're in control." His message to these young career-oriented women: please don't make the man in your life irrelevant; "humor him," Mulhern suggested. He cited statistics that show women are outperforming men, and he spoke candidly, almost painfully so, about his efforts to find his place in the limelight focused upon his wife, who just won a second term as governor. He admitted that a major speech he had written for her had bounced back with so many changes, there were effectively two different speeches. He was so out of control when the staff assembled for the runthrough, he had to take a walk. "I know they were thinking, 'Who is this lunatic?' For me, it was an intense moment about control and relevance."

It's rare that a man will lift the curtain on his marriage to a powerful woman, and there were moments in Mulhern's talk that seemed better suited to the therapist's couch. But he is doing a service by examining a private dynamic that will become more common as more women excel in the public arena. One way he and the governor sort things out is to borrow a technique used in her campaigns; it's called "stay in your lane." The communications people stay out of fund-raising, and vice-versa. "Family is my lane now," he says. "I make the major decisions, and I live with the consequences. Jennifer would not make major decisions [on family] without consulting me." As for her professional life, he says simply, "I respect her turf."

But there are those moments when the lines blur. On a recent morning while she was doing radio interviews, putting on makeup and reading briefing papers, he suggested a "small tweak" in what she had said. The governor replied with some exasperation, "Just once could you say, 'nice job'." Easier said than done for Michigan's First Gentleman, but he's trying.