As we endure another election year, Parlor Politics author Catherine Allgor shared with us these thoughts on the unique significance of the First Lady…

Undoubtedly one of the brightest spots in the tedious, tendentious slog of the Republican presidential debates came in Jacksonville, Florida on January 26, when Wolf Blitzer asked the candidates which of their wives would be the best First Lady. The Twitt-O-Sphere went wild, howling at Gingrich’s gaffe that made him sound like he was evaluating all his wives for the job, mourning the loss of a good “Mormon joke moment” at Romney’s expense. Many commenters did indeed see the question as an occasion for comedy.

But the inquiry about First Lady aptitude was trying to get at something, albeit in a clumsy way. The role of the First Lady can be as important as it is hard to quantify. A look at our history shows that a woman with the right personal gifts and a taste for politics can make a difference in how Americans feel about a president. And that is what is potentially at stake. The “job” of First Lady (unappointed, unhired) can encompass many things, but the most successful First Ladies have acted as “charismatic figures” for their husbands’ administrations, transmitting larger-than-life images and messages of reassurance, legitimacy, and hope. As wives by their husbands’ sides, as mothers with their families, as remarkable women in their own right, they can say much to the issue of character and help turn the abstraction of “Candidate” into a person.

Dolley Madison reassured both Americans and Europeans that the infant republic and the new capital city were secure and growing endeavors and that the Madisons were the right people to rule them both. In the depths of a depression that called into question the American character, Eleanor Roosevelt made us feel moral and caring. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy was the symbol for a new era in US leadership, one that was young, bright, both cosmopolitan and American. A perfect fit for her husband’s presidency, Michelle Obama lets us know that people like us, middle-class strivers, have brought modern ideas and commonsense to Washington.

Every election season, some journalist asks me how much effect a First Lady or First Lady-hopeful has on the results. They’re looking for a percentage or some kind of number. Of course that’s impossible to provide (except perhaps in the case of the Ford election: don’t we think 100% of the Ford votes were for Betty?). But when a voter steps into the booth, how he or she feels about the candidate, whether the voter trusts one candidate over the other, that has everything to do with his wife.

So. Maybe not such a silly question after all.

Catherine Allgor has been thinking and writing about women and politics since the Clinton administration. A professor of history and Presidential Chair at the University of California at Riverside, Catherine’s books include a political biography of the First Lady who set the tone for all the others: A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation (Holt, 2006). Her first book was with the University of Virginia Press, Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government (2000). Her latest exploration of political women brings her home to Virginia with The Queen of America: Mary Cutts’s Life of Dolley Madison, due for release in Fall 2012.