IMANE KURDIWatching Ann Romney on Tuesday night I thought wow, what a woman! She's 63 but looks more than a decade younger (at least on TV), she has five sons, 18 grandchildren, she's survived breast cancer, she lives with multiple sclerosis and she makes cup cakes for the press! Apparently m&m cup cakes are a particular speciality of hers, recipe available online for those of you who are interested. And she knows how to give a speech! She was wheeled out to make Mitt Romney likeable. She was there to show us his warm, soft side, and of course to appeal to women voters. How amusing too that she turned the famous adage among women “never trust a man who says trust me" around: “you can trust Mitt" she told us. As a wife, mother and grandmother she told fellow American women that they could trust her husband, and perhaps they can, but I wonder, if the Republicans want to win this election surely it is the votes of women who voted Obama they want to steal and not the vote of conservative, rich, stay-at-home wives? Those votes they've presumably already got, it's the so-called soccer moms or other derivative thereof that they need to win over: middle-class educated women with jobs and children. If I were a soccer mom, juggling with keeping a job and bringing up a family, rushing from appointment to appointment, how would I react to seeing the very perfect Mrs. Romney giving me recipes for making cup-cakes? Surely I would think: oh how I wish I had the time! And so I looked back to elections I have followed closely in recent years and wondered would the candidate I favored be the same if my vote was based solely on who he or she came home to? Certainly to my eyes Ann Romney cannot cast a shadow over Michelle Obama for whom I have great admiration. She represents my own social values far more closely than Ann Romney. Ditto in France, though the continuing soap opera of the rivalry between Segolene Royal, Hollande's ex-wife and Valerie Trierweiler, his current partner, irritates me by its pettiness — three books have come out this week just about the relationship between them — I identify more strongly with both Royal and Trierweiler than the previous duo of Carla Bruni and Cecilia Sarkozy now Attas. Essentially given a choice between daughters of privilege who have got ahead based on their looks and family connections and intelligent women who have fought through study and hard work to make a place for themselves in society, the latter win hands down. Well it's hardly surprising to find that the spouses reflect the social values of their partners, but what of likeability? It is — unfortunately — the main reason wives are brought out on the campaign trail. Whilst the main man can concentrate on the politics and the economics, the woman he shares his life is there to show us what a nice man he really is. In fact an appealing partner can be a great asset to a president. Do you remember the “Rose in the Desert"? Ah how times change, a couple of years ago Asma Al-Assad was on magazine covers, in lengthy interviews in quality newspapers as well as trashy photo-led pieces in lesser media, with journalists and editors fawning over her. She was the queen of the puff piece. Perhaps because she was British-born as interviewers always reminded us, this woman was portrayed as a beacon of light that was bringing modernity and sweetness to Syria. Long before, François Hollande decided to portray himself as the “normal" president, Bashar Al-Assad beat him to it, for here we had the first couple posing as an ordinary family, telling us how things worked in their household, pretending to be just regular people who live as you and I do. They were feted by politicians and the crème de la crème of Western society too. Finally, Syria was run by people we could like! All change now of course. At first there was the attempt to portray Asma as someone who had been duped. Reports emerged that she had tried to flee back to England with her children, or more recently to Russia, but the truth won out, try as hard as you could, you could not deny that she supports her husband and stands by his side. But how can she? I often here my friends tell me. How can someone so nice live with someone so evil? It's cute as an argument. How much is her presumed niceness due to her looking “to all appearances English" as the American Vogue piece had put it? How much of the shock of seeing her support a man killing his own people is due to her being identified with Western values? Bashar is his father's son. She knew the family she was marrying into. You do not marry a tyrant's son innocently. Those who were duped are those who thought that wearing designer clothes and growing up in London made you immune to the corruption of power. Asma Al-Assad is probably as lovely as she looks in the pictures, it does not mean she is not the wife of a man who runs a repressive regime, with all that entails. At the end of the day, likeability will give you great PR, just as long as you don't look too close. — Imane Kurdi is a Saudi writer on European affairs. She can be reached at [email protected]
