In an interview for ABC’s 20/20 Republican Presidential Candidate Rudy Giuliani made remarks about the role of his wife in his administration that has resulted in some minor waves. He told interviewer Barbara Walters that if elected president he could see his wife attending cabinet meetings.

The role of the First Lady has regularly been under scrutiny in the history of the country. Tradition more than any established or constitutional rule created the position and each First Lady has made the role her own. Since the White House is both the office and residence of the Chief Executive someone has always been responsible for making it a home. With the attitudes of the nation being what they were in our past this often meant the wife of the president, when there was a wife, took on the role of keeping up the manor as well as attending to social functions.

It hasn’t always been the case though. Many First Ladies have shied away from being a socialite and several have shied away from running the home at all. Often these roles were given to children, nieces, cousins etc. Some First Ladies stayed away from the White House & Washington itself as much as possible.

In recent times the role of the First Lady expanded into policy. Eleanor Roosevelt campaigned openly for her husbands ‘New Deal’. She held weekly press conferences, traveled extensively, championed civil rights, co-chared a committee on civil defense and after the War worked with others to draft the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She received a great deal of criticism for her roles and much was written and said negatively about the impact she had on the administration.

Nancy Reagan took a rather public role and established the ‘Just Say No’ campaign and talked to the press regularly to help shape her husbands image to the outside world. She rather famously also took a large role in setting her husbands schedule, reportedly using an astrologer to figure out the appropriate times for meetings and creating a color coded schedule the president would have to follow. This lead to a rather unpleasant exchange with Ronald Reagans Chief of Staff who hung up the phone after an argument with Ms. Reagan. After the president found out about the incident the Chief of Staff resigned. She received much criticism in the press for her activities and her dominance in the White House.

Perhaps the most vocal and visible First Lady was now Senator Hillary Clinton who is now Senator of NY and running for president. She was the First Lady to hold a graduate degree and to have a career of her own in the legal profession. She maintained an office in the White House with her own set of policy advisors and headed up a national health care initiative that was widely panned and was abandoned. She also received scorn and widespread objection to her involvement in shaping the administrations policies & agenda.

Perhaps the most powerful First Lady was Edith Wilson, wife of President Woodrow Wilson she kept her husbands incapacity after a stroke from the public as well as from his Vice President & Cabinet. During the remainder of his presidency Edith purportedly completed much of her husbands day-to-day tasks becoming what has been called a “shadow” president.

Beyond a hisorical sense Giuliani’s announcement was interesting politics. Most current polling shows Giuliani the frontrunner of the Republican Party & Senator Hillary Clinton the frontunner of the Democratic Party. This week Clinton received the endorsement of the National Organization of Woman and has also received a great deal of press for being a female candidate. With woman the majority of the country & Giuliani having suffered a bitter & very public divorce just a few short years ago, with a lot of scorn from womans groups placed on him he and his staff might be feeling the need to court woman.

Putting his current wife out as an equal with clout in his administration could be seen as a sharp political move in a general election. How it will play to the Republican base though will be interesting to see and how it will overcome the fact that he is running against a woman and how that will effect female voters remains to be seen as well.

An important point to note is how President Clinton used his wife while he campained for the 1992 election. He regularly said voters would get “two for the price of one” and let voters know his wife would take a public role, just as Giuliani is doing. Clinton received a great deal of scorn both during the campaign and while in office for this.

One important point to note is that Senator Clinton had built up a rather large career by the time she was first lady. In addition to her advanced degrees and very successful law career she had also worked on Capitol Hill several times, worked on national political campaigns, was on the board of directors for TCBY & Wal-Mart, had worked on policy initiatives while her husband was Gov. of Arkansas and had founded several organizations & even worked on the Impeachment hearings for Richard Nixon.

Judith Giuliani doesn’t hold those same credentials. Not to downplay her successes but she was a nurse and then a saleswoman before she married a very wealthy man and retired to a life as a socialite before her divorce. She was a charity campaigner as well as a top sales manager for a pharmaceutical company but there is no evidence that she has a grasp of public policy or experience in government.

Many will question her qualifications and undoubtedly question her place at cabinet meetings where giving her weight similar to a sitting Secretary of Defense or State might not be seen as appropriate. Personally in my opinion I don’t see how the “two for the price of one” argument would help his candidacy.

With that said, as mentioned above, the role of the First Lady is open to change and interpretation and often times as in the case of Laura Bush, First Lady to the current President, those who have entered expecting a more reserved role can find themselves more involved then planned. Each President sets a new tone, agenda and organization to his administration and if elected Mr. Giuliani will do so with his.