Many Americans who are turning up at huge rallies for the 2008 presidential nominations are disappointed that the one person they want to vote for in November is not a candidate. On most podiums, she stands taller than the men on the stage and is attractive, with a figure that models starve and exercise to the point of illness to maintain. That alone would probably have been reason enough for Bill Clinton to endorse her as his choice for the next US presidency, if only his wife, Hillary, was not in the running for the White House.

If this dusky woman’s husband, Barack Obama, makes it to the White House in January 2009, he will have a lot to thank her for. On Sunday, Michelle Obama escorted Stevie Wonder, a long-time friend of the Clintons, before a 7,000-plus crowd at the University of California in Los Angeles. The crowd rose to sing with Stevie Wonder for her husband. Later, the crowd roared deliriously as Michelle sprang a national surprise and got Maria Shriver, wife of California’s actor-turned-Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to share the stage with her in support of Barack Obama.

The current campaign for electing a new American president is already the stuff of history. Not merely because a black man or a woman is likely to be the next occupant of the White House, but for a variety of reasons, some trivial and interesting, others substantive and serious.

It may be some comfort for those who complain that India has an aged political leadership to know that the Republican frontrunner, John McCain, 71, could raise a desperately-needed campaign loan only after he took a huge life insurance policy and mortgaged that policy, as demanded by his creditors. No one in Washington can recall anything like that in any previous election in the United States of America.

The current campaign could be a turning point for America for many reasons. Last week, TV channel CBS asked each presidential candidate in both parties “what is the one book other than the Bible” that they would take with them to the White House. McCain, the long-serving senator from Arizona, who is weak in economics, promptly said Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, “because we may be entering some pretty shaky economic times”. Politically-correct Obama mentioned a biography of Abraham Lincoln. What Hillary Clinton said by way of reply eloquently summed up what this election is all about. “I would certainly bring my copy of the (American) Constitution because there was apparently not a copy in the Bush White House to the best I can determine,” she told CBS.

There are more holy cows in US presidential campaigns than in the politics of most democracies around the world. Given the nature of the US political system, the media and the combination of fear and complacence in American society, no candidate who confronts the truth can hope to win. For several decades now, in election after election, presidential hopefuls have, therefore, stayed on the straight and narrow campaign path, thrived on vote banks and managed to win by adding a few votes here and there, taking as few political risks as are allowed by a system that gives no room for innovation either in ideas or in strategy.

For this reason, Michelle Obama has already shown herself to be refreshingly different. And because she is different, she is catching the imagination of the American people. When Michelle tells the people of Delaware that she and Barack have been out of debt for no more than three years because of the loans they took for studying in Harvard, she strikes a chord with her listeners, especially the college-going youth, who have registered in unusual numbers to vote this year.

When she talks about her two daughters, nine-year-old Malia and six-year-old Sasha, and worries that the Obamas are only a few years from having to take more loans for the education of their two girls, she is articulating the worries of millions of American parents. When she tells Californians that Americans can no longer afford to be nurses and teachers and social workers because they cannot make both ends meet with such jobs, her audiences nod in assent as if they are hearing their own inner voices. The crowds at Michelle Obama’s rallies represent a sea change from TV clips that showed yawns — stifled or otherwise — during speeches by George W. Bush during his 2004 re-election campaign or the polite applauses that greeted Al Gore in 2000, when he delivered his heavy policy speeches that most Americans could not comprehend.

Spouses are playing a huge role this year in electing the next American president. Perhaps that was only to be expected, what with Bill Clinton throwing himself into the campaign for his wife as the primary season for candidate selection warmed up. Bill cheekily remarked about Hillary during his first presidential campaign in 1992 that if he were elected to the White House, Americans would get “two for the price of one”.

It has been the unstated, but underlying, theme of the current Clinton campaign that if Hillary is elected president, it would be a co-presidency, with Bill making up for any experience that Hillary may be lacking in.

Bill Clinton’s overarching role in the campaign on behalf of his wife has enabled her to experiment with, change and mould election strategies in a way no other candidate has been able to do. In Iowa, traditionally the first caucus in every presidential season, Bill touted Hillary’s experience. When voters opted for change over experience, he quickly packaged change in gender terms. When Hillary worked up her tears before a national audience, women marched in droves to voting stations and elected her in New Hampshire and then in Nevada. When his divisive strategy of injecting race into electioneering and portraying Barack Obama as the black candidate backfired, Bill went to black churches in California on Sunday and apologized for what he had done to Obama in South Carolina only a few days earlier. Bill’s ability to ask for forgiveness with an absolutely straight face — which the world is familiar with from his apology after being exposed in the Monica Lewinsky scandal — is a great asset for Hillary in this campaign. It allows the couple the luxury of making mistakes and then resorting to course correction in a way no other candidate has been given room for this year.

The role of spouses is by no means limited to the two Democrats left in the race for the White House. It works on the Republican side, too, although the dynamic there is entirely different. Barack Obama and his wife seldom campaign together. Even at victory rallies, Michelle appears with her husband only fleetingly and leaves the stage entirely to Barack. It is the same with Bill and Hillary Clinton.

But on the Republican side, the wives of the three leading candidates stand dutifully, but silently, beside their husbands at every single election meeting. In doing so, they are being loyal to their husbands’ Republican base. Cindy McCain is heiress to her huge Hensley family fortune and she has been a cheerleader and rodeo queen in her time. Good-looking and elegant, Cindy, 18 years younger to her septuagenarian husband, is a good foil to John at campaign appearances where every moment is captured on TV. The wife of Mike Huckabee, Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor, has rarely been seen opening her mouth although hers is a ubiquitous presence at any spot where her husband chooses to be. Mitt Romney’s wife too has never been seen exercising her vocal chords.

As a member of the Mormon church, which still extols male dominance and which ended polygamy only when it became unlawful, it is not known if the silence of Romney’s wife during the campaign is self-imposed or ordained by the conventions of her church. Whatever the truth, the irony is that the silence of the wives of the Republican presidential aspirants is as loud as the eloquence of the spouses of the Democratic candidates for 2008.