Suddenly, Michelle Obama is everywhere: Hosting ABC’s “The View”; dissected on page one of the New York Times; occupying movie-star space on the cover of US Weekly magazine. And with a straight face, Barack Obama declares his wife “off limits” for political attacks? Then he coyly adds, “I will never consider making Cindy McCain a campaign issue.”

Never mind that the Democratic National Committee has already made an issue of Cindy McCain’s refusal to make her tax returns public, Obama knows full well that his wife is fair political game like any other of his surrogates. After all, he could fire Samantha Power, his foreign-policy adviser who called Hillary Clinton a “monster” – not so Michelle Obama.

The same is true of Cindy McCain, who also took on “The View’s” host duties and recently detoured off the campaign trail to Vietnam, visiting one of her charities in a not-so-subtle reminder of her husband’s war record. Both candidates’ wives – and it is still wives – will be scrutinized as if they were running for the top job themselves. That’s the way it has been since the beginning of the republic.

When Martha Washington arrived in the temporary capital of New York as the original first lady, she knew from experience that anything she said, did or wore could make headlines. A lover of fine silks, she had the public-relations sense to make her inaugural appearance in simple homespun, a precursor to Pat Nixon’s plain cloth coat.