Daddy Dearest: Candidates Balance Fatherhood, Ambitions

June 17, 2007 — -- This Father's Day placed a different take on the 2008 presidential race. It is a race among fathers. All but one of the male candidates for president, Bill Richardson, is a father.

Most of them are taking time off today, partly to be with their children and partly because being seen as a good father is good politics.

Out on the campaign trail, 63-year-old Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., jokes about his toddlers.

"I'm probably the only candidate who gets mail from AARP and diaper services," Dodd said.

Mitt Romney's five sons blog about being proud of their dad.

And when introducing her husband, Michelle Obama referred to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as "my babies' daddy."

Obama has been known to preach a bit about being a good dad.

"We got too many daddies not acting like daddies," he said. "They think that fatherhood ends at conception."

On the road to the White House, being seen as a good father figure sure doesn't hurt.

"You want somebody who has a strength of character, a noble heart, an ability to stay with things in tough times, to stare hard facts in the face and do something about them," said author and psychologist Stanley Renshon. "And you'd like to have such a person for a father and for president."

Being a father can cut both ways. Last month, Rudy Giuliani sat in the balcony and snuck out early at his daughter's graduation.

His son Andrew told reporters in March he hadn't been talking to his father, saying, "I have problems with my father, but that doesn't mean he won't make a great president."

"It's just confirming the truth of Rudy Giuliani," Renshon said. "He's a strong, sometimes acerbic guy, and you wouldn't expect him to be much different in family life as you would in public life."

John McCain rarely talks about his seven children, including Jimmy, who's in the Marines and may be headed to Iraq.

John Edwards doesn't often mention Wade, the teenage son he lost to a car accident. But that loss has shaped his candidacy.

"There's a strange freedom or liberty as if nothing can touch me now: 'What can hurt me. what can a loss do, what can critics say, that could hurt worse than this?'" author Doug Wead said. "It gives them a strange freedom for them to pursue what they believe."

Edwards won a father of the year award last week. But being a stellar father doesn't necessarily mean a successful presidential term.

"History shows that it is often the reverse," Wead said. "Sometimes, bad fathers make great presidents. And there are some good fathers who make bad presidents."