Don’t Call Jeri Thompson a “Trophy Wife”

Robert Novak has an excellent column up today dispelling the notion that Fred Thompson’s wife, Jeri, is some sort of “trophy wife.”

The archetypal “trophy wife” (a phrase coined by Fortune magazine 18 years ago) conjures up the image of a rich corporate executive who tires of and abandons the woman he married when they both were young and has grown old with, and turns to a young, chic new wife, usually seen as a home wrecker. Mrs. Thompson does not fit that mold. Thompson had been divorced for 17 years and was on friendly terms with his first wife when he married Jeri Kehn in 2002. They also have two small children — not the trophy wife caricature either.

Nor does Mrs. Thompson’s background fit the caricature. After working for the Senate Republican Conference and the Republican National Committee, she became a big-time political media consultant in Washington. She has been intimately involved in the planning of her husband’s campaign, including last week’s staff shakeup. When Tom Collamore left as Thompson’s campaign manager, he told CNN that he was “very respectful of the desire of Fred and Jeri to make some changes as they move to the next level.” Those comments generated whispers in the political community that whoever ran this campaign would have to answer to the candidate’s wife.

Actually, Collamore is a former bureaucrat and tobacco lobbyist with vastly less political experience than Mrs. Thompson. Not even Collamore’s friends could conceive of him running a national political campaign.