The Clintons campaign in Iowa/New York Times photo

The appellation “First Laddie” — used by reporter Bob von Sternberg in his story today about Bill Clinton’s funraising trip to Minneapolis – is one that Clinton himself has jokingly raised. He did so recently on Oprah and earlier this year at the Aspen Institute.

The role that the former president would play if there’s another Clinton administration, and the Bill and Hillary marriage and political partnership, are among the most intriguing story lines of the presidential campaign.

Here are a number of recent stories examining the Bill factor in this race.

This weekend, the British Sunday Observer had this look at the Clintons, including this line: “By now we’ve come to expect experiments in political androgyny from the Clintons.”

Here’s another British media story, from earlier this month, in which Bill talks about being a sort of roving ambassador in his wife’s administration “to help restore America’s standing in the world.”

And here is a story about a story you won’t see: a GQ magazine article that the Clintons reportedly pressured the magazine to kill. Here is the Politico.com’s report.

CBS has this story about a book being released this week about the Clintons’ marriage and working relationship, “For Love of Politics: Bill and Hillary Clinton: The White House Years.” The story is here. The book is written by Vanity Fair’s Sally Bedell Smith.

That book is one of about 40 books by or about the Clintons, more than half written by critics, according to this Wall Street Journal story.

In the current issue of Newsweek, Michael Isikoff reports that Bedell Smith figured she would find a treasure trove of documents about Hillary’s role in Bill’s White House, including the health care fiasco, at Bill Clinton’s presidential library in Little Rock. Not so. Three years after the library opened, “barely one half of 1 percent of the 78 million pages of documents and 20 million e-mail messages at the federally funded facility are public,” he writes.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton’s appearance in Minnesota meant that he didn’t join five other spouses of presidential candidates at a panel hosted by Maria Shriver in California. Here’s the story about that event.

And finally, in this light-hearted musing by two journalism students from Northwestern’s Medill, titled “Top 10 things Bill Clinton won’t do as First Lady,” they list: “Entertain the wives of visiting Head’s of State…It’s unlikely the former president will be left alone with anyone’s wife as his own hammers out treaties in the Oval Office.”

Which raises a whole host of questions if Hillary is elected:

What role should Bill play in her administration? How about leading health care reform?

What should he be called?

For that matter, what should Hillary be called? Mrs. President? Madam President? Madame President?

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