A lot of things have already happened during the 2016 presidential campaign that no one would have believed possible in terms of unlikely candidates becoming frontrunners and frontrunners becoming also-rans (see Trump, Donald and Bush, Jeb). But those aren’t the only unexpected developments. Given the way vulgarity has infiltrated virtually every aspect of American popular culture, we probably shouldn’t be shocked at some things that are said and published in politics. If Americans want a president without a filter and who is ready to say just about anything about his opponents, why should anyone be surprised that Donald Trump would comment about Hillary Clinton’s bathroom break during the Democratic debate. If behaving like a gentleman even when discussing opponents was still considered a prerequisite for the job, I guess Trump wouldn’t be leading in the polls.

Nor should we be terribly surprised that even candidates’ children are now considered fair game. That was the upshot when Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes decided to draw a piece scorching Senator Ted Cruz and his children. The conceit of the cartoon was that Cruz was exploiting his two little daughters by including them in a humorous video that appeared on Saturday Night Live. According to Telnaes, their presence at his side there made them fair game and she took full advantage depicting Cruz as an organ grinder and the two kids, aged 7 and 5, as monkeys. Cruz responded angrily and was supported in his outrage by rivals Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush.

To his credit, Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt quickly took the cartoon down. He explained in a note that he hadn’t seen the piece before it was published and disagreed with Telanes’ belief that the circumstances warranted an exception to the paper’s general policy of “leaving kids out of it.”

But the damage had already been done and as many on the right pointed out, it’s difficult to imagine Telnaes or any member of the mainstream liberal media ever thinking that President Obama’s children were fair game for that sort of skewering. Indeed, rather than the gentle reproof Telnaes received any cartoonist that depicted Sasha and Malia Obama as monkeys would be damned as a racist, fired, and drummed out of journalism.

The notion that there was anything uniquely crass about the presence of Cruz’s children in what was, after all, a Christmas parody video rather than a straight political ad, is absurd. Politicians use their kids as “props” all the time and none in recent history has been more shameless about it than Obama.

But this kerfuffle is more than a reminder of the always-potent double standard in American politics by which conservatives are subjected to the sort of harsh treatment that liberals don’t get. It’s also an indicator of the way politicians are treated as celebrities and presidents and their families as royalty rather than as fellow citizens.

The notion that political spouses, especially those of presidents, are actually office holders in some sense has been gradually growing over the course of the last century. It has gotten to the point where we now take it for granted that anyone running for president must bring with them a suitable surrogate spouse who will be at least symbolic partners in the running of the country.

Hillary Clinton’s eight years as First Lady is considered an important part of her resume and not just the prelude to a political career in her own right. Those who wish to follow in her footsteps are judged by their willingness to be outspoken. In particular, Marco Rubio’s wife Jeanette has been subjected to the kind of scrutiny that you might think would only be accorded the actual candidates. Her traffic tickets became a cause célèbre last summer after the New York Times highlighted her traffic tickets and a recent Times profile portrayed her as a reluctant participant in her husband’s career. For some the diffidence of the onetime Miami Dolphins cheerleader is not an appropriate attitude for a future First Lady. Given the general unwillingness in most of the mainstream liberal media to probe too deeply into Bill Clinton’s activities at his family foundation, the attention given Jeanette Rubio and Ted Cruz’s kids is, to put it mildly, curious.

I’m sure Mrs. Rubio will be just fine if she’s the one who winds up holding the bible for the taking of the president oath in January 2017. But perhaps the problem here isn’t just the obvious double standard at play. Maybe it’s a political culture that pushes family members into the fray whether they have asked for it or not and then treats them as royalty once in office provided they are members of the right party.

I don’t think the Obama children should be given the same treatment meted out to the Cruz girls. But I also think we’d be better off if Michelle Obama and whoever follows her in that role were covered in a manner that doesn’t convey the notion that they are anything other than the wives (or husbands) of politicians. As the Federalist Papers’ noted, the person we choose as our president is just an “elective magistrate,” not a “hereditary monarch.”

I believe this manner in which political spouses are both attacked and glamorized is part and parcel of the growth of an imperial presidency whereby the resident of the White House is truly given royal powers. A president that can circumvent Congress via executive orders or conclude treaties without subjecting them to the advice and consent of the Senate is also the sort of person whose family will be treated by an adoring press as members of a higher caste than the peasants that voted them into the mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue.

With that in mind, perhaps a good rule of thumb would not only be to “leave children out of it” but to stop covering these people as if they were running for king and queen of the United States. If we did, maybe we’d waste less time on defaming or defending the children of candidates, but also that we might have presidents that don’t feel free to govern as if there were no Constitutional checks and balances on their already vast power. Oh, and it might also be nice if they behaved like ladies and gentlemen on the campaign trail.