He was, in other words, an ideal candidate for First Spouse of the United States, and every time another candidate’s significant other has been described as “shy” or “uninterested in the spotlight,” the answer seemed obvious: Whether or not we elected Pete Buttigieg, we should get to hire his husband.

From an electoral-math perspective, Buttigieg’s and Amy Klobuchar’s decisions to drop out of the presidential race made perfect sense. But from a historical perspective, the departure of the first out gay contender and yet another female candidate have nearly extinguished the chances of another first: a man in the East Wing.

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Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Harris, Gillibrand: all gone, along with their husbands. That means it’s down to two guys: Elizabeth Warren’s husband, Bruce Mann — First Mann, lol — and Tulsi Gabbard’s husband, Abraham Williams. Who, frankly, I just had to Google to remember if he even existed (Yes), while simultaneously checking whether Gabbard had quietly dropped out yet (No). Warren is hanging on, but barely.

Consider this an elegy for the first gentlemen who might have been.

The prospect of a female president is intoxicating and important, a necessary benchmark for gender equality. But the symbolic corollary of a woman poring over China policy is a man poring over china patterns. Truly, we need both. And, given that studies have shown men are even more boxed into traditional gender roles than women, we need them both soon.

There’s still been a lingering tee-hee surrounding the conversations about a first gentleman. A sense that such a thing would involve a self-conscious bit of playacting by some poor fellow who would have to figure out how to carry out official duties while preserving his delicate manhood. When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was tapped to serve as John McCain’s running mate in 2007, her husband, Todd, let it be known that he preferred the moniker “First Dude,” which sounds like the title of a ’90s comedy starring Matt LeBlanc doing Go-Kart doughnuts on the South Lawn. “First Dude probably doesn’t host many teas,” read the headline of an Associated Press article in the Los Angeles Times, which opened with a scene of Todd barreling toward Fairbanks on a snowmobile. His wife, meanwhile, was negotiating the state budget in Juneau, but she still dragged herself onto a plane to cheer him on at his race’s finish line.

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Followers of Family Circle’s longtime first lady cookie competition — pitting candidate’s wives against each other in a bake-off — will remember that the recipe Bill Clinton submitted in 2016 was in fact the same recipe that Hillary submitted to the magazine’s contest in the 1990s, now rebranded as “the Clinton Family’s chocolate chip cookies.” What a missed opportunity. Bill is famously vegan — couldn’t he have at least asked the family chef to help him create a dairy-free update?

Of course, copious column inches were spent speculating what kind of proxy presidenting Bill might do in Round 2 at the White House. Granted, his skill set was a little more enhanced than a typical spouse. But nobody seemed able to wrap their minds around the idea of asking, let alone demanding, that a man should choose the annual holiday decorations, host garden parties and select state dinner centerpieces, without pay, as we’d already once asked his wife and every other first lady to do for 250 years.

If Bill or Todd had ended up in the White House, or the vice president’s residence at the Naval Observatory, one imagines how it would have gone down: The gentlemen decline to do all the traditional frilly stuff, instead maintaining their own pursuits and interests (politicking, snowmobiling), and nobody bats an eye. Meanwhile Hillary Clinton screams into her pillow, remembering that Family Circle’s cookie competition only originated when, in 1992, she dared to admit she wasn’t personally into baking, and the public all but duct-taped a rolling pin to her hand.

But maybe things would be different now. This crop of prospective first gents showed real promise.

We had, for example, Amy Klobuchar’s husband, John Bessler, showing up to fundraising potlucks on his wife’s behalf, toting tater-tot casseroles and communing with his fellow Midwesterners. Currently, he serves on the Senate spouse club’s hospitality committee; Klobuchar likes to tell the story of spotting her husband walking across the Capitol lawn, carrying a pink box. When she asked what he was doing, he cheerfully explained, “I’m going to Jim Webb’s wife’s baby shower.”

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We had Kamala Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, leaping onstage at one of his wife’s events to help escort away a protester who was interrupting her Q&A, proudly festooning himself in Kamala apparel and hashtagging her candidacy like he’d been training for it his whole life. We still have Bruce Mann, who brings the family’s golden retriever to Warren’s public events, and who, when Warren asked him to list pro and con reasons for a presidential run, refused to impose himself. “You’re going to run anyway,” he told her, recounting the conversation on CNN. He said he knew she’d regret it if she didn’t.

In many ways, the role of first lady is antiquated, based on a marital arrangement — working husband, stay-at-home wife — that the majority of Americans no longer experience. In many ways, I’d like nothing more than to see presidential spouses of either gender take one look at the job description and say, “I’m a professional lawyer/accountant/librarian, you’re going to need to outsource all of these decisions to a professional florist/decorator/caterer because I just don’t care all that much about our ‘Thanksgiving mood.’ ”

But until we create a new position of First Host (Chasten. Hire Chasten.), I’m lamenting all the first gentlemen we didn’t get to have. The gentlemen who could have taught us that looking great in a designer gown at an inaugural ball should not be a requirement for being a first spouse, but who also could have taught us that men can be competent, enthusiastic, china-choosing, baby shower-hosting East Wingers, too.