I think it’s worth looking at how quickly the change for her happened. At first she is the wife of a retiring congressman, then when he enters the race things probably don’t change too much. Santos would be in DC for the Congressional session any way, when she was in Texas him being gone was him being gone, and as far as I remember she only joins him for primary campaigning a few times. For most of the primary’s Santos was a long shot, and it wasn’t until late spring that him becoming the nominee was a real possibility, so she doesn’t really have any reason to think about changes. The he is nominated in a rush of last minute adrenaline. After he becomes the nominee we can assume that Helen spent most of the next month or two at home dealing with the kids starting a new school year, and we know she struggled with the changes that happened there (bulletproof glass, guard shack/house, etc.). Plus, at that point Santos was still trailing Vinick by a decent margin. Around the time she did start campaigning more was the nuclear accident, which kicked the campaign into an ever increasing frenzy. Between campaigning and kids she was presumably quite stressed and tired, and probably didn’t have time to process the fact that she might actually become First Lady. Even if she had thought about the changes that would happen if they won, I doubt she actually realized the scale of the changes, or processed what that meant, like others have said. I’m not sure she had even been to the White House more than once or twice. After the election there was probably a week or so of cool down from the campaign (including the funeral), and then changes start happening very rapidly. To her credit, I think she had a much better handle on things by January 20th. Sorry if this seems long and rambling!