Bringing a Date to Your Public Humiliation

An on-target letter to The Corner’s Mark Hemingway on the “stand by your man” phenomena: Bringing a Date to Your Public Humiliation.

I’m not willing to criticize the wife of a politician on the issue of whether she stands there or doesn’t. Certainly not on the issue of whether she remains married or doesn’t - I was always taken aback by those (many of whom at least talk in bumper-sticker terms about “family values”) who wanted Hillary Clinton to divorce Bill.

Whatever we may think about when it is appropriate to divorce, it is wrong to encourage a person (and in a bow to real life, I’ll say “a person who is not a close relative or friend”) to dissolve a marriage unless that person is incapable of making competent decisions.

What I would like to see, however, is a politician show up without his wife and say: (1) she wanted to stand here with me; (2) I am grateful for her support; but (3) I told her “no” - I’m the one who failed and I’m the one who should bear the public scorn.

But that would require that one of these knuckleheads was, emotionally, a grown man.

Exactly right.

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