Stand By Your ...

Michelle Cottle, on the unhappy Mrs. Spitzer:

... how many men do you think would really do the same for their wives? Consider it: You wake up one morning to discover that the papers are awash in juicy details (and even juicier innuendo) about how you are such a loser that your woman went out looking to pay some young stud to scratch her itch. You are utterly humiliated. You want nothing more than to phone the meanest divorce lawyer in the state. Instead, you get to shower, shave, put on your special-occasion tie, and try your best to look aggreived yet supportive while standing two-steps behind your lying, cheating tramp of a wife--possibly even holding her hand--in front of God and 10,000 drooling reporters all thinking that you must be the most pitiful creature on the planet. Riiiight. That's gonna happen a lot.

Leaving aside the prostitution angle, it's hard to think of many recent adultery scandals involving politicians' marriages where the wife was accused of stepping out on her husband. There was the Andrew Cuomo/Kerry Kennedy marriage, where he charged her with adultery after they had already filed for divorce. There was the case of Nicolas and Cecilia Sarkozy: She conducted a public affair in 2005 - when he was conducting an affair as well, needless to say - and then returned to him during his campaign for the Presidency. (And we all know how that turned out.) Those are the only examples that spring to mind; can anyone think of others?

Comments

Did Cindy McCain have an affair a few years ago?

Posted by wj | March 11, 2008 12:15 PM

I have no examples for you, but it's interesting. On one hand, I know I wouldn't divorce my wife (who I would handicap at 4:1 for one day running for elected office) for cheating on me, at least, for doing it once. But on the other hand, I wouldn't be standing up there next to her during her press conference, helping her through it. Similarly, I'm almost positive she wouldn't divorce me if I cheated on her, even if she found out through the news (which I doubt was the case here). But if I were dumb enough to ask her to stand next to me and hold my hand (I will never be running for office anyway), I know what her answer would be: "you're on your own." I think that's fair.

Posted by hugo | March 11, 2008 12:25 PM

I believe Morris Udall's first (of three) wives stepped out on him and took up with someone else. That was around about 1965. (His second wife committed suicide).

The modal pattern of adultery which incorporates manifest female transgression would be a younger unmarried woman poaching some other woman's husband. (Of which the unfortunate Chandra Levy would be an example). Politicians tend to be in their middle fifties, not their middle twenties, and men do not tend to make 'success objects' out of women, whether these women be considerably older or not.

A more common type of misbehavior you might expect to see in women of mature years would be divorce suits initiated for reasons of occult disatisfaction on the part of the plaintiff (rather than for misconduct on the part of the defendant) and the alienation of fathers and children as a sequelae. These sorts of misbehaviors are much more difficult to treat in discrete news stories; one might also suspect that reporters (and others) who have not been the victims of the nation's divorce courts do not viscerally disapprove of this sort of behavior either.

Posted by Art Deco | March 11, 2008 12:25 PM

I really hope Hillary Clinton makes us find out. That would be fantastically delicious.

And if I were Mrs. Spitzer, I'd definitely tell Eliot to go to his damn press conference on his own.

Posted by right | March 11, 2008 12:36 PM

A political marriage isn't like a normal marriage, as the Clintons have proved over and over again--the accepted rules of fidelity just don't apply. For example, according to Suetonius, Livia actively procured young virgins for Augustus' bed, while Winnie Churchill reportedly just looked the other way. Naturally, Silda Spitzer looked awful yesterday--but for all we know, she may just be between cosmetic surgeries and hate cameras. Their 'marriage'--as we mortal folk understand the term--may have died years ago (especially if Millbank's hints about Spitzer's tastes in bed are true). After all, a quarter of all couples, married or unmarried, now sleep in separate bedrooms. Michelle Obama looks and sounds to me like a woman who's had to put up with a certain amount of this stuff, but I may be slandering the couple by such speculation, I dunno. All I know is that I don't have a 'political marriage', and that if my husband ever cheats on me, whether it's with a stranger on an airplane, my best friend, or a $4300 a night hooker, he's out on his ear. Period. End of subject. He knows this, so hopefully it won't ever happen. Because once a partner cheats, no matter how hard you try to 'work things out' for the sake of the kids or whatever, something irreplaceable is broken forever.

Posted by Hope Muntz | March 11, 2008 1:14 PM

wj asks: "Did Cindy McCain have an affair a few years ago?"

Yeah, with John McCain, though it was more than a few years ago. She was what the Family Values crowd would refer to as a shameless homewrecking harlot if she and her adulterous husband were Democrats. And of course she's a drug addict. But we must not discuss such things when it comes to "straight shooters" who are Republicans.

Helen Chenoweth had an adulterous affair with a married man before she entered politics... another Family Values fraud. But like Ross, I'm coming up empty on actual in-office female American cheaters, unless the Dennis Hastert/Liddy Dole rumors are true. Then there's Condi Rice and her "husband" Dumbya Bush.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | March 11, 2008 1:20 PM

it is the same old story spinned a thousand ways...
please are we really that surprised??

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Posted by Els | March 11, 2008 2:14 PM

There's Margaret Trudeau, wayward wife of Canada's Pierre--but that's going way back.

Posted by Ackroyd | March 11, 2008 3:43 PM

After all, a quarter of all couples, married or unmarried, now sleep in separate bedrooms.

Oh go on.

Posted by Art Deco | March 11, 2008 5:32 PM

Moe, don't forget Fred Thompson, Jack Ryan, and Sara Evans' ex husband, whatever his name is.

Posted by Rod Blaine | March 11, 2008 7:41 PM

Uh, women of all classes, for good evolutionary reasons, are less likely than men to commit adultery. Therefore there won't be as many women as men adulterers in any population you look at (excepting perhaps a few of the particularly sexually permissive societies in Africa and the Pacific Islands). To whom, exactly, is news??

Posted by Hector | March 11, 2008 8:25 PM

Harold Macmillan's wife, Dorothy, was unfaithful to him for years with another Conservative politician, Robert Boothby. I don't think Macmillan cared very much. Lord Mountbatten's wife, Edwina, cheated on him constantly, most famously with Nehru when her husband was the last viceroy of India. Mountbatten didn't mind, and may have even encouraged Edwina's affairs. Maybe it's a British thing.

Posted by Richard Skinner | March 11, 2008 8:27 PM

"Uh, women of all classes, for good evolutionary reasons, are less likely than men to commit adultery." Hector

TR: That's not actually true, they've done studies showing it's not. When ovulating women tend to, perhaps unconsciously, wear sexier outfits and be more flirty. Some genetic study showed that a surprisingly large amount of kids have a biological father who is different from their "Dad."

Although I believe that, to a greater extent, when women cheat it's a sign they actually want to leave their husband. Also that men respond more negatively to a sexual affair than an "emotional affair" whereas women are the opposite. So if a female politician cheated on her husband it's more likely to mean the marriage is history and therefore there's no need for him to be at press conferences.

Another factor is that politicians are still like 70-80% men in this country.

Posted by Thomas R | March 11, 2008 9:19 PM

I imagine wives have cheated on loser politicians, but we can't remember the cuckolds' names -- because they're losers. If they were winners, their wives would have been more likely to stick around.

Posted by Steve Sailer | March 11, 2008 11:23 PM

Not sure I would count Macmillan as a "loser." He did get to be Prime Minister (and a pretty popular one), while Boothby became known as a political underachiever. Macmillan did end up raising Boothby's daughter (born to Lady Dorothy), which I guess could count as some sort of evolutionary revenge.

Oddly enough, Macmillan and John F. Kennedy -- more or less, the opposite extremes of the politico-sexual continuum, became bosom pals during their respective periods in power.

Posted by Richard Skinner | March 11, 2008 11:32 PM

While the UK has long had a surplus of "naughty" MPs, the only British prime minister with a JFK-LBJ-Clinton reputation that I can recall was David Lloyd George. Churchill certainly didn't have one. (His father died of syphilis, but he never became PM; his mother was known for a rather *active* social life).

Posted by Richard Skinner | March 11, 2008 11:46 PM

When the word "you" is used in this manner, it clearly is not intended to mean "the person reading this article." Who then, is being referred to? The picture we are painted is one a role-reversal, and the question seems to refer, if vaguely, to the idea of Governor Spitzer being in the position of his wife. For that specific kind of person, a husband and politician with very clear personality flaws and moral shortcomings of the Bill Clinton archetype, it is indeed difficult to imagine that the reaction to such a situation would be supportive or even polite. We should not seek to apply the same stencil to all men, though. Absent an appeal to that kind of broadly-stroked stereotype, Michelle Cottle seems to be telling us something that hardly needs telling: politicians are scheming amoral scumbags that not even a statistician could count on.

Posted by Cody | March 12, 2008 1:27 AM

Moe, don't forget Fred Thompson, Jack Ryan, and Sara Evans' ex husband, whatever his name is.

Jack Ryan did not, to my knowledge, commit adultery. Granted, he wanted other people to watch him have sex with his then-wife, Seven of Nine, but if exhibitionism with your spouse isn't good family values, then what is?

Posted by Glaivester | March 12, 2008 1:43 AM

> 'While the UK has long had a surplus of "naughty" MPs...'

Liberal Party (ie, conservative) leaders in Australia have had some serious Oedipal issues. Restricting myself to those who are dead and can't sue (as NYT v Sullivan is not good law in Australia), there were:

(a) Harold Holt, Prime Minister 1966-67, whose ex-girlfriend dumped him, and married his father;

(b) Billy Snedden, opposition leader 1973-74, who died while in bed with his son's ex-girlfriend.

Brrrrh.

Posted by Rod Blaine | March 12, 2008 3:01 AM

Thomas R.,

Most women who wear sexy clothes and are flirtatious are probably not married, so can't commit adultery by definition. Even if they are married, that a woman dresses a certain way or acts flirtatious doesn't indicate that she is looking for sex, just that she wants a little bit of attention. Moreover I didn't say that women are never tempted to cheat, only that they aren't tempted as much as men, and don't give in to their temptation so often.

From "The State of Affairs: Explorations in Infidelity and Commitment." Duncombe, J. and Duck, Steven. Routledge, 2004.

"Virtually all available research indicates that men are more open to extradyadic sex than women. Indeed, men more often fantasize about extradyadic sex, are more willing to engage in extradyadic sex, and do actually more often engage in extradyadic sex. Although there is a large variety across cultures in the occurence of extradyadic sex, in all cultures men are more unfaithful than women. For example, in Guinea-Bissau, 38% of the men and 19% of the women had had extradyadic sex in the past year, and in Hong Kong 8% of the men and 1% of the women did (Carael, Cleland, Deheneffe, Ferry and Ingham, 1995.)"

Posted by Hector | March 12, 2008 9:56 AM

I was also going on genetic studies of children in marriages not having the "assumed father."

You got me on the study though. (Although it contradicts most other studies I've read) Still it strikes me as possible that women just don't admit it as much as men. I would think in Guinea-Bissau or Hong Kong women would have more reason to lie about such things than men. And that that would be true in most cultures.

Granted it seems plausible men cheat more, but two to eight times more? I'm still skeptical of that. Although it strikes me as possible that women more often separate or divorce their spouses before consummating their extra-marital relationship.

Posted by Thomas R | March 12, 2008 10:46 AM

TR,

Could you point me in the direction of the studies you've seen? I'm genuinely curious. I'm actually less sympathetic to sociobiological arguments than a lot of people - but there are some of their arguments that seem just too strong not to accept, and my sense is that this is one of them.

As I remember from my college animal behavior textbook it was almost taken as a given, on the basis of many studies, that males (in humans as well as many other mammal species) have a tendency to be less faithful and more likely to seek sex outside the pair bond. There was some famous study a couple decades ago where the study volunteers would go onto a college campus, get into conversation with random people and after about two minutes, offer to have sex with them. About 75% of men accepted the offer, compared with 0% of the women.

Posted by Hector | March 12, 2008 12:02 PM

Some genetic study showed that a surprisingly large amount of kids have a biological father who is different from their "Dad."

I would view this with extreme skepticism. Even in the absence of technological fertility regulation (and I am recalling statistics I have seen reconstructed from British vital records from prior to 1870), a woman in an agricultural household could expect to have (on average) eight live births between the ages of twenty and forty, or one child every two or three years. Episodic trysts do not produce pregnancies with great frequency.

Although I believe that, to a greater extent, when women cheat it's a sign they actually want to leave their husband. Also that men respond more negatively to a sexual affair than an "emotional affair" whereas women are the opposite. So if a female politician cheated on her husband it's more likely to mean the marriage is history and therefore there's no need for him to be at press conferences.

In my parents' circle of friends (ca. 1972), the very few divorces initiated by husbands occurred in just that circumstance: the wife abandoned her husband having first cuckolded him. I am not sure any of these men were given the option of patching up the marriage.

I imagine wives have cheated on loser politicians, but we can't remember the cuckolds' names -- because they're losers. If they were winners, their wives would have been more likely to stick around.

That's real sweet, Steve.

Granted it seems plausible men cheat more, but two to eight times more? I'm still skeptical of that.

Adulterous men are not copulating with rabbits. The adultery that women prefer does violence to someone else's marriage rather than their own.

Although it strikes me as possible that women more often separate or divorce their spouses before consummating their extra-marital relationship.

Politicians are generally not held responsible for having initiated asinine divorce suits unless there is something salacious involved (Dr. Gingrich's divorces come to mine). Also, the time in their life when women usually pull such stunts is in their early thirties, and few prominent lady politicians are that age.

Posted by Art Deco | March 12, 2008 12:39 PM

politicians are scheming amoral scumbags that not even a statistician could count on.

Cody, I would suggest you plug in a few names of actual politicians and see if it makes sense as a categorical statement. Limiting ourselves to New York politicians, try the following:

-"Malcolm Wilson was a scheming amoral scumbag that not even a statistician could count on"

-"Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a scheming amoral scumbag that not even a statistician could count on"

-"John Lindsay was a scheming amoral scumbag that not even a statistician could count on"

-"Allard Loewenstein was a scheming amoral scumbag that not even a statistician could count on."

and so forth.

Posted by Art Deco | March 12, 2008 12:47 PM

Mr. Deco,

I'm skeptical of the 'eight live births' between the ages of twenty and forty. There have been some pre-industrial societies that put a premium on high birth rates, and others that did not, and in the ones that didn't, people usually found semi-effective ways to reduce their fertility (herbal contraceptives, coitus interruptus, etc.)

Some countries like 19th century France and post-Famine Ireland are well known to have had low birthrates (I believe in 19th-century France it was a little over 3 children per woman). The Pacific island of Tikopia also maintained a roughly stable population for a period of about 2,000 years, and maintaining relatively low birth rates was at least part the solution.

Re: Adulterous men are not copulating with rabbits.

No, they're 'copulating' with prostitutes, or courtesans, or serially adulterous women. It's quite imaginable that there are eight times as many adulterous men as women, all that means is that adulterous women are about eight times the intensity.

Posted by Hector | March 12, 2008 2:23 PM

It's quite imaginable that there are eight times as many adulterous men as women, all that means is that adulterous women are about eight times the intensity.

I would take that with a grain of salt as well.

Posted by Art Deco | March 12, 2008 5:00 PM

Art Deco,

I was kidding, for the most part, in that last bit. But my point is that Michelle Cottle is appealing to a conception of the male population as cartoonish, abusive Al Bundys. I know plenty of men who have put up with unfaithful partners, to a certain extent. I know plenty of women who would consider Hillary Clinton and Silda Wall Spitzer weak beyond measure for putting up with what they have. I don't see the validity in this kind of statement, except as it applies to these specific people in this specific situation.

Posted by Cody | March 12, 2008 8:12 PM

"Could you point me in the direction of the studies you've seen?" Hector

TR: On the children it seems I was taken in by a myth. I did find things that imply "non-paternity" was as high as 28%, but this seems to be exaggerated. Going by an article I found from Monash University, look up "non-paternity rate" at Google Scholar, misattributed paternity is as little as one percent and no more than three percent. Exact numbers are probably unknown.

I think it was either Gallup or Pew where women indicated adultery in the same percentages as men, but I don't remember which. Older Gallup Polls are hard to access.

"Also, the time in their life when women usually pull such stunts is in their early thirties, and few prominent lady politicians are that age." Art Deco

This is a good point. I think there would be good reason for women near or after menopause to be unlikely to commit adultery. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but the cases of adultery I'm thinking of the woman was under 40. Picasso cheated on some women when he was in his 80s. I'm not sure I can think of a woman that age who did similar. (I'm barring cases where the woman has Alzheimer's, or other forms of dementia, and literally doesn't remember her marriage)

Posted by Thomas R | March 13, 2008 12:34 AM