Fred Rogers: A model of gentility for coarse times

It was gym class in junior high school, and Jennifer and I were sitting on the bleachers waiting our turn. She began humming a tune, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” which opened “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” every day on our TV sets.

Suddenly, she caught herself and turned to me in embarrassment. “Please don’t tell anyone I was singing that,” she begged.

Fred “Mister” Rogers was uncool — along with his sincere messages of self-acceptance, compassion and dealing with complicated feelings like anger.

Still, as kids we watched him. As an adult, I sought him out and interviewed him in September 2000 and April 2001 at his modest public television studio in Pittsburgh. This gentle, authentic soul has something to remind us about today.

We’re at an unprecedented moment in our unwillingness to listen to each other or to recognize our shared humanity. Express a wrong political thought, and you’re unfriended on Facebook. Cocktail party chatter is kept consciously anodyne. We jump the line at the deli counter because we can. Where is the bottom of this spiral of coarsening culture?

Fred Rogers died in 2003, but his ethos is needed now. The Postal Service honored the host of the 33-year TV series with a stamp last week. In this 50th anniversary year of the show’s launch, the service said Rogers “inspired and educated young viewers with warmth, sensitivity, and honesty.”

Earlier this month, WNYC radio named Rogers the first inductee to its Masculinity Vision Board, which is anticipated to contain “portrayals of masculinity, real or fictional, that you find commendable or challenges what’s seen as the status quo.”

Rogers is an antidote in so many ways. For one, he was always curious. He would take his TV audiences on field trips to see how things were made — paper, for example, or crayons. Contrast that with the Trump administration banning words such as “science-based” or “endangered” in government documents.

Rogers thought the entertainment industry should be self-regulating. “We should be thinking, whatever we produce, would we want our families to see it?” he said during one of our interviews.

On the air, Rogers wanted to give kids “the gift of [my] honest self.” He told a story about an invitation he accepted to try out for commercial TV in Manhattan. The producer asked what sort of costume he would wear. He wanted Rogers to come as a clown or something snazzier than a regular guy in a cardigan, so that kids would pay attention. Rogers replied, “Well, it seems to me as if our interview’s over.”

Generations of children paid attention anyway.

The recent focus on a man who stood for honesty and decency is heartening. It might be too idealistic to hope that a commemorative stamp and a film or two could release his spirit to soothe and uplift us.

But, we must have hope. As Mister Rogers liked to remind us, stay in touch with “that deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive.”

This is one delivery the Postal Service has executed with perfect timing.

Image: Fred Rogers' widow, Joanne Rogers, with a giant Mister Rogers stamp in Pittsburgh on March 23, 2018. Credit: AP / Gene J. Puskar

his column first appeared in Newsday.

Opinion: Trump immigration policy is irrational

‘J” is a 42-year-old husband, the father of four teenagers and a project manager for a disaster restoration company where he supervises 50 employees. He came to the United States from the Dominican Republic when he was 18.

One mistake in his past, trying to sell drugs in his early 20s, has prevented him from obtaining U.S. citizenship.

“M” emigrated from Somalia at age 13. Now 37, he supports a wife with cancer and three young children, one with severe autism. M has been steadily employed for almost two decades, having put behind him a drug-possession conviction at age 20.

These are two of the 18 people who have turned their lives around and whom Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo pardoned at the end of the year in an effort to push back against the increasingly harsh immigration policies coming from the White House. The 18 committed low-level offenses and have built solid lives in the years, and sometimes decades, since their convictions.

A youthful crime, a punishment paid, and now a life that supports others — they could be our neighbors. They could be us. Everything we know about human nature tells us that people who make the most of a second chance deserve to hold on to it.

The governor’s December pardons might remove barriers to jobs, volunteer opportunities and the pursuit of citizenship.

This is the second time that Cuomo has used his powers of clemency partly as a rebuttal to President Donald Trump’s immigration initiatives. Before last month, Cuomo had pardoned seven immigrants. However, the pardons are an uncertain guarantee. The governor’s office did not release the new 18 names, so as not to identify them to federal immigration officials who could still target them.

Trump began pressing on this emotion-laden issue during his second week in office with the order to temporarily ban entry by citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries. And on Thursday, he used a vile expletive to describe immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti and African countries.

In between, he tried to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program protecting 800,000 Dreamers, though a federal judge has challenged whether he can, and Trump has canceled one after another temporary protected status designation, the most recent for Salvadorans, the largest immigrant community on Long Island. He wants to beef up Southern border security and restrict family migration policy.

What good does it do to deport responsible fathers, husbands and employees in our communities? What will happen to J’s four teenagers or M’s wife? Can we afford to ignore that they will fall into our social safety net and ring up costs to taxpayers?

Some argue that people here illegally should go back to their home countries and get in line for legal immigration. Come back the right way. However, that process can take many years, and meanwhile, what happens to their families here? People live day by day; we don’t subsist on ideologues’ would-be purity. What’s more, Trump seems to abhor even legal immigration, mischaracterizing the diversity visa lottery program as countries sending us “the worst of the worst.”

Back on Cuomo’s list, “F,” a 45-year-old émigré from the Dominican Republic, is caring for his ill wife and has a daughter serving in the U.S. Navy. “N,” 44, came from Trinidad and Tobago, and his elderly mother relies on him for her care.

These individuals are living the ideal of caring for family and community in a way that exemplifies American values. Deporting these neighbors would be irresponsible, irrational and costly. It’s time to rethink Trump’s direction on immigration.

Image: President Donald Trump holds a meeting on immigration issues on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018, at the White House. On Thursday, he reportedly used a slur to refer to immigrants from certain countries. Credit: Bloomberg / Andrew Harrer

This column first appeared in Newsday.

An Affair, A Lie, and A Conservative Government Came Tumbling Down

Christine Keeler, the woman at the heart of a 1963 scandal that helped oust the dominant Conservative Party, died on Dec. 4 at age 75.

She was just 19 when, working as a model and night club dancer, she took lovers from opposite sides of the Cold War: British War Minister John Profumo and Soviet Embassy attaché Yevgeny Ivanov.

Questioned about the affair by a Parliamentary foe who suspected there were Russian spies around every corner, Profumo lied and said nothing inappropriate had taken place between them. Later in life, he claimed he lied to protect his wife, stage and screen actress Valerie Hobson.

But that didn't buy him a pass. He was forced to resign, and his mentor Prime Minister Harold Macmillan barely survived a vote of no confidence. He announced his resignation months later, and the following election ended a 13-year run for Britain's Conservatives.

The Hobson-Profumo marriage is one of the nine I wrote about in Why They Stay. Here's an excerpt from my book, along with my wish that Ms. Keeler will rest in peace.

First, though, a word of explanation about the first line, which references the White Queen. In Why They Stay, I proposed that today's political marriages are not so different from centuries-old sovereign unions, such as that of medieval queen Elizabeth Woodville, grandmother to King Henry VIII. She's known today as the White Queen, and her loyalty to the Tudor dynasty surmounted her desire for a faithful marriage. In Why They Stay, I argued that contemporary political couples make the same sorts of compromises because of the unique set of standards and pressures they face.

Valerie and Jack are the first of our modern White Queen couples to face live press scrutiny. Unlike the Roosevelts and the Kennedys, whose infidelities were revealed many years after their time in office, the Profumos suffered their downfall and humiliation in real time. They struggled with the glare of publicity on political couples. First, Valerie and Jack retreated into the bunker of the private space they had constructed together. The day after Jack’s resignation, hundreds of reporters around the world were looking for him. In an attempt to stay ahead of and away from the press, he moved around the English countryside to the homes of various relatives and friends, with Valerie and their sons David, 7, and Mark, 12. They stayed at the Suffolk home of Winston Churchill’s son Randolph, who referred to the Profumos’ visit as “operation sanctuary.” Back in London, Jack’s secretary Pam Plumb fended off the media. Journalists posed as private detectives hired by the Profumos to get her to reveal their whereabouts. The editor of the Daily Telegraph invited Plumb to lunch.

During this time, one imagines that Valerie and Jack were in urgent discussion about how to choose their moment and method for a public resurfacing. Future couples would call press conferences to declare their positions, but the Profumos didn’t have role models to steer by. Instead, true to Valerie’s training on stage, they planned an elaborate pantomime of marital support. Nearly two weeks after Jack’s resignation, the couple returned home to their high-ceilinged town house in the tony neighborhood of Chester Terrace, overlooking the tranquil grandeur of London’s Regent’s Park. A police escort led Valerie and Jack through the cluster of news reporters. Looking composed, Valerie wore a headscarf and white gloves. They made their way through the silent crowd. Soon the mob jostled and called out. Valerie turned, looked at her husband, and clasped his hand in hers as they made their way to their front door. It was an image of solidarity inspiring both sympathy and admiration.

Looking back from our era of regular public revelations of adultery by political leaders, it’s hard to understand how incendiary the Profumo scandal was to the western world. Just a month earlier, in May 1963, sexy starlet Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday” at Madison Square Garden to President John Kennedy, marking what we now know was a yearslong series of liaisons between the two—but that relationship was relegated to whispers among press reporters, not scolding editorials published in the country’s leading newspapers.

The Profumo Affair profoundly altered British society, emboldening the press and rocking people’s faith in their leaders. It gave lie to the belief that those born into the ruling class were inherently superior and destined to lead, making room for lower-born folks to rise through the political ranks on merit. Sixteen years later, a grocer’s daughter, Margaret Thatcher, became Prime Minister. David Profumo, the only biological son of John and Valerie, wrote that it has become an article of faith that “my father’s behaviour was instrumental in changing the heartbeat of our society.”

Opinion: Women in politics are upending Washington culture

It’s very tough to break a glass ceiling when you’re busy protecting your backside against groping hands.

Allegations of sexual harassment are swirling like autumn leaves around Congress, statehouses and, really, any place you find politicians in power. The culture has been unmasked — and Congress looks more like a bacchanal than a sober domain for public policy.

There seems to be a connection between the frat house culture and the lopsided lack of representation of women in American political life. We need more women in politics, not fewer, and these sexist escapades are one more way those in power build barriers to entry.

Because sexual harassment isn’t about attraction, it’s about power, and power is the currency of politics. According to the Congressional Office of Compliance, U.S. taxpayers spent $900,000 in fiscal 2017 to settle harassment and other workplace complaints.

The numbers are still paltry: Just 19.6 percent of Congress is female. Only six of 50 governors are women, and just 25 percent of state legislators.

We know how the efforts to elect a woman president, to date, have turned out. But there’s hope. Women, gathering strength in numbers from the #MeToo social media reckoning, are outing male politicians’ bad behavior.

On Thursday, the Senate Ethics Committee opened an inquiry into Sen. Al Franken, who has apologized for sexual misconduct allegations, including at least one case after his election.

And accusations against Rep. John Conyers — as well as stinging criticism by Rep. Kathleen Rice of Garden City, among a generation of female members of Congress pushing against the sexist culture in Washington — persuaded House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday to call for his resignation.

Women in Washington are pressuring Congress to finally and seriously deal with sexual harassment in that workplace. What’s more, women outside of Washington are also more interested in running for political office — perhaps exponentially growing their ranks in positions of power.

Some 22,000 women have reached out to Emily’s List about running for office next year, including in local and state races, the group told The Hill. A typical year’s traffic for the organization is about 900 women.

If these women run and win, will they change the culture of politics? That’s possible, but it will be difficult. It can be counterproductive to speak up about a colleague or a potential mentor. Gayle Goldin, a Rhode Island state senator, penned an op-ed for Glamour last week saying, “Politics is all about relationships. We aren’t just making friends at work; we’re building rapport to advance our legislative agenda.”

Political chumminess has routinely worked to dismiss women’s stories. Deanna Maher, who was an aide for Conyers in the 1990s and has accused him of harassment, told CNN she thought about reporting his alleged behavior for years, but she didn’t think she would be believed until the #MeToo wave. “These members protect each other,” she said.

Female politicians face hostility from online trolls, too, which seems intended to silence them and send them out of the public sphere. In a short video by the Women’s Media Center, a non-profit group that raises women’s visibility, several women politicians told about gender-based insults and threats of death or rape.

Such tirades are meant not only to intimidate women, but also to keep us silent. This isn’t something we can tolerate in our politics. Not in the past, and especially not now, just as more and more women are finding their political voices. It’s not enough just to find our voices, but to raise them, even when someone else doesn’t like it.

This column first appeared in Newsday.

My story of sexual harassment at work: All-too-typical #MeToo

The news is awash with stories of powerful men preying on women at work. After settling a woman's lawsuit in January for $32 million - an astounding figure - Bill O'Reilly inked a new four-year employment contract with Fox News.

It seems Fox and others have a profound desire not to heed a victim's story when it might mean losing a revenue-generator like O'Reilly.

Since the recent revelations about film mogul Harvey Weinstein, Amazon Studios' Roy Price and New Orleans chef John Besh, more than 1.7 million women have tweeted #MeToo to say they also have been victims of sexual harassment or assault, many in the workplace. Is this a moment of enlightenment? A final end to harassment? I'm skeptical, but I believe there are ways we can each help to reduce it.

First, a story.

When I was in grad school in Manhattan, I was having trouble with my desktop computer, and the manufacturer sent a technician to my apartment to help. My four roommates were out. When the tech finished, he asked me to kiss him. I refused. I called his office to report him, but the woman on the phone didn't believe me.

Months later, as I was graduating and looking for a job, an editor from my former newspaper called unexpectedly. He said he could get me an internship at a prestigious New York newspaper if I would share a bottle of wine with him. I said I would get back to him about that. Later, getting together with some of my colleagues, male and female, who knew him, I told them what he had said. My story was met with uncomfortable silence.

I accepted an internship, instead, at a large West Coast newspaper, and drove my Mitsubishi Colt across the country, where I rented a room in a home where the owner was looking for a couple of tenants. Within a few days, I woke to the sound of my landlord masturbating outside my bedroom door. I froze, and later called police to report him. As I sat in the cruiser giving my report, it became clear that the police officer was mocking me. I left as soon as was politely possible.

I mentioned this incident to an editor at my paper, and he offered to let me stay at his place. I did, for about two weeks. There were just the two of us in the house, and I was wary. But he didn't try anything, and I was grateful. His kindness allowed me to get on my feet and spend another five years working for that newspaper.

Later, when I mentioned my story to another intern, she said I had been stupid to rent that first room. Perhaps.

It would be nice if that editor's kindness were the happy ending to my story.

However, I encountered another editor after a while who made comments about women's breasts and men's genitals. I told him the comments made me uncomfortable, but they didn't stop. I discussed his talk with human resources. The woman there said she would counsel my editor, and she advised me to find another job. I did.

Years later, now as a married woman with two children, I reported to another editor who would stop by my desk and make suggestive remarks about my underwear and the state of my marriage. Two colleagues who could overhear said to me, how can you stand that? I just shrugged. The years had taught me that speaking to HR or even to friends wouldn't elicit justice or even sympathy. I put my energy into finding another job.

Last week, in an op-ed in The New York Times, actress Lupita Nyong'o wrote about her harassment at the hands of Weinstein. "I wish I had known that there were ears to hear me," she wrote. "That justice could be served. There is clearly power in numbers."

I wish so, too. When a friend or an employee speaks about this, don't ignore it. And maybe, offer to put her up, or at least back her up, until she regains her pride and sense of safety.

This column first appeared in Newsday.

Writing While Parenting

New York Times and USA Today bestselling novelist Meg Waite Clayton was so kind as to feature my essay "Caution: Writing While Parenting" today on her '1st Books" blog. In the essay, I wrote that completing a book while raising two daughters through their teenage years was a piece of performance art -- a demonstration of persistence and grit that I hope they will emulate.

Check out the blog post and add your comments by clicking here. Or click here to purchase a copy of Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives, a nonfiction account featuring Hillary Clinton, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy and more, available in print, ebook and audiobook.

Meg Waite Clayton's most recent novel, The Race for Paris, is a highly enjoyable and rigorously researched tale of WWII women journalists pursuing the big story. For more information and to purchase a copy, check it out by clicking here.

Meanwhile, here's my essay:

Caution: Writing While Parenting

Forty-five minutes before I was scheduled to discuss my book in front of a crowd at a local library, the program director and I were chatting. Adorned in chunky azure jewelry, she asked, what did my family think of my success?

“This book has been a piece of performance art,” I began, “conducted for a very small audience: my two daughters.” She laughed, getting my joke.

Many will tell you that becoming a parent hinders one’s art. I remember reading an interview with the talented author Pam Houston, in which she said her mother advised her not to have children or her life would become ordinary.

Rarely do we hear that having children watching can drive an artist forward.

After my second daughter was born, I stayed home with my girls for about three years. I tried many rhythms for our days but found it usually worked best to get out of the house in the morning for a walk, a shop or a play date.

Soon, I went back to work full time as a journalist. Weekend mornings, I would observe my husband and daughters enjoying “CatDog” or “The Fairly OddParents” on TV and wonder, do I have the energy to motivate all four of us out the door? Is a morning on the couch really so bad after a full week of work and school and gymnastics class and music lessons?

I felt anxious at times during these days, the kind of anxiety that psychologists call free-floating. Yes, kids in front of the television made me feel like a bad mother, but there was more. I felt as though there was something, undefined, that I should be doing. I signed up for a class on how to write a non-fiction book proposal. This meant that I was out late one night a week, getting home long after the girls had gone to bed, and I spent more time when I was home sequestered with my assignments. This caused me added guilt about my mothering, but the strange anxiety diminished.

Over the course of about five years, I would write and quit, start again and quit. After one long hiatus, I engaged a writing coach who, via Skype, helped me find pockets of time. I spoke into a digital recorder while commuting. I sent myself snippets in emails from home to work, and vice versa. I woke up early. I walked my daughters to the school bus stop and then put in an hour of writing before heading to my newspaper office.

My daughters never said they would be disappointed in me if I quit for good, but I felt it. Each time they witnessed me packing off to the library for a couple of hours, making notes on a draft or otherwise giving time to this dream of mine, it solidified my commitment to keep going. I couldn’t break off and admit that it had been wasted time or, worse, that I had given up on myself.

Eventually I secured an agent and a book contract.

My daughters are a junior and a freshman in college now. They’ve witnessed the physical book arrive from the printer, and their mother with index card notes in hand, rehearsing for book talks. They’ve offered useful suggestions on blog posts before I hit “publish.”

This year, while my older daughter was home for summer break, she took a class online that required group participation. Some in the group were slackers. When she complained, the professor said, “Figure it out.” She did.

This isn’t unusual, for either daughter. They have grit, they persist and they pursue their passions. Each time I see this, I take a little internal bow.

-- Anne Michaud

Excerpt: eleanor stayed married for the kids but later regretted her choice

Excerpted from Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives (Ogunquit Press, March 2017).

The marriage between Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt has served as a template for political couples who search for a way stay together through the husband’s serial infidelity. As the story has come down to us, the Roosevelts suffered a rift over his affair and then went on to live separate, successful and very public lives under the same roof. But a closer look shows that their reality was very painful, messy and human.

By staying in the marriage, Eleanor believed she was doing right for their five children and for her husband. Just as she was experiencing her own deep sense of betrayal, she was called on to rally behind Franklin as he stepped onto the national stage as the Democrats’ vice-presidential candidate in 1920. She traveled on his whistle-stop tour, monitored his press coverage and gave him advice on his speeches. Her patriotic devotion to the public ideals the couple stood for revealed itself in her own design for a fulfilling life outside of her empty marriage. Using her position first as the wife of New York’s governor and then as first lady, she advocated for safe housing, laws against child labor, wider voter registration, birth control and civil rights. Her determination to rise above personal pain gave the world one of its great leaders.

“Never for a minute would I advocate that people who no longer love each other should live together because it does not bring the right atmosphere into a home,” she wrote.

Yet the manner in which Franklin dealt with his marriage and his own needs for intimacy reverberates throughout the lives of his children. They chose spouses with the right pedigree. Infidelities abounded. A partner who didn’t fulfill one’s needs was shortly substituted for another. And worldly success often took precedence over happiness at home. It’s almost as if the children of Eleanor and Franklin were trying to work out in their own lives the issues that their parents left unresolved in their marriage.

“At first, each of us married into moneyed families. Not because we needed money, but because we were exposed to moneyed people,” James wrote. “Eventually, we made other marriages. Some of us married outside the social register…. Hopeless romantics, we Roosevelt children married again and again.”

The eldest, Anna, briefly attended college at Cornell University but quit to marry Curtis Dall, a successful stockbroker, in 1926. She said that she married to “get out of the life I was leading,” a reference to the Roosevelt’s difficult family situation in the aftermath of Franklin’s affair with Lucy Mercer.

Anna and Curtis separated as Franklin was entering the White House in 1932, and Anna moved there with her two children. She met and married a reporter, John Boettiger; it was a second marriage for both. Eleanor felt Anna and John entered this marriage having learned from their sufferings and mistakes, and she commented to a friend in a letter that marriages shouldn’t be preserved for the sake of the children. “Never for a minute would I advocate that people who no longer love each other should live together because it does not bring the right atmosphere into a home,” she wrote, adding that it was very sad when a couple was unable to make a success of marriage, “but I feel it is equally unwise for people to bring up children in homes where love no longer exists.”

Excerpted from Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives (Ogunquit Press, March 2017). To read more about the book, and for links to purchase, click here.

Sadness at Anthony Weiner's demise

Although former Congressman Anthony Weiner mostly bedeviled me when I covered politics in New York City, I only feel sadness today at his political and personal demise. Any schadenfreude I felt after his first Twitter stumble in 2011, which led him to resign from Congress, has dissipated.

Partly that's a result of his repeated humiliation over time. No one deserves that -- even if he did set himself up by seeking such a high profile and insulting staff and reporters like me. The man's got an addiction, which I define as a willful self-destruction even as there are parts of one's life that are so worth showing up for. Like his vision for the middle class that he hoped to carry out as NYC mayor. Like his beautiful and extraordinary wife Huma Abedin, who filed for divorce on Friday even as Weiner was pleading guilty in the federal courthouse in Manhattan to sexting with an underage girl. Like the couple's son.

If kids don't give you a reason to be a better person, I don't know what does.

Weiner, however, even involved 4-year-old Jordan in his sext-capades. He took a suggestive image of himself for his 15-year-old sext partner as Jordan lay next to him in bed. I can only shake my head at how sad this is, how much this man in that moment was obliterating everything. Especially, but not exclusively, any image he could hold in his mind of himself as a good person.

To me, this is the nature and the bottom of addiction. Hatred of oneself creates a downward spiral, finally extinguishing decency and integrity.

In the opening lines of the documentary Weiner, for which filmmakers followed Anthony on the campaign trail for mayor in 2013, he admits to having done bad things but adds, "I've done good things, too."

I wonder where we will find the next generation of political leaders if we have to screen for such a panoply of character flaws. Narcissism, self-destructiveness, crossing the line into involving minors in one's obsession and damaging the public regard for a woman, Huma, who's a political force in her own right.

Are we, the public, supposed to overlook these flaws, as Weiner suggests, and concern ourselves with the good he might do in office? (I'm hard-pressed to find many accomplishments while he was in Washington.)

Who runs for political office in America today, at least on the highest levels, but for narcissists? Is there another motivation for public service, or are some politicians just better at hiding their self-regard? Perhaps self-regard doesn't have to be as toxic as Weiner's?

I'm sure I'm being too bleak about our political class. Weiner's felony guilty plea is depressing. He's smart, rose from humble beginnings, and can talk circles around his opposition. All, so it seems now, gone to waste.

If you liked this post, please subscribe to future updates by scrolling down on the home page. Also, please check out my book, Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives, published in March 2017.

Working women react to Ivanka's "Women Who Work"

The Cut posted a dead-on video this week of four female wage workers reading passages from First Daughter Ivanka Trump's newly published Women Who Work. The book purports to celebrate a new generation of mothers who are doing work they love, and that inspires them and allows them to pursue their passions, according to the publicity site for the book.

It's perhaps too easy to mock a privileged woman who speaks as though she can relate to the rest of us. Here's an excerpt from the video, from a woman who works as a security guard. As she begins to speak, she's holding an open copy of Ivanka's book.

I'm sorry, but this is like ... weird to me. (Reads) "By occasionally bringing my kids to the office, I'm sharing what I love to do with them." Hey this is what we can do, bring our kids and enjoy our family time at work -- and, once again, it's not reality to all parents.

Another woman questions how Ivanka can chide herself for neglecting self-care by forgoing a massage -- reminding the First Daughter that most other moms would need to pay a babysitter, pay for a massage and take time off from work. A triple hit to the wallet.

A third woman bemoaned that Ivanka writes she took just six days off of work after giving birth to her third child. Such examples undermine other choices, the speaker says, such as spending time with newborns and allowing one's body to heal.

These women in the video are asking all the right questions. It's feminism's role to rally collective action around income inequality, paid parental leave and high-quality, affordable child care.

I don't begrudge Ivanka enjoying her job. I enjoy mine (most of the time). But let's not pretend that the vast majority of women don't have more practical problems.

Q&A with Anne

IndieReader published a Q & A with Anne in December 2017.

1.       What inspired the creation of Why They Stay?

 As a political reporter, I covered a number of the men who stumbled over sex-related scandals: Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner. I watched as their wives appeared on TV to defend them, or stood by them red-eyed at press conferences. These were all intelligent, accomplished, articulate women. It seemed off to me that they would play this subservient role to rescue their husbands’ careers. I began looking into their lives, and I found common themes, as well as many more examples of wives who stayed with politician-husbands who cheated. This isn’t just an American phenomenon; Why They Stay includes one Israeli and two British couples.

2.       You’re an award-winning reporter. How did this influence you when writing nonfiction?

I felt it was extremely helpful to have a background in fact gathering and to understand how politics works – as much as an outsider can, perhaps. I’ve spent a lot of time with not just politicians but their aides and advisers, and the activists and lobbyists who want to influence them.

3.       Whose writing do you look to for inspiration?

I’m inspired by Erik Larson, who brings to life whole eras with his fact-based books. I’m thinking of Devil in the White City. I’m inspired by radio shows such as NPR’s StoryCorps as well as the tradition of literary journalism. I think good storytelling is so important to catching and holding people’s interest, and I believe that true stories are the most fascinating.

4.       Do you follow any writing rituals you’d like to share?

I remind myself at the beginning of each writing session that there will be some reluctance and resistance and even pain to get through. That’s expected, and I try to work on some lower-level tasks at the outset, such as taking notes or rewriting my previous day’s work. I know that there’s a period of getting settled into the work that I need to move through. On the other side of that period, I’m in the flow and enjoying myself – most of the time! Then, I can write. Another technique I use is to start writing first thing in the morning, when I feel most fresh and creative. 

5.       What do you look forward to most as you continue to promote the book?

I really enjoy the Q&A sessions with people who attend my talks. They ask the most intriguing questions, and I often sense that behind their curiosity is a question about how we all make and keep romantic commitments. I think that many more people would like to talk about “why they stay” and the ups and downs of relationships. There’s a yearning to not be quite so perfect as the Facebook version of our lives. I’m also intrigued by the idea that we are at a moment in American politics when the submissive spouse will no longer be an acceptable political cliché. I think we’re ready for political leaders who are more authentic. Absolutely including women political leaders.

Donald Trump's antics stoke new opposition

President Donald Trump’s continuing assaults on cherished American ideals, like protecting the environment and providing health care, are having an intriguing side effect. His administration is keeping the outrage at a boil.

For organizations that encourage and train women to run for political office, that has made for a very busy four months since Election Day.

Women, especially, are expressing interest in running for public office.

Activism has spiked in many areas, from demonstrations in airports to raucous town halls to protests at politicians’ doorsteps. But the events of the last few months have fundamentally changed attitudes about politics, particularly among women. Organizers say many more women are embracing the value of running for office.

VoteRunLead, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that offers classes with titles like “30 Things Every Woman Needs to Know to Run for Office,” recently surveyed women who had signed up for the program. In the past, two-thirds of VoteRunLead’s students said they were thinking of running in the next five years or so. When their children were grown, perhaps.

Now, according to VoteRunLead founder Erin Vilardi, 66 percent want to run in the next two years.

“In the past, we heard, it’s on my mind, but it’s not urgent,” she said. “A new crop of women are raising their hands and accelerating the schedule.”

VoteRunLead, which is based in New York, unveiled a website this week under the banner “Run as you are.” An important function of groups like this is matching the skills and passions of individuals with the right offices.

“Probably, the number one question I get is what to run for,” Vilardi says. She begins by asking what policies they want to change. Most will end up seeking school board or local offices, with a sprinkling interested in federal posts.

From September 2014 to the November election, VoteRunLead trained about 5,000 women at conferences and online. Since Nov. 8, another 5,565 have signed up. Organizations like the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, She Should Run and Ignite National are reporting similar surging interest.

Even optimists thought interest might fade after the Jan. 21 women’s marches. But Anne Moses, president of Ignite National, which offers programs for high school and college women, says so far, apathy has been a stranger. “I thought maybe it would slow down,” she said, “but this administration is doing a good job of keeping people angry.”

Cue Hillary Clinton. On Tuesday, she gave a major speech in San Francisco to an audience of 6,000, and she’s scheduled today to address the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security in Washington. On Tuesday, she tried out a new mantra: “Resist, insist, persist, enlist.”

Her timing was perfect. Last week brought the image of a room of men in Congress debating whether to cover maternity care, along with Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts making light of losing mammograms. He was forced to apologize.

Such moments are raising awareness in young women that “sexism is real, it’s not just something my mom is talking about,” said Moses of Ignite National, which is based in San Francisco.

The recent ineptitude of the White House — failing on two travel bans and Obamacare repeal — also demonstrates, like a reality show, that no experience is necessary to try governing. The missteps have been liberating for potential candidates, and especially women, who research shows tend to underestimate how well-prepared they already are for jobs.

Who knew that Trump’s Washington would offer so much inspiration?

Melania Trump tests First Lady waters cautiously

There’s one Trump whose approval ratings are climbing fast, and it’s not the guy in the Oval Office.

First lady Melania Trump has picked up 16 percentage points since before the inauguration, according to a recent poll by CNN/ORC. Fifty-two percent said they have a “favorable” opinion of Trump, even as her husband’s numbers remain mired in the low 40s.

Americans, it seems, are getting to know the former model from Slovenia. The same poll found that 23 percent had “no opinion” of her before President Donald Trump’s inauguration; afterward, only 12 percent hadn’t yet made a judgment.

This first lady is like no other in recent memory. She had no experience in the political spotlight before landing in this high-profile, if poorly defined, role at the top of American public life. She was known in New York celebrity circles, of course, and pictured in society coverage as the wife of a publicity-loving billionaire whose name adorns skyscrapers, hotels and golf courses.

Trump’s visit cast her as nurturing and selfless, with little risk. No tyke was going to pop up and ask whether she had permission to quote Dr. Seuss. 

But national politics, unlike celebrity and fame, often demands more gravitas and homage to tradition. Melania Trump is navigating this all in real time, without the training wheels her predecessors had, and with a partner whose political brand is built on upending Washington norms.

Before becoming first lady, Michelle Obama was the wife of a state senator and then a U.S. senator. Laura Bush was married to a Texas governor and a member of a family steeped in politics. Hillary Clinton’s husband had been the attorney general and then governor of Arkansas. Barbara Bush had a wealth of experience as the wife of a former CIA director, ambassador to China, congressman and vice president.

As political spouses, these women made mistakes in early roles and learned from them.

Trump’s first major foray was publicly bruising. She was the wife of the candidate then, supporting him as he accepted the Republican Party nomination. Her speech at the convention was cribbed from her predecessor’s — and the plagiarism was rightly blasted.

It’s enough to make a person want to hole up in a posh Manhattan penthouse and tend to her 10-year-old son. Get back to basics.

Now, though, there are signs that Trump is testing the waters as first lady. Earlier this month, she visited a hospital in Manhattan to read to sick children. She chose the classic, “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” In the lore of first ladies, this is public relations gold.

Trump’s visit cast her as nurturing and selfless, with little risk. No tyke was going to pop up and ask whether she had permission to quote Dr. Seuss.

Last week, she hosted an invitation-only luncheon at the White House in honor of International Women’s Day and spoke about equality, freedom and women helping each other achieve success. Also, the Trumps will honor the 139-year-old custom next month of rolling Easter eggs across the White House South Lawn.

Step by step, Trump is adopting traditions we associate with first ladies. Her next challenge will be the gravitas.

Before Election Day, Trump said she was interested in working to combat cyberbullying, but she hasn’t begun, at least not publicly. Nancy Reagan is remembered for her anti-drug message, Obama for encouraging kids to exercise and Laura Bush for reminding children to read. Must each first lady have a cause? It will be interesting to see how Trump answers that question.

For now, she’s made it clear that she will remain in New York until son Barron finishes his school year. This also allows her to approach her new role with caution.

Jackie Kennedy was a determined White House mom

As the celebrity press eagerly reports on actor Natalie Portman’s second pregnancy, the buzz around her Oscar-worthy portrayal of Jacqueline Kennedy in 2016’s Jackie is mounting. This intersection of life and art has me musing about the passionate and rule-defying mothering Jackie Kennedy brought to her own two children.

Shortly after John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s inauguration as president in 1960, he asked his chief of protocol, Angier Biddle Duke, to speak with Jackie about her new duties. To follow the model of her predecessors, Jackie would be expected to attend lunches, deliver speeches, host teas and accept honorary degrees.

What she told the protocol chief was that she would do as little of that as possible. “My family, they come first,” Jackie responded to Duke’s advising, according to an account in All Too Human by Jackie’s friend Edward Klein. “The children come first in my life. I’ve got a problem: the kids are young and I just want to do as much as I can within the bounds of my responsibility to my children. And however you want to phrase it, that means I want to do as little as I have to do.”

The White House staff was incensed and embarrassed. Jackie refused one invitation after another. However, after the first couple of months, it became clear that her absence was distributed evenhandedly, and Jackie had set a precedent that would-be hosts could accept without feeling too slighted.

Instead, Jackie and the children spent their weekdays at Glen Ora, a 400-acre estate the Kennedys rented in Middleburg, Virginia. There, Caroline rode her pony, Macaroni, and Mom took the kids on picnics, gave them baths and read to them in bed before they fell asleep. In one journal entry, Jackie noted, these were the “things I have no chance to do in the W. House.”

Jackie’s determination to focus on her role as a mother was apparent even during the campaign. Shortly before the election, when Caroline was three and Jackie was pregnant with JFK Jr., she remarked in a TV interview that she needed to be with her children in the White House. “If you bungle raising your children,” she said, “I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.”

When her husband was brutally assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, Jackie could have been forgiven for withdrawing into her own grief. Instead, raising Caroline and John Jr. kept Jackie moving forward. She invited friends who had worked closely with her late husband Jack to come and speak to her children about their father. Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., presidential adviser Theodore Sorensen and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara were among them. These private seminars These private conversations – seminars, really – continued for years.

Jackie also had her children meet regularly with developmental psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. He served as their therapist in an era when Americans didn’t usually acknowledge children’s emotional pain, much less offer them help.  Jackie stepped outside the norm to make sure her kids were well cared for.

In my time, Jacqueline Kennedy’s reputation has come to me as a fabulous figure of fashion and as a material girl whose subsequent marriage to Greek shipping mogul Aristotle Onassis solidified her presence among the cosmopolitan jet set.

Yet this view of her commitment to a normal life for her children makes me feel as though she and I had at least one thing in common. We both cared, all else aside, to be good mothers.

If you liked this post, please subscribe for future updates here (scroll down). Also, please check out my book, Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives,published in March 2017.

How Jackie Kennedy dealt with her husband's compulsive affairs

Jackie, the film by Chilean director Pablo Larrain, hit American screens this winter, accompanied by scores of stories resurrecting speculation about the experiences of former First Lady Jackie Kennedy. One question writers and film reviewers ask is, what did she know about her husband’s infidelities?

I was interested to find that the filmmakers agreed with my research for “Why They Stay”: that Jacqueline Kennedy was by turns pragmatic and bereft about her husband’s seemingly compulsive sex outside of their marriage.

When Jack Kennedy took office in 1961, the couple had been married for seven years. As president, he became consumed with almost daily sexual liaisons, according to the many accounts of their White House days. Both Jack Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier had been raised to regard philandering outside of marriage as a natural male privilege.

Even so, there’s evidence that JFK’s philandering hurt Jackie deeply.

Jackie’s father, “Black Jack” Bouvier, confided in his daughter about his seductions. According to Kennedy biographer Edward Klein, Bouvier told Jackie that on his honeymoon, on his way over to England with her mother on the Aquitania, he slipped away and slept with tobacco heiress Doris Duke. Years later, when her father visited Jackie at boarding school in Farmington, Conn., the two would play a game where she would point to the mother of one of her classmates, and Black Jack would respond “yes” or “not yet” – to indicate whether he had bedded the woman in question. He was said to be capable of sleeping with two or three women in an evening.

Little wonder then that Jackie, who saw her dad as a man of great style and sophistication, would respond this way when warned about her future husband’s playboy ways: “All men are like that. Just look at my father,” according to historian Sally Bedell Smith. Jackie echoed this in later years when trying to reassure her sister-in-law, Joan Bennett Kennedy, who was upset by her husband Teddy Kennedy’s affairs. “All Kennedy men are like that,” Jackie said. “You can’t let it get to you because you shouldn’t take it personally.”

Similarly, Jackie’s husband had grown up with the idea that powerful men weren’t required to be faithful to their wives. His father Joe Kennedy’s many affairs – especially with glamour girl Gloria Swanson – were publicized in newspaper gossip columns. And yet Joe’s wife Rose Kennedy ignored it all, choosing family togetherness, social status, great houses and money over confrontation.

Possibly Jackie saw JFK’s appeal to other women as tantalizing. She may have thought, they could want him, but she had him. She had won. However, it’s also likely that she underestimated her husband’s near-constant pursuit of sexual reassurance and release. Author Klein reports this observation by Kirk LeMoyne “Lem” Billings, Jack’s prep school roommate and lifelong friend. “While on one level Jackie must have known what she was getting into by marrying a thirty-six-year-old playboy, she never suspected the depth of Jack’s need for other women,” Billing said. “Nor was she prepared for the humiliation she would suffer when she found herself stranded at parties while Jack would suddenly disappear with some pretty young girl.”

The First Lady also tried dealing with her husband’s needs directly. She met a cardiologist, Dr. Frank Finnerty, through her brother-in-law Bobby Kennedy, according to a story retold by Bedell Smith. Finnerty was a friend and neighbor. Jackie and he struck up a telephone friendship, where she began calling him twice a week for consolation and advice. She told him she knew what was going on with Jack, and that the Secret Service covered for him. “She was also sure that Jack felt no love or any kind of affection” for these women, Finnerty has said. “He was just getting rid of some hormonal surge,” Jackie rationalized, that he had “undoubtedly inherited from his father.”

With the doctor, Jackie learned about foreplay and other ways that she and Jack could discover more pleasure with each other in bed. The phone consultations included a script Jackie could present to her husband to raise the issue of changing their bedroom routine without offending his masculine ego. Jack’s philandering didn’t stop, but as least his wife could reassure herself that it wasn’t because they lacked intimacy in the bedroom.

This version of Jackie -- vulnerable, nurturing a closer marriage -- is so at odds with her public persona, where she always seemed cool and in charge of her emotions. This window into her world as a wife causes me to admire her even more.

If you liked this post, please subscribe for future updates here (scroll down). Also, please check out my book, Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives, published in March 2017.

Loyalty to a cheating spouse helps tank Hillary's candidacy

Huma Abedin is Hillary Clinton's closest aide, and since graduating from college has held no job that wasn’t connected to this rising American political star. At Huma’s wedding in July 2010, Clinton called her a “second daughter.” That’s how close they are.

Ten months after her marriage to Anthony Weiner, on May 27, 2011, Huma’s husband was caught very publicly cheating on her via sext message. Anthony sent photo of himself, erect in gray undershorts, to a 21-year-old sext partner. By mistake, he bypassed the direct message function on Twitter and sent the pic to all 45,000 of his followers. A conservative blogger and Anthony detractor, Andrew Breitbart, got hold of the errant tweet and publicized it further to the world.

And what did Huma do? At first, she believed Anthony’s story that his Twitter account had been hacked. Within a couple of weeks, though, he told the truth. She considered their unborn child she was carrying, and she stayed with Anthony. She tried to resurrect his political career in 2013, as he ran for New York City mayor. Huma used her connection with Bill and Hillary Clinton to raise money and support for Anthony's mayoral campaign.

Such marital stoicism, in the words of journalist Jennifer Senior. And to whom did Huma look for this example? Her mentor Hillary Clinton. “At the end of the day,” Huma has said of the senior woman’s advice, “every woman should have the ability and the confidence and the choice to make whatever decisions she wants to make that are right for her and not be judged by it.”

To whom did Huma look for this example? Her mentor Hillary Clinton.

Huma stayed with Anthony until August 2016, when a fresh leak of sexts showed that he had not only continued virtual flirtations with female partners but was now referring to the couple’s toddler son, Jordan, as a “chick magnet.” At this point, Huma announced that she was separating from Anthony. But was this decision to break with a cheating man already too late?

The following month, in September 2016, the FBI learned that Anthony had been sexting with a 15-year-old girl. Given the girl's age, this was now a potential crime, and the FBI opened an investigation into Anthony's activity.

Then, with less than two weeks to go before Election Day in on Nov. 8, 2016, FBI Director James Comey announced that this investigation had revealed a new cache of emails, forwarded by Huma on Anthony’s laptop during Hillary Clinton’s tenure at the state department. Comey’s revelation reinforced public concern that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was careless. Then, just two days before the election, Comey told Congress that the new emails contained nothing of interest in regard to Clinton—but if he intended to clear the air, Comey’s announcement had the opposite effect. It energized Donald Trump supporters to show up at the polls and vote.

We all know now how that turned out.

Hillary's path to power required Faustian bargain

Hillary Clinton couldn’t have known in 1998 how her husband’s high-profile philandering would play out. Would he be rehabilitated in the public eye? She couldn’t be sure, but she took the gamble. Had she left the marriage, today she might be the spurned wife of a retired politician instead of on the precipice to lead the free world.

Looking back on the path chosen by the nine political wives profiled in "Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives," we have the evidence to see a pattern—as old as the dynastic maneuverings of England’s medieval queens. The women married to the “royalty” of our times—politicians—make similar cold calculations in order to hold onto their “thrones” and their family’s history-making potential.

After covering politicians for decades as a reporter and columnist, I switched my gaze to the women behind the cheating men. Drawing from multiple sources that span the Roosevelts’ marriage to the more recent scandal involving Hillary Clinton’s closest aide Huma Abedin (wife of “sexter,” Anthony Weiner), "Why They Stay" argues that when it comes to the “power behind the throne,” women in the limelight weigh the risks and rewards. They remain loyal to their men, because of complex, often unconscious forces.

From mapping a path to power to laudable notions of holding the family together, I examine the uniquely challenging Faustian bargains that political wives grapple with, even as the public spotlight illuminates their every move.

Publishing in March 2017, Why They Stay explores the possible reasoning and motivation behind why political wives stay with their husbands after the husbands cheat. For updates on the book launch, sign up at whytheystaybook.com.

Huma had a Sophie's Choice

In the end, it probably wasn’t Huma Abedin’s injured wifely feelings that ended her marriage so much as her professional pride.

This is the third time that Anthony’s Weiner’s sexting has landed him on the front pages of New York tabloids. Again, he was embarrassingly shorn of his shirt, wearing just his skivvies and apparently happy below the waist.

The first time Anthony went public with a photo like this, it was intended for a 21-year-old admirer, but he accidentally tweeted it to his roughly 45,000 Twitter followers. It was May 2011, and he was congressman, a loner and a whip-smart combative son of middle-class Brooklyn with the ambition to run New York City as its mayor. Huma, his pregnant wife of one year, apparently hadn’t known about his obsession for e-sex with strangers.

But she knew when she propped him up for his mayoral run in 2013 – helping solicit funds from her friends among the Bill and Hillary Clinton campaign donors. And so it mustn’t be the infidelity – if you can call it that – of phone sex that finally caused Huma to walk. It must be the public embarrassment. A scandal isn’t a scandal if it’s private between two people. It’s a scandal when it appears on the cover of the New York Post.

For Huma, the Aug. 29 NY Post cover was a potentially career-ending juncture. It called into question her judgment at a time when her long-time mentor Hillary Clinton is a breath away from becoming the nation’s first female president. Why would a woman as talented and striking as Abedin stay with a guy who regularly humiliated her? Love is one reason, but it doesn’t overcome every odd. Not odds this repeated and this public.

Heartbreakingly, the photo also compromised Huma as a mother. The couple’s son Jordan, now 4, appears as a baby next to his dad in the offending pic. His face was blurred out in the published photo – but, my God. One of the reasons the couple stayed together all these years – five years since his first fateful tweet in May 2011 – was an aspiration to give Jordan a good family life.

Huma said, at a July 2013 press conference, “I made the decision that it was worth staying in this marriage and that was a decision I made for me, for our son and for our family. I didn’t know how it would work out, but I did know that I wanted to give it a try.”

Anthony’s view in October 2014, as told to Politico, may have been the more pessimistic if realistic outlook for young Jordan: “I am quite confident that my son will have the ability to look at the totality of the experiences he has with his father and the record that I've got and judge me appropriately. Maybe, you know, it teaches him a little something about adversity and everything doesn't go great all the time.”

Especially not if you keep working at making it un-great, no.

Anthony could not keep his fetishes inside the walls of his home. Perhaps if he could have, his and Huma’s personal bargains could have had a chance. All relationships make accommodations – maybe those of political spouses more than the rest. But because of who Huma is – given her near-familial relationship with Hillary Clinton – the interpersonal is always going to be front-page, tabloid fodder.

Huma had to choose: Hillary or Anthony. Anthony’s behavior tilted the scale. As a mother and a political force, Huma knew the stakes on both sides were rising. I think she chose well.

If you liked this blog post, please sign up for updates on the book launch of "Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives" at whytheystaybook.com, publishing in March 2017. Anne Michaud is a veteran political journalist and columnist for Newsday in New York.

That ringing endorsement

This is an early sketch for the cover of Why They Stay. Photographer C.J. Burton sketched out nine or 10 potential scenarios, and our team chose this as the one that most closely conveys the idea that politically married women are tied to their husbands -- even as the husbands continue to thrive in politics.

When I showed the early sketch to friends, I explained, "That's a wedding ring around the couples' waists." Fortunately, when C.J. sent through the actual cover design, the circle was so obviously a gold wedding ring that I no longer had any fear people wouldn't get the idea and impact.

Janet Michaud was the art director for the cover design. Yes, in fact, we did grow up together. She's my sister and the talented head of Politico's magazine and website design. Janet, C.J. and I brainstormed the art on conference calls. The three of us live in far corners of the country. It was wonderful being able to use technology to collaborate at a distance.

I've always been on the word side of publishing, and this collaboration has taught me a ton about what my sister does for a living. Bonus!

"Wife" imitates life

The Good Wife debuted in 2009, shortly after the real-life resignation of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Like Spitzer, the CBS series' errant politician Peter Florrick is discovered hiring hookers. District Attorney Florrick goes to jail, not for the sex but on corruption charges, and the show – as its name implies – revolves around how wife Alicia and their two children cope with the crisis. Creators Michelle and Robert King, husband and wife, say they drew inspiration from imagining the life of Silda Wall Spitzer after her husband's downfall. Like Alicia, Silda had given up work as an Ivy League-educated lawyer earlier in the marriage to raise her two children.

As Alicia sells their beautiful suburban home, downsizes to an urban apartment and begins work at a law firm, her reasons for staying married to Peter unfold. First, there's his assumption that once he beats the corruption charges, their life will go "back to normal." His mother, who's now helping the family care for their young teens, tells Alicia, "he's hurting, and he needs you to forgive him." And, naturally, the children want their father to return and their family to be reunited. When Peter finally leaves jail and decides to run again for office, his sharp political adviser tells Alicia he has no chance of winning without her Good Housekeeping stamp of approval. In other words, she can choose to stand by him or deny him his redemption.

As the writers of this show would have it, Alicia/Silda acts out of concern for everyone around her. The insights about her feelings for her husband are rare – at one point, she suggests separate bedrooms, telling Peter she still loves him but that she's been deeply hurt.

The political limelight bends couples

Our public conversation about politically married women who remain in the marriage after infidelity has remained frozen in place. When the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, we asked, "Why does Hillary stay with Bill?" And we are still asking essentially the same question. When Anthony Weiner's sexting came to light, we wanted to know what kept Huma in the marriage.

It would take a lot for me to leave my marriage, which I love, but the repeated public humiliations these wives have suffered would have been enough to break me.

So, I wrote a 260-something-page book called "Why They Stay: The Sex Scandals, the Deals and the Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives." I concluded that the spotlight changes how these couples react to infidelity. I'm sure you've heard references to politicians living in a bubble or an echo chamber. I feel that applies to their marriages. We can't judge them by normal standards.

For one, they've often lost touch with normal. These couples have learned to perform for the media and, at the same time, to distrust media reports, so that they turn inward toward each other and a few close advisers for counsel. Also, couples in public life fend off repeated political attacks, and the furor over an infidelity can elicit the same defensive crouch. The women who stay in these marriages are often described in the media as loyal, selfless, "a rock" -- which again distorts what's going on. The temptation to buy into that role, and inflate one's already powerful sense of patriotic purpose, must be enormous.

Publishing in March 2017, Why They Stay explores the possible reasoning and motivation behind why political wives stay with their husbands after the husbands cheat. For updates on the book launch, sign up at whytheystaybook.com.