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?

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.