What’s Love Got to Do with It?

With a national divorce rate that has hovered between 40 and 50 percent in recent years, the state of marriage in the United States today is abysmal. This trend is especially foreboding for young people—like myself—who one day hope to have happy and healthy relationships with their spouse and maybe even raise normal, well-adjusted children.

Marital erosion is especially rampant in the celebrity world, where competing careers and the relentless scrutiny of the public’s microscope drive couples apart almost instantly. By contrast, in the political sphere, it seems that “I do” still means forever. Nowhere is this peculiarity more apparent than in the wake of a high-profile political sex scandal.

What is holding these marriages together? We can probably assume elected officials aren’t simply more loving than the rest of us. The answer appears to be found instead in the realm of public image and power. Recent examples of resilient political couplings are not hard to find. Idaho Senator Larry Craig’s wife stood by him while he was accused of soliciting sex in an airport men’s restroom. More recently, Silda Wall Spitzer was there for her husband (and the press conference cameras) while he resigned as New York’s governor after getting caught up in an expensive prostitution ring.

There is no reason to think that these marriages are going to deteriorate as their respective crises fade from the front page. In fact, presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill seem to be doing just fine together after 1998’s highly publicized Monica Lewinsky scandal and a handful of Bill’s other dalliances.

This anomaly would seem to dispel the antiquated notion that true love or selfless forgiveness are at all necessary for enduring relationships—there can be something far less magical at work. In the case of political marriages, the mere practical exigencies of maintaining a pristine reputation in the public eye and smoothing over rough patches for the good of a party or administration often mean politicians and their spouses are stuck together, for better or worse. In other cases, the influence of money and power creates a situation in which one person in the marriage has his or her interests and ambitions subordinated to those of the spouse.

The fact of the matter is that both the embattled politician and his or her spouse stand to lose big if their marriage itself ends in scandal. For the former, this can mean further tarnishing an already-troubled political career, and for the latter a second professional sacrifice made for personal reasons.

Silda Wall Spitzer was a very successful corporate lawyer before giving it up in 2006 to support her husband’s political ambitions. After relinquishing her personal achievements and hitching her fate to her husband’s in office, Mrs. Spitzer suffered a particular injustice when the former governor’s indiscretion was revealed. But because of this very investment in her marriage, divorce would accomplish nothing; indeed, it would only further hurt her and their family.

There is of course nothing wrong with making such sacrifices for the people you love. Eliot Spitzer, however, did not apparently appreciate his wife’s selflessness enough to avoid betraying her trust and breaking his marital commitment. Yet they remain together, even after all that has happened—and we may never know precisely why. Craig’s days in Congress are running out in disgrace, yet his wife stands by him: might it be image, sympathy or love behind her loyalty?

Examining these recent political sex scandals leads to a less than idyllic picture of marriage. Through it all, it seems that where love falters, public image maintenance and power relations are waiting to pick up the slack.

This mercenary attitude toward matrimony may highlight the uglier aspects of human relationships. But we could perhaps take it as good news, especially for the many Harvard undergraduates aspiring to positions of power in the public sphere. Desperate for a mate? With political power and prestige alone, one will almost certainly find a marriage that withstands the test of time, however unhappily. We can only hope, though, that in the name of love, people will try a little harder.


Anthony C. Speare ’10, a Crimson editorial comper, lives in Dunster House.