Posted on 08/24/2017 8:08:59 AM PDT by doug from upland
"In the spring of 1971, I met a girl…"
So began Bill Clinton's tender, rambling speech last night at the Democratic National Convention, a speech in which he described his wife Hillary as a natural leader, an excellent mother, and "the best change maker" he'd ever met. "I married my best friend," he said.
It was a reminder that the Clintons are still together after 45 years of marriage, in spite of all the public humiliations they've faced. They've outlasted the Gores, the first two Trump marriages, and the first two Gingrich marriages. Could the Clintons be — and having grown up in a culture where their relationship was often a punchline, I never thought I'd say this — good marriage role models?
Bill's uncharacteristically humble speech about his wife (which, as someone on Twitter joked, felt like a telling of their love story "in real time") made her relentless fix-it spirit sound virtuous, a little exhausting, sure, but also somehow charming. The speech did something many would argue not much else has in the past 25 years the Clintons have been on the national stage: it made Hillary sound like a real person, and their marriage like a real marriage — replete with water breaking and house purchasing, and, heaven help us, a Police Academy marathon.
He left some things out, more than a few critics noted after the speech was over. What about his affairs? That Bill's straying should reflect on Hillary is a drum Trump has been beating at least since May. In stump speeches, he has attacked Hillary for "enabling" her husband's infidelity, suggesting that doing so is a sign of weakness. He would never take back a woman who'd been unfaithful to him, he's reportedly said. (Though he's bragged about his own affairs, and about the benefits of having around "a young and beautiful piece of ass.")
As a Trump attack dog, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, too, tried similarly to discredit Hillary. "You don't care about women, you don't care about feminism," he's said. "You don't even care about your own dignity." (This from a man whose wife, the mother of his children, found out he was leaving her via a press conference.) And of course Newt Gingrich led the impeachment proceedings against Clinton while, we know now, cheating on his own wife.
These three men, nine marriages between them, know what it's like to want someone else — and to sleep with someone else — while married. So what are they really saying when they're making fun of the Clintons' marriage? What they're saying is that when you get the hots for someone else, you should have the "decency" to leave your spouse. This cheating-is-worse-than-divorce assumption is baked into mainstream society. People from across the political spectrum say that cheating should be a marital deal breaker, and that to tolerate or repeatedly forgive infidelity — especially someone as much of a hound as middle-aged Bill Clinton has often been painted — is to be a doormat, a punching bag, a fool. But that doesn't have to be true.
Relationship therapist Esther Perel says that monogamy "used to be one person for life. Today, monogamy is one person at a time." Good statistics on this are tough to come by, but it's generally believed that as many as three out of four married people will cheat at some point. Does that make all their marriages shams?
Certainly it's not always worth staying in a relationship if you're being cheated on and miserable about it (or if you're miserable, period). But maybe it's worth asking: could it ever be just as noble to stay and work on a marriage through tough times as it is to leave when you or the person you're married to strays? We've done a good job getting rid of the stigma around divorce, but in doing so, have created one around the decision to keeping your vow to stay together no matter what.
Bill's speech made a case for his wife as president, but maybe it also made the case that working through infidelity could pay off, and that staying married could be creative and exciting. "I've lived a long, full, blessed life," Bill said. "It really took off when I met and fell in love with that girl." Lord knows he could have had a lot of fun single. And Hillary could have put her husband's recklessness behind her like a bad haircut and moved on to continue her change-making and achievements without him too. But she stayed. And now they get to be doting grandparents together, mutually supporting each other in their latest acts, and potentially becoming the first married to couple to ever both be President, which will make a good Christmas letter.
"What I admire most about Hillary," Michelle Obama said in her own much praised convention speech, "is that she never buckles under pressure. She never takes the easy way out. And Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life." That stubbornness is a trait for which last night Bill seemed particularly grateful. In his speech he was a husband who, Rebecca Traister wrote in New York magazine, "was managing, for once in his life, a moment of self-control and of submission." Seeing him that way — humble, smitten — made it look like Hillary's investment in him may have been a smart bet, like maybe she saw in him the potential to be just this kind of partner.
"Everything she touched, she made better," Bill Clinton said this spring at a stump speech for his wife soon after Trump started attacking their marriage. Bill was talking about her rampant do-gooding, but he could have been defending their life together. In the Clinton's marriage model, you screw up. You forgive. You grow. And you grow old, together, making new memories and celebrating old ones with the same person you've known since she was "a girl," someone you fell in love with many years ago in the spring.
They are still married because spouses can’t be compelled to testify against one another in a US court of law.
Just like Barak and his Wookie.
That pic is so very disgusting.
I bet the “Prez with the continuous boner” lost it during that photo shoot.
So, if you rape women and kill your political enemies then you can succeed in life?
I think HilLIARy is the perfect example of the power behind the throne.
She has the evil ambitions, he has the skill and charm to pull them off.
She is nothing without him, except maybe a middle manager at the DMV. She would probably have been disbarred.
He is nothing without her - pushing him to drive higher and higher. There is nothing people wont do for him, and there is nothing he is not willing to do.
So you had a Charming Sociopath and an evil shrew who rode him to the top.
Role models??????
Hi guy, I hope you are doing well.
“Clintons are still together after 45 years of marriage”
The reason that they are still married is to insure they can’t testify against each other.
5.56mm
Nothing more than a criminal business/political partnership.
Yeah, right. Their relationship has been much more of a political alliance than an actual marriage. Bill has been cheating on Hillary all along.
Exactly. Let’s define precisely what is meant by “still together”. I’d be willing to bet that they haven’t been truly man and wife, or even slept in separate beds under the same roof in decades.
Only if you consider repeated public humiliation a good part of marriage.
This article was one of many written by friendly jurnos during the campaign to ease the wound known as Monica. How’d that work out for you Hill?
Ah yes, ‘standing by your man,” a serial sexual harasser, adulterer and face-biting rapist. How touching, what a lovely marriage.
What binds them together is their hate for whomever they decide are their enemies.
The Secret of a successful Marriage, Marry a Rapist.
A+
The dance on the beach was especially creepy
I think she looks a little like Paula Broadwell, General Petraeus’ mistress.
And it has. The Clinton's have redefined marriage as a political partnership.
They probably weren't the first political couple to make their marriage a vehicle for career advancement, but that model of marriage as partnership for mutual advancement has really taken hold in some parts of society and displaced other ideas about marriage.
I can think of a dozen worse reasons to be married.
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