Laura wonders how Silda Wall Spitzer can attend press conferences with her hopefully-soon-to-be-ex-husband:

Why do political wives stand by their man? Why do they stoically stand next to their husbands at the podium as the dirtbags admit to sleeping with prostitutes and young men? Most women I know would morph into Loretta Bobbitt in a similar situation rather than Silda Spitzer.

Silda is urging Eliot to stay in office. At this point, I would be throwing his clothes out of the window of their 5th Avenue apartment and letting them rain down on the reporters below.

I can think of many reasons why Mrs. Spitzer would at least try to put up a brave front in public.

The first problem is, Laura is approaching this like a normal person. There is nothing normal about a political family. I just blogged about this. Let's quote Andrew Ferguson:

But does "super type-A personality" really describe the kind of person who runs for president nowadays? It's not pleasant to think of the life they lead, these Americans who would be president, from the first hints of dawn to well past midnight, this life of endless demands, this succession of superficial sociability, in which you smile and smile and pop your eyes wide open in delighted wonder at the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of faces and places that circles before you, and you haven't the time or leisure to settle on a single one. Charming countryside, pretty little towns, sprawling centers of commerce and industry fly by and you haven't a moment to enjoy them or learn their tales. You rush to meet hundreds of people a day and never have a meaningful exchange of words with any of them.

From the backseats of freezing cars and vans you're hustled into overheated coffee shops and those packed school gymnasiums with the stink rising to the rafters and then the oppressive hush of corporate meeting rooms, where your nose starts to run and a film of sweat forms under your wool pullover, and you press the outstretched hands that carry every bacterial pathogen known to epidemiology. You open your mouth and you release the same cloud of words you recited yesterday and the day before. And in the Q&A, when you stop to listen, you hear the same questions and complaints from yesterday, the same mewling and blame-shifting, all imploring you to do the impossible and through some undefined action make the lives of these unhappy citizens somehow edifying, uplifting, and worth living. And you always promise you will do that; you have no choice but to tell this kind of lie.

There's no rest, because there's not a moment to waste: The handful of minutes away from the kaleidoscope are spent chatting with the scorpions of the press, the ill-dressed, ill-mannered reporters from the prints and the pretty, preening peacocks of TV, each of them either a know-it-all or a cynic or a dope, take your pick, and each of whom, for professional and other reasons, will deploy all his energies and cleverness to the task of trapping you into a misstatement or ungenerous remark or expression of irritation so he can convey to his editors and the world that--at last!--you've made a gaffe; and if you won't make a gaffe then he will convey to his editors and the world how "scripted" and "over rehearsed" you sound; kind of slick, almost robotic, inauthentic.

When the scorps are dismissed, in the seconds before you pass from the freezing van to the overheated gym or boardroom, a sycophant whose name you can't remember hands you a cell phone that connects you to a rich man whose face you dimly recall from another boardroom last summer and you beg him to give you money, or more often--considering the grinding pressure you feel for cash, always for cash--you beg him to assemble a circle of other rich men that he can beg on your behalf, and when you sign off you don't have time to be grateful. There will be more calls before dinner and after dinner, and dinner is a cold thigh of chicken in a sump of clotted gravy served from a steam table in a freezing cinderblock banquet room at the Lions Club, and a hundred pairs of eyes fix themselves on you--a celebrity, someone they've seen on TV--as you dribble the gravy on your shirtfront. And after you release the same words and hear the same complaints you go to bed in a Hampton Suites for five hours of sleep on starchy sheets with dimly visible stains whose origins are impossible to discern, and from the corner the digital display on the microwave flashes 12:00 12:00 12:00 . . .

And you do all this so you can wake up the next morning and do it again. Because you like it.

The man or woman who seeks out such a life and enjoys its discomforts is not normal. Not crazy necessarily, but not normal, and probably, when the chips are down, not to be trusted, especially when the purpose of it all is to acquire power over other people (also called, in the delicate language of contemporary politics, "public service" or "getting things done on behalf of the American people").

This. Is. Not. Normal. And no candidate can long undertake this kind of effort with an unsupportive family - either the candidacy goes or the family does. A spouse that supports this kind of effort is buying into a pressurized lifestyle that outsiders can barely understand, much less relate to. (Michelle Cottle's profile of Michelle Obama in this week's TNR is also worth reading along these lines.) Remember Elizabeth Edwards' insistence that her husband redouble his campaign efforts in light of her cancer's recurrence? That type of commitment to the husband's political career is closely related to what drives a political wife to attend a press conference regarding that which any other couple would try with all their might to keep private. Dean Barnett, no friend to Democrats, understood this:

I CAN'T TELL YOU HOW BAD I FEEL FOR ELIZABETH AND JOHN EDWARDS. I'm familiar with the body-blow of a sudden diagnosis that turns your world upside down. It's incredible - you walk into a doctor's office and within a span of minutes you find out your life will never be the same. In the back of your mind you nourish the hopes of miracle cures or that you might be like that guy in Dubuque who got the same diagnosis but oddly enough lived forever, but the reality of the situation sits there in your mind. You can't shake it - it just won't leave.

But you try to carry on. I think I may know some of what the Edwards are feeling. They've been running for the White House for seven years now. And make no mistake - as Hugh points out in his book, running for president is a family affair. It's more than a dream and an ambition for them. It's a big part of what defines their lives.

So they walked out of that doctor's office refusing to let her disease take their lives away. Some people are calling their decision courageous; others find it puzzling. Having been in a situation analogous to theirs, I think I have some understanding and I know I have some sympathy. They're working through all of this. Their first instinct is not to surrender. That's good, and it's what you would have expected. People who seek the presidency aren't the types who give up or even compromise easily.

Whether high-level politics selects for people capable of this level of commitment or causes it - likely both - the end result is that families committed to politics at this level simply cannot, and do not, react in ways that would seem "normal" to outsiders. The pressure (which after a certain amount of habituation, becomes more internal than external) to keep up the public facade is overwhelming in a way that outsiders can barely imagine.

I still think this is one of the underrated reasons for the recent increase in political dynasties: they're the only ones who think of the lifestyle as normal, which confers a major competitive advantage in and of itself.

I don't really know any politicians, but some of my best friends are rabbis or rabbis' wives. For pulpit rabbis (and I am sure the same is true for other religions' clergy families), the pressure to be "on" and present the appropriate public face 24/7 to the community also can be pretty overwhelming, and the entire family is enlisted into this project by necessity. It is part of what you sign up for, if you're the wife - and the kids learn quickly that they have no choice (yes, many wonderful rebellions are inspired by this realization). If you think that political wives can be resentful (as shown by certain lines attributed to Mmes. Spitzer and Obama over the years), trust me on this one: you have NEVER had a candid conversation with a pulpit rabbi's wife.

Finally, there is one point that isn't restricted to political or rabbinic families. When everything is falling apart around you, it is natural to seize at any part of the situation that you can control. It wouldn't surprise me if women in Mrs. Spitzer's situation try to keep up an "appropriate" public facade purely as an attempt to control what they can, to hold the husband-induced chaos at bay in at least one way. I don't think anyone can criticize a woman for this reaction.