Here Come the Helpmates

By FRANK BRUNI
NYT

Before we travel any further down the 2012 campaign trail and hear any more about what a rosy and essential mirror of the candidate his (or her) spouse provides, let’s brush up on history. We need go back only four years, to John and Elizabeth Edwards.

He had really great hair, right up there with Mitt Romney’s. She carried some extra pounds. And his Ken-doll perfection next to her real-world flaws was supposed to tell us something about what a decent fellow he was, or so the superficial, insulting, credulous narrative went.

I remember no small number of conversations in which I heard someone speak highly of him because he was with her. And I remember that the main question asked about their relationship, for a while, was not if he loved her enough, but if he loved her so much that her cancer and possible death would distract him from governing.

Of course it turned out that even as he was beseeching the country to give him its trust, he was betraying hers by having an affair with a campaign videographer, whom he impregnated. He and Elizabeth were long separated by the time she died.

(More here.)