Paragons of Marital Excellence
Rod Dreher asks a good question:
“… the Clinton marriage, however hollow from the inside, still honors the “till death do us part” formality. Besides, if there is no deceit or abuse inside the marriage, is it so wrong for them to agree to stay married, honoring their partnership as a social institution? Where is it written that a married couple must have romantic affection for each other for their marriage to be worth something — and worth preserving?”
The Clinton marriage has long been something of an obsession of mine. Firstly because Dreher is exactly right: the Clintons demonstrate that marriage is not mere sentiment but an objective fact. It is an alliance of interests, a concrete commitment, a relation sealed with vows and witnesses. Affection, while it ought to emerge naturally from these facts, is a fillip.
Secondly for a precisely opposite reason: I sometimes imagine that they are the secret representatives of genuine romance in our age. It is possible, in the world of idle speculation, that the two are positively frantic for each other and their public distance is a mere sham. The universal surety that Bill and Hillary privately despise one another only heightens the ordinary joy of sharing secrets to an impossible and ecstatic degree. When they were young they loved in the ordinary way, but as their love grew, in degree and in kind, they began to understand, more than other couple in our age, that marriage is like a theater and a play should be playful. It is possible that they regret now and then that one of their most convincing acts—the only one in which they have so far dared to include another actor—did so much lasting damage to the presidency and the country, but in their madness for one another patriotism is a tepid passion, and their regret never lasts long.
This is a pretty interesting post. I think about this one a lot as my marriage matures. While I would never argue that romance is unimportant in a marriage, I think it’s important to remember that it waxes and wanes with time and the events in our lives. What’s often more important is that a marriage be a very strong partnership. My wife and I aren’t always madly in love with each other but we are great partners and that actually deepens our love in a lot of ways.
I think Bill and Hillary are one hell of a couple. They’ve been in the game a long time and they’ve carved out two pretty unique rolls for themselves. I think they have a lot more to offer before they go off into the sunset.Report
Jim Henley has a pretty good post about this as well.
http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2008/02/11/7856
Here’s his finish: It’s an odd marriage – only odd people rise to that level of political eminence. But it’s too durable to assume, in this era, that it’s just a career move. I believe that if they were animals on the paradigmatic veldt and one of them died, the other would hang by the body and howl for days.
That last sentence just chokes me up.Report
@Jaybird, That’s some good stuff yo.Report
“paradigmatic veldt”????? Who talks like that? Should they be slapped or applauded for that?Report
“The main animals inhabiting the paradigmatic veldt are the elks, the moose, and the knights of Pythias.”Report
Good post. I’ve often thought there’s sort of a Holmes/Moriarty thing going on with Bill and Hillary- they’re brilliant rivals who need each other to spur themselves to greater heights. One could defeat the other, but then what would they do with themselves?Report
@Rufus F., Ahh, but who will chuck whom over the falls first, one wonders?Report
@Mopey Duns, It’s always possible that both would end up going over together and we’d find out that Al Gore was manipulating both of them all along.Report
“… the Clinton marriage, however hollow from the inside”
Keeping in mind that all of us have close friends whose marriages are complete mysteries to us, how, exactly, would Dreher know this?Report
@Mike Schilling, Exactly. I’m always amused by all the various wise pundits (especially the moral ones who preach from airport bathroom stalls or from the arms of their gay “luggage boys”) who purport to somehow know what exactly is in the hearts and minds of the Clintons.
It’s entirely possible of course that the relationship is as cold blooded as they claim. But how the hell would these poobahs know?Report
No one knows what goes on inside of a marriage. That’s about the beginning and the end of it. We can conjecture. We can think about it. But at the end of the day the first sentence of this comment holds true.Report
@Parmenides, Don’t you mean to say that the unchanging reality of a marriage can’t be understood via the senses, but only by pure reasoning?Report