What Would ‘The Good Wife’ Do?
By ROBERT KING and MICHELLE KING
Published: July 8, 2011
Two years ago, “The Good Wife,” a CBS drama, opened with a familiar tableau: a politician apologizing for sexual peccadilloes. By his side, also caught in the glare of cameras, was his pale, stone-faced wife. What was going through her mind? Since then, politicians continue to face the cameras asking forgiveness. But wives have become conspicuous by their absence; the public no longer expects them to stand by their philanderers. What are these wives thinking? The show’s creators, Robert and Michelle King, who write together and have been married since 1987, speculate about the pressures peculiar to the wives of errant politicians as they weigh whether to forgive their husbands.
Jenny Sanford, in yellow, the former wife of Mark Sanford, leaving the Governor's Mansion.
Hillary and Bill Clinton in 1992.
Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press
Representative Anthony D. Weiner with Huma Abedin.
THE image has indeed changed. There is no wife standing by her man anymore: the political calculation doesn’t demand it. Jenny Sanford didn’t stand beside Gov. Mark Sanford. Huma Abedin wasn’t at Representative Anthony D. Weiner’s side.
But what hasn’t changed is the melodrama of these political scandals. Clinton, McGreevey, Edwards, Spitzer, Sanford, Schwarzenegger, Weiner. Speaking as television writers: they’re over the top.
One can imagine the studio notes. “We like the husband who impregnates his housekeeper, but keeping her in the same house for a decade seems a bit mustache-twirling.” “Love the presidential candidate cheating with his videographer, but do you need the wife to have cancer?” “Tweeting semi-naked photos from the congressional gym: good — very hip. But making his wife pregnant: isn’t that too on-the-nose?”
But here we are. Reality isn’t constrained by studio notes.
Reality is also usually grayer than fiction. The bad husband must have some good in him, or why would the wronged wife love him in the first place? And if the husband is not all bad, if this indiscretion is just a moment of weakness, or a decade of weakness, is there hope? Is there something in the husband for the wife to forgive?
That’s what interested us in “The Good Wife,” back when things seemed so innocent: just call girls and wide stances. How does a wife deal with two betrayals simultaneously: betrayal by infidelity, and betrayal by public humiliation? And how does the wronged wife deal with both, while suddenly judged by the public for every step and misstep?
The question still fascinates us.
Obviously the betrayed wife’s dilemma is complicated by the overlap between the private and the public spheres. The husband’s sin is magnified by the media. It’s everywhere. How can a wife forgive when she can’t get away from the photos, the tweets, the dress, the hooker’s interview, the surprise son?
And then there is the husband’s dilemma, that of the public penitent. The confessing politician has two audiences: the spouse and the public. And the two interests conflict. A wife wants privacy to heal the relationship or to dissolve it. The public wants details.
Robert (Michelle doesn’t completely agree with this): Also confession as a public act is patently hypocritical. It can’t help but have an agenda: political rehabilitation. To my mind, Catholics have it right. Confession, whether to a wife or to a priest, is a private matter. As soon as you make it public, it’s performance. Was there ever a more hurtful or mortifying confession than Mark Sanford’s as he proclaimed his love for his Argentine mistress?
But that’s the irony of public life: how can a politician make amends otherwise? He has to be in the public eye. If he has offended the public, if he has lied to them, then he needs to make amends to his public. So he has to say something. Is it even an option for him to shut up?
Michelle (Robert marginally agrees): Yes, but the wife has to wonder if she’s being used as a way to resurrect his career. Even if she does forgive him, does she want that forgiveness to be used to save his job?
The wife didn’t run for office. She doesn’t benefit from a public airing of her marital problems. At the very moment when she should be allowed to consider only herself and her family, she’s forced to think about public consequences.
Robert (Michelle doesn’t agree): And what does the wronged wife do if she truly believes in her husband’s political worthiness? Is it wrong for her to forgive him if she merely believes it serves a worthy political end?
Michelle: Yes.
Robert: But doesn’t that reduce her to only a spouse, and not address her as a thinking political being?
Michelle: No.
Robert: In the end, I can’t help but sympathize with the disgraced candidate. He is surrounded by hypocrisy. Voters are appalled that he would do what he did or tweet what he tweeted when they have their own particular skeletons in their closets.
Michelle: The difficulty comes when you impregnate the woman you’re paying to clean those closets.
Robert: ...
Michelle: I’m sorry, go on.
Robert: That’s why the crisis manager’s admonition to “admit everything” always seems a bit ridiculous. What don’t you admit? Once you start digging, there’s no stopping. Do you admit what you did in third grade, in high school, in your darkest thoughts?
Michelle: No, you don’t. But the problem is, once you’re thinking about what to admit, you’re in the world of strategy. You’re trying to manipulate the system to save your career. In the best of all possible worlds, you ignore the public consequences and apologize privately, and accept whatever happens.
Robert: Which unfortunately makes for bad drama.
Robert/Michelle: “The Good Wife” was always meant to be a show about “politics” and how it wasn’t just something that happens in Washington, in the State House, in a campaign office. It happens everywhere: among co-workers, friends, enemies, companions, spouses. And our main character, the wronged spouse, came to realize that. She discovered that righteousness is often a pose, and that her husband’s enemies were sometimes worse than her husband.
Given that, the triumph of our betrayed character was not in forgiving. It was deciding not to retreat into her victimhood. If she were ever going to suffer from any mistakes again, they were going to be her mistakes and not her husband’s.
In the end, to forgive or not to forgive seems like half the equation. The more important half is making forgiveness irrelevant.
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