In May 2013, when Huma Abedin stood alongside her husband, disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner, as he announced his unlikely candidacy for mayor of New York City, the public watched transfixed. They were both aghast and perplexed. They had seen it all before, but this one seemed to break the mold. Abedin was a highly coveted political operative and Weiner was a laughingstock (he would prove to be even more so when more details came out this past fall.) And yet his wife was still there. We thought back on Clinton and Spitzer and countless others and again couldn't help but wonder: What makes women stay in a political marriage after a highly public infidelity? Author Anne Michaud believes that part of the answer is that politics is soaked in traditional values to such an extent that the political wives-even though they are accomplished, well connected and conceivably financially independent-choose to fight for the marriage more forcefully than one might expect in the general population. Additionally, the coverage of political wives is, almost without exception, blind to the weight they place on family happiness over their own as individuals.
Their reasons for remaining married is within a family context-it isn't only the marriage that matters, it's the whole family. They see their marriage as the basis for a larger web of relationships. Why They Stay will look through lenses of marital tradition and at nine philandering politicians (including FDR, JFK, Clinton, Eliot Spitzer and Weiner), whose wives have stayed with them-for years or forever. If we can begin to understand this group of women, we may arrive at some universal laws that govern or concern all women.