Why Political Marriages Matter

What goes on inside of a marriage is always a mystery. With a political marriage, even more so. We all know the stories of the neighbors who have the apparently idyllic marriage, that ends in divorce. Or the couple that battles incessantly, that have been together for 40 years. These dynamics, and the psychological mechanism behind them are truly a riddle wrapped in an enigma.

However, with political marriages, and with public figures, we get a better glimpse. After the fact, we often have letters, tapes, diaries and tell-alls that become a part of the public record. In analyzing them, we learn a lot about how the marriage worked, how it shaped the individuals and in turn how it shaped history.

This is what we learn about LBJ and Lady Bird in Betty Boyd Caroli’s Lady Bird and Lyndon: The Hidden Story of a Marriage That Made a President.

My conversation with Betty Boyd Caroli:

Alexandra Fuller

It is one of the tragic ironies of the psychoanalytic age that we are attracted to people, particularly our partners, who often turn out to be the very ones that begin to repel us later in life.

At first, its those once endearing and now annoying habits. And then, it becomes annoyance at their larger world view.

Perhaps it's because in partnering, we seek to make up for those things that we are lacking. Perhaps its because we buy into to the old adage that opposites attract. Even though, contemporary research shows us that that is simply not true, that partners that are similar tend to do better.

Today we seek and talk of authenticity, but is it possible to be authentic, while trying to compromise with anyone that is the opposite from who we are at core?

Those are some of the central ideas running through Alexandra Fuller's memoir, Leaving Before the Rains Come.

My conversation with Alexandra Fuller:

Sleeping with the enemy...

Again, a marriage becomes the template to examine the socio-political storms swirling around the society. While previously we looked at marriages of the 60's and 70's, now Sophia Raday, in her new book,  Love in Condition Yellow: A Memoir of an Unlikely Marriage, writes of a marriage, her own, that's a template for a kind of 21st Century point/counterpoint.

Imagine a Berkeley peace activist who falls in love with a straight-laced Oakland police officer. As someone who had run away from cops dressed in riot gear at protests, Sophia was skeptical, to say the least, at the prospect of dating not only a cop but also a West Point graduate, an Airborne Ranger, and a major in the Army Reserve.

The two argue about many of the matters that divide the country; things like drug policy and race relations  Then, to up the ante, comes September 11th. Sophia and her husband Barrett must then begin to confront, on a very personal level, their differing viewpoints on polarizing values like fear, duty, family, and patriotism.

My conversation with Sophia Raday:

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Marriage Go Round

Andrew Cherlin argues that marriage in America is totally unique, as compared to the rest of the world.  We value marriage and commitment, yet the American strain of independence and freedom is equally powerful.  This dichotomy has helped to define marriage in America and may even help explain some of the debate our same sex marriage.  In his new book, The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today, Cherlin deconstructs marriage in a way that even Woody Allen would have found helpful.  

My conversation with Andrew Cherlin:

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