What's the Secret to a Political Marriage That Works?

One afternoon early in his second year as governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger flew home from Sacramento to Los Angeles with a vexing political problem. He needed to cut $2 billion from the budget he was putting together, and any of his best options for doing it could get him into trouble.

If he raised taxes, he'd anger his fellow Republicans. Break a promise to increase education funding and he'd alienate the top Democratic interest group, the California Teachers Assn. Option 3: Cut health and human services, the next biggest category in the budget. He didn't like the idea, but some of his advisors did, and given that there were no good choices, it appeared to be the political path of least resistance.

But Schwarzenegger had more to think about than budget policy and his own political standing. As a 21st century politician, he had to factor in his wife. Though Maria Shriver identifies herself as a journalist, she, like most political spouses, is, in effect, a politician with her own persona and constituency--a separate political brand. And the governor was savvy enough to know that damage to her brand could undermine them both.

We've seen more than a few examples lately of how that can happen. The Clintons, the Obamas, the Bushes, the Spitzers: They've all been navigating --some better than others--the tricky new reality in which political couples are expected to make their positions separate but not combative, their public identities close but not too close.

The need for this distinct branding evolved for reasons directly related to the massive expansion of one American institution--celebrity culture--and the shrinking of another: marriage. Today's political spouses are turned into celebrities on a scale that would have overwhelmed Bess Truman or Mamie Eisenhower. And they exist in a new social paradigm. Because married couples represent a minority in the U.S.--and many who are married don't define themselves by their unions--we expect political spouses to be more than mere extensions of the politician.

Thus, the modern political spouse: a wife or husband with a separate persona that's larger and broadcast farther than ever before.