He minimizes the President's actions by placing them within a recognized pattern of infidelity, asking us to be more understanding. Gilliard characterizes Donna Hanover as a victim, yet any successful professional woman who leaves her job and career for a career as mother and first lady of any jurisdiction assumes the risks of marriage, just like any other woman who makes those choices. And just like many married mothers faced with cheating husbands, she is free to exercise her option to leave the cheater, knowing that the stakes for her and her husband's careers are higher. But then she knew that going in to a very public marriage. Marriage is a choice.
Divorce is also a choice.
It's not something people must necessarily spiral into when their lives go roaring out of control at the hands of evil, lying Republicans. Far beyond any of these specific omissions in Gilliard's article lies an immaturity to accept that human intimate relationships are difficult, and often are the font of damaging hubris, and that public officials' private lives are no more exemplary or ordered than the rest of our private lives. This is not to say that it's not our business to ask or to know. Whichever social issues Americans are ready to confront they confront first in their heroes, leaders, and legends. We have known that Thomas Jefferson had children with his slaves.