'THAT WOULD NEVER BE ME'
WIFE SCOFFED AT HILL STANDING BY CHEATIN' BILL
By JENNIFER FERMINO
March 13, 2008 -- A decade ago, as she watched then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton humiliated by her intern-loving hubby, Silda Wall Spitzer made clear her intentions if Eliot ever cheated.
"That would never be me. I'd be gone," Silda told friends, a pal told The Post.
But Silda, for the second time in a week, donned a tailored designer skirt suit and appeared to be standing by her hooker-loving hubby yesterday, even as the fairy tale has soured behind closed doors.
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Describing their relationship as "icy," a source said they now sleep in separate bedrooms.
Silda Spitzer, alone and clutching a handkerchief, left the palatial high-rise yesterday at around 3 p.m.
The news of her spouse's philandering with a coterie of high-priced girls in multistate trysts has not been easy to handle for the Southern Baptist, said another friend. "She's taking this very hard," said the source.
One comfort for Spitzer is the volumes of e-mails she's been getting from pals. She has responded warmly to many of the well-wishers.
Friends are speculating that Silda and the soon-to-be-ex-governor will ride out the legal problems as a team. Then, said the source, she'll deal with their marital woes.
As painful as the public humiliation has been for Silda, it was the mother of three who urged her husband not to resign in a rush.
"She didn't want him to be hasty. [She said], 'Take time and think about what you're doing before you make the decision,' " Trilby Wall, Silda Spitzer's mother, told The Post.
"[Silda wanted to] let everything sink in."
Wall, who lives in North Carolina, said that Spitzer was ready to throw in the towel on his job as governor much earlier.
"He probably would have earlier [if it wasn't for her]," she said.
As for her feelings on the scandal that has taken down her son-in-law, the polite Southern lady said only, "We love our family in good times and in bad."
That seems to be the motto of many a political wife.
In 1992, Hillary Clinton appeared on "60 Minutes" to defend her presidential-candidate husband, who was being hounded by rumors of infidelity.
Sitting next to Bill Clinton, Hillary said, "You know, I'm not sitting here like some little woman standing by my man, like Tammy Wynette. I'm sitting here because I love him, and I respect him."
In the years since, hordes of high- profile women let down by their straying spouses have followed Clinton's lead.
Wendy Vitter, the wife of Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, thought for sure she'd dump her two-timing spouse.
"I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary," she told reporters in 2000, referring to the woman who chopped off her husband's penis.
Seven years later, Vitter stood by her guy for the cameras when he was identified as a client of "DC Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey.
And Suzanne Craig, wife of Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, lent her support to her embattled hubby after he copped a guilty plea to soliciting a male undercover cop for sex in an airport bathroom.
Debbie Walsh, the director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said that the wives are often used as props to soften their husband's transgressions.
"It is supposed to make him look like not such a bad guy. Like, 'Geez, look, his wife was standing next to him,' " Walsh told the San Francisco Chronicle.
But she thinks it backfired with Silda Spitzer.
"In this case, she looked so pained that, to me, he looked less sympathetic," Walsh said.
Even the most long-suffering wives sometimes say enough is enough.
Six years after the infamous "60 Minutes" interview, Bill Clinton again had to address his infidelity on the public stage, this time with a 19-year-old intern named Monica Lewinsky.
And this time, his wife was nowhere to be seen.
Silda, a one-time corporate lawyer who chucked her career to be a full-time mom, has ended up walking a mile in Clinton's shoes and treading very similar territory.
jennifer.fermino@nypost.com |
