This is a double-sided question. Should the highly-regarded, well loved Mrs. Spitzer “stand” there as her hypocrite of a husband confesses his sin or should she stay out of sight? AND should she stick with him privately? I’d say emphatically “NO” to the first idea of public appearance. But privately – that’s Mrs. Spitzer’s choice. Maybe she can adjust to the fact that Mr. Clean, the new broom sweeping clean, the White Knight of Albany, the holier-than-thou crusader is worth sticking to or not. Seeing Mrs. Spitzer and their three girls enduring this charade of shame was really hard to take.

There oughtta be a law against wives (or husbands – though women haven’t gotten into these fixes – yet) standing next to their accused husbands. A law!

But they almost all do in circumstances like this.. and you wonder why. What is this? It brings to mind a story I heard from the ex wife of a Southern governor. It was custom for the governor to ride in some big annual parade in an open convertible. When he was a bachelor, she told me, he was booed. People threw things at him. But after they got married, and she rode in the parade with him, he was never booed again.

She said his “handlers” explained that a woman by a politician’s side inoculates him from harsh attacks. There’s something about a picture of a man with his wife (and his kids) that softens his image, diverts the viewer’s mind from his flaws or indiscretions.

I keep seeing Hillary marching in and out of the White House with Bill at the height of the Lewinsky scandal. There she was – jaw tight, game face plastered on. But there was Chelsea too. The child the Clintons had (till then) shielded from public view.

Surely, the “handlers” (or Clinton himself since he was his own best handler) felt that the “picture on TV” said in a flash: What a good father he is… Or even: They’ve been married for close to 20 years. Or at the three of them arm-in-arm: What a lovely family! These are subliminal thoughts that register in the gut, and overtake the brain which is thinking about the scandal.

Politicians have known about the power of pictures for years. How the visual image is more powerful than what we hear or read. The next thing I expect you’ll be seeing is Spitzer with a dog! Remember when Bill Clinton got Buddy.

I can’t imagine Silda staying with her husband after so public a humiliation, but she wouldn’t be the first woman to do it. Just last July, when Louisiana Senator, David Vitter, was caught in almost the same situation, his wife — another attractive, highly intelligent, auburn-haired lawyer — stood with him by the press conference podium in a photo that looks exactly like the one today on the front page of the New York Times. So far, Wendy Vitter is still standing by her man and he is still in the Senate, but either of these women are made of far sterner stuff than I…or they are nuts. I still remember the awful stone face of Lee Hart in the wake of Donna Rice, and Silda’s face was heart-breaking. She was just so obviously thrown. As Candice said, Bill Clinton’s philandering did not come out of left field like this. And whatever bizarre pact the Clintons may have, Hillary has her reasons for sticking it out. I would have a far more difficult time, especially since these guys are not just unfaithful, but so arrogant. Gary Hart went so far as to challenge the press to follow him, and then he led them right to the monkey business. Did Eliott Spitzer honestly think he would never be outed as client number nine?