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Behind Every Good Man
Violet

My husband.

I must say those words a hundred times a day. I say them to friends and strangers and senior citizens and children. Last week I said them seventeen times in fifteen minutes to a group of girls from my old sorority. I say them to my assistant. I say them to my family.

I don't see him nearly as much as I talk about him, these days.

My husband is a man of the people. I've known it since I met him. Southern Methodist University, 1975. I was a sophomore then. My hair was long, and my GPA was perfect, and my standards were high. I was taking a public policy class, and every now and then we had to attend graduate presentations. One of them was given by a law student named John Hoynes, and he picked me out.

We both knew it. He picked me out of the audience. It wasn't just because I was awake -- I wasn't giving him any more attention than anyone else, and you can imagine how interested a bunch of rich white Texas kids were in welfare reform. John just singled me out. He played that speech right off me, talking to me, making eye contact, finding a rhythm and building it up. I couldn't help but respond, to what he was saying, and to the way he was looking at me. It was really very sexy.

We had coffee together that afternoon. A few days later, he asked me to dinner. And then we were dating, and then we were engaged. We got married in 1978; a big white wedding at his father's house. My mother cried audibly through the ceremony and most of the reception. John was drunk; I was getting over the flu, and we both passed out on our wedding night. We made up for it, though, the rest of that week in Aruba.

Of course, we were never in love. And it's perfectly fine that way.

We never fooled ourselves. We were always realistic in what we saw in each other. He looked at me and he saw a strong, smart woman. He saw that I knew how to listen and when to smile, that I was sharp and pretty and quick and level-headed. He saw a very good political wife in the making. And I looked at him and I saw the future.

It was hard, those early years, while we were gearing up. He finished law school; I studied journalism and political science. There were a few years where we were both teaching, but what we were really doing was waiting. We waited, and the time came.

It was 1982. Our first campaign was just state senate, and we were in our home district with virtually no opposition. Still, it was a ride. It was fun. And I watched my husband in various crowds, and I saw him do the same thing he'd done to me that day. He knew how to reel people in; he still does. It's his element, and it's always hot to watch him in it. And I played my role, and if I do say so myself, I was damn good at it, even that young. I was always good at campaigning; I even liked doing it.

"You know what, Ruth?" he'd say to me, back then. "We're going to win this." And I would nod, because I knew it was true. We could play the game, and we were going somewhere. That was what made it special. I could see it in his eyes, and in the eyes of everyone he met.

We used to wind up the long days with quite a few drinks. John's father drank like -- well, like a Texan, like a cowboy from the movies. "Smile when you call me a son of a bitch," you know? And he passed that on to his son. He'd come home from the legislature, I'd come home from some boring charity board meeting, and we'd drink and laugh and screw and drink some more and fall asleep.

Or sometimes, he wouldn't come home. That was when I worried. Not for myself, you understand. I knew what I was married to, the long hours and everything, and I've never complained about being lonely. No, I worried that he'd get wasted and do something stupid, stumble into the arms of some sexy young thing, and wind up as front page news. It wasn't because I'd be jealous. It would have been really easy for someone to ruin us, and some nights I was just waiting for the phone call. God knows there were a few times he came close, but it never happened. Maybe we were lucky, or maybe it's a matter of fate.

I stopped drinking in 1984, when I was pregnant the first time, with Georgia. I never looked back. It took me another three and a half years to convince John he needed to quit. I didn't cry; I didn't scream at him. I just kept trying to get through to him, trying to make him know what was at stake.

This is what I know about the last night he drank. Just before the '88 campaign really started up, he went on a particularly nasty bender. He woke up in bed with a college kid, a 21-year-old baseball player named Donnie Winchester. The boy was from out-of-state, and was too dense to realize how much trouble he could have gotten us into. He never knew who John was. Luck again, or fate again.

I believe in destiny. I believed in it in 1990, when we took our first shot at the Senate. That was a rough race, dirty in the primaries and downright bloody when we took on the Republicans. It was our closest race ever, but we pulled it out, and we moved to Washington. Our youngest, Andrew, was born here. It's home now, and we like it.

We intend to stay in town for a while.

I believed in our destiny in 1997, when we first started talking about the White House. Just saying the words was a thrill, but it wasn't out of left field. We'd always known where we were headed. And I still think we could have won -- would have won, in any kind of normal world. I suppose we were up against a bigger force of fate than ourselves. I don't really begrudge Bartlet his office. He was just more ready than we were, and that's our own fault.

It was the first time we ever lost. God, I was so scared. I thought he might start drinking again. He didn't, though he spent the better part of some days on the phone to his sponsor when he should have been on the road. We didn't know how to be on the losing team. I'll never figure out what possessed them to offer him the Vice Presidency. I suppose they wanted the South, but we didn't even take Texas. All I know is, it saved us. If we didn't have this, we'd be nowhere.

So we're waiting.

These days, when I see him, I look at him very carefully. I know his strength is his weakness. He's good at politics -- a little too good; it means a lot of people don't trust him. I see that he loves this country and he wants to lead it; he is smart and he believes he can make it a better place. And when he looks at me, he sees a woman who has helped him every step of the way, and he shakes his head and smiles.

"God, Ruth," he says sometimes, "Look how close we are." And I nod, because I know it stings like hell to be this far away, but it also keeps us going.

John Hoynes is a man of the people, and he is going to be the President of the United States. In two years, or six years. I wish they'd make up their minds, but I know how these things go. And either way, we'll be out there on the campaign trail, and I'll be doing what I do best: talking about my husband.


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