Dec 3, 2019
The Story of George and Kellyanne Conway is one of Tragedy, Not Celebration
George and Kellyanne Conway are in the news again. The political odd couple’s latest public dispute naturally began on Twitter where Kellyanne commented on a video of Joe Biden talking about his “hairy legs.” She mocked the idea that President Trump would ask Ukraine to investigate him, “Sleepy Joe is Creepy Joe. We need Ukraine’s help to defeat THIS guy?” George quote-tweeted her and responded by declaring “ Your boss apparently thought so.”
There is nothing new about political odd couples, James Carville and Mary Matalin being perhaps the most famous. But there is something more troubling about the Conways. Part of that is that while it is easy to imagine Carville criticizing his wife’s boss in public, it is hard to imagine him making it so personal.
The Conway marriage has become a bit of a microcosm of the country as a whole. On one side you have Kellyanne who works for the president and therefore defends him and thinks he doing a great job. On the other you have George who think believes the president is a threat to all that is good and decent.
Critics of the president like to portray George as the sensible Republican who is willing to speak the truth about Trump. His supporters like to portray George as a misogynist who repeatedly dumps on his wife in public because he does not like her boss and does it for fame in the form of clicks and retweets.
The differences between George and Kellyanne have thus become just another political football that everyone from the president himself to CNN kicks around to score points. It is tragic that has happened to a marriage because it reiterates the view that good people can have differing perspectives on Trump.
I try to give people the benefit of the doubt that what they say is sincere and not done for outrage clicks or retweets, but George makes that difficult. The fact that he feels the need to air his marriage’s dirty laundry, assuming this isn’t a stunt, on the internet for the whole world to see is not one that would seem to have an innocent explanation. He can continue his criticism of Trump without having to publicly scorn his wife for wrongthink. But by taking the relationship’s differences public in such a personal matter, it seems as if the end game is a book deal, potentially co-authored with Kellyanne, about how the political odd couple managed to survive the Trump presidency that inevitably reaches the top of the New York Times best seller list.
Either way, a public spat between husband and wife is not something to celebrate or view as a team sport.
