Who Really Sleeps Their Way to the Top?

For years, Kamala Harris’ detractors have delighted in returning to the story of her long-ago romance with Willie Brown, a legendary politician who dominated Bay Area politics for a generation. Willie is more than three decades Kamala’s senior, and the affair was brief. It ended cordially in the mid-1990s, but not before Brown had introduced his protégé and lover to many influential San Franciscans. Harris’ enemies have offered this story as evidence that she “slept her way to the top,” a familiar charge thrown at countless successful women.

I have always believed that the private sexual lives of our leaders are none of our business, a principle I’ve applied with enthusiasm to everyone from Democrats like Barney Frank, Bill Clinton and Katie Hill to Republicans like Mark Sanford, Larry Craig, and Lauren Boebert. (Bonus points if you remember the details of each scandal.) What interests me about the weaponizing of the Harris/Brown affair is the unspoken assumption that men don’t sleep their way to the top. And I assure you, they almost all do.

It is axiomatic that married American men have too few close friends other than their wives. There are exceptions, but the truth is that heterosexual men are rarely equipped to offer each other profound and enduring emotional support. The truth is also that we are a culture that mistrusts opposite-sex platonic friendships; if a married man has a female best friend who is not his wife, that relationship will almost certainly engender considerable suspicion. So, at the risk of gross stereotype, many men – particularly as they age – find that their wives are their best friends. That can mean a considerable amount of emotional labor for the wife, but perhaps she welcomes it, or even maybe wishes she could do more of it.

The wives often sleep in the same bed with their husbands. (“Often” is both elastic and hard-working in this instance.) One can be quite sure that in those beds, or in adjacent kitchens, those wives encourage, console, strategize, and encourage almost constantly. A great many people still see marriage as a companionate partnership, in which a spouse’s triumph is a shared goal.  Who else is doing more advising? Who else is giving the “come to Jesus” lecture? Who else is reminding the future president, senator, congressman of who he really is?  I know you can do this, she says. She’s seen you naked, she’s seen you sick, she’s seen you broken and afraid, she’s seen you at your truest and weakest and she still believes you can conquer the world.

Try and imagine Barack without Michelle, Bill without Hillary, George without Barbara. Try and imagine them running and winning without having shared a bed with those women!  When presidents get old, sick or frail (Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan, Joe Biden) we openly assume that the First Lady (Edith, Nancy, Jill) is the true power behind the proverbial throne. Anyone who has been married might point out that an old man’s decline only makes a long-wielded power more transparent. It was there all along.

It is, of course, easy to imagine Donald without Melania. It is not unkind to point out the obvious, which is that the current Mrs. Trump is not a traditional political wife. It is impossible to imagine her lying next to her husband night after night, offering him counsel, encouragement, and reminders of all that he can do if he sets his mind to it.  (I accept that I could be wrong, but I doubt it.)  Many conservative friends of mine who support Trump lament that it sometimes seems very much as if he is ambivalent about whether he wants to win. He is so undisciplined, so often off message, so prone to self-sabotage!  To which some of us might say, that’s in part because he has no strong woman to keep him on the proverbial straight and narrow.  That’s not blaming Melania – it’s blaming Donald for not having the good sense to go to bed each night next to his chief strategist.

My point is simple enough: most successful men do sleep their way to the top.  No one doubts that the doors Willie Brown opened for Kamala Harris thirty years ago proved a boon to her.  I feel confident that the wives of most of our most powerful male politicians have proved to be much greater assets to their husbands than Willie was to Kamala so long ago. I don’t see how that’s open to dispute.

On a personal note  -- and you know me, there must always be a personal note – each of my five former wives helped me enormously. I tried to do the same for them, of course, but if it weren’t for the women I loved, I’d never have finished that PhD, never have landed a tenured teaching job, and perhaps above all, never survived all my own recklessness. It is not unnecessary self-deprecation to say that my failures are mine alone, but my past successes are all shared.

Since separating from Victoria in June of last year, I have slept alone each night. I have not kissed a woman or gone on a date. I have close female friends, but I am assiduously careful with them. That care isn’t about avoiding a romantic boundary crossing – it’s easy to switch the sexuality off. It’s about avoiding turning these friends into “proxy wives,” sources of a particularly intense level of encouragement. Of course, good friends should offer each other support and empathy!  But just as one keeps one’s clothes on with one’s friends, one keeps the neediness and panic concealed as well. It’s not just that I don’t want to burden my friends, it’s that I want to prove something to myself. I want to prove I can survive and thrive -- as an older man on my own.

We are a culture that pities single, older, heterosexual men. We assume men of a certain age are lost without wives. We sing country songs about lonely widowers sitting mournfully on park benches; we expect older men to forget to bathe, to eat, to speak to anyone other than the talking heads on the television. (In the stereotype, a television invariably tuned to Fox News.)  The world expects us to be bitter, resentful, and – eventually – mad.   Lear, raging on the heath? That’s a man without a wife.

Celibacy for me isn’t just about giving up after five divorces. It isn’t just about my fear of women’s anger. (Though I could go the rest of my life without hearing a raised voice.) It isn’t just that I no longer feel desirable to women. (Though the mirror does not lie; it is not 1999 anymore.) At its core, celibacy for me is now about proving that I can survive, that I can write, that I can build a flourishing career, and do it all without the constant reassurance, encouragement, and affection that a spouse or girlfriend provides. 

I can do it myself!  That was my daughter’s first full sentence, and I burst with pride at my two-year-old’s assertion of her precious autonomy.  I can do it myself! That is my own mantra as I head into the autumn of this life, eager to prove that I need not tax the patience of a long-suffering wife in order to thrive.

Few men seem to do it well. Challenge accepted.