To forgive her wayward spouse was her decision to make, but I don’t believe she could have done so in a week and during a press conference, as she seemed to do back when his affair was first revealed. That’s not reconciliation; it’s campaigning. And even then, standing loyally on the dais, she lacked the serene countenance that bespeaks forgiveness. Rather, as political wives do at such moments — Silda and Hillary and the long disheartening parade — she looked tense and resentful and conflicted. Her expression did not (under the circumstances, could not) comport with her declared determination to soldier on. This was not grappling with marital discord; it was a performance and, as such, a kind of lie, one that abetted, or at least acquiesced in, a broader campaign cover-up.

She should have dumped him out of respect for her own values. When she married John, she asserted the premium she placed on monogamy: “‘I wanted him to be faithful to me,’ she told Oprah, ‘It was enormously important.’” This is not to elevate monogamy to a marital necessity. Each marriage has its own rules; each must please only two people (and not harm anyone else). But in what sense does Edwards revere fidelity if her actions don’t accord with her words?

How much more inspiring — for her kids, for other women, for Oprah — if she had responded more like Veronica Lario, wife of Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. When confronted with his escapades, Lario mocked and derided him and demanded a divorce. “The impudence and shamelessness of power offends the credibility of all [women], damages women in general and especially those who have always struggled to defend their rights,” she said, providing yet another example of the superiority of Italian life. They eat better than we do, dress better and cope better with philandering: look at the plots of all those operas.