Maria Shriver, California's first lady, reveals her personal crisis as a new political spouse
It's not a difficult situation confined to politics, but a new book being published by California's first lady, Maria Shriver, reveals a personal crisis that afflicted her around the time her husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was elected governor.
It's about the little-known price that all kinds of spouses, but especially political ones in the public eye, pay for the success of their husbands or wives. We've seen recent examples in the news of spouses paying a different kind of price for the infidelities publicly revealed by their husbands.
Silda Spitzer and Wendy Vitter's names come to mind immediately.
But Shriver's difficulties surrounded success and her feeling ignorant of what she was supposed to do as the Golden State's most important political female.
In her new book, just out this week from Hyperion, "Just Who Will You Be?: Big Question, Little Book, Answer Within," Shriver talks about the difficult....
adjustment from her widely-successful career as a network correspondent for NBC and CBS from 1989 to 2004, when her movie celebrity husband also became the celebrity governor of the nation's most populous state.
Shriver is the daughter from a famous political family of her own, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver, who was Sen. George McGovern's vice presidential running mate on the seriously unsuccessful Democratic presidential ticket in 1972.
To avoid a conflict of interest with her husband as a new politician, Shriver had to give up her network TV job. She said she felt lost.
"My career was gone," she says in her 112-page book, "and with it went the person I'd been for twenty-five years."
Although the public guessed little of the inner turmoil going on in her life, the once-confident working mom Shriver admits she suddenly had no idea what a state's first lady was supposed to do -- cutting ribbons seemed superficial, staying in her office was safe but accomplished little.
"I was embarrassed to admit I didn't know what to do," she says. "I never cried. I'd been tough. My mother is extremely tough."
"I didn't know what I was supposed to do. But I thought if I put on the pearls and walked a couple feet behind my husband and stayed in the office that they gave me and tried to do what they told me, that that was what I was supposed to do."
"I cried," Shriver told Oprah Winfrey today. And then she added softly, "I still cry." There's a very brief video clip here.
--Andrew Malcolm
Photo Credit: AP/Mark J. Terrill
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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Who cares about her "career?" She got to journalism solely due to family connections. She did an ok job, but really, without the Shriver name, nobody would have put her bony mug on camera.
Let's salute people who really worked there way to the top.
Posted by: George Mia | April 16, 2008 at 06:47 PM
Wow, how sad that the author would call the first lady "Golden State's most important political female". What about Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein, just to name 2 important females with power invested in them by voters. I don't think people who voted for Arnold did it to get his wife into office.
Posted by: sharon | April 16, 2008 at 07:19 PM
Omigod -- another powerful woman breaks down and (choke) cries! I can't (sob) stand it anymore! Oh, the unfairness of it all!
Maria, you are one of the most pampered and privileged women on the face of the earth. Suck it up, sister.
Posted by: Clare | April 16, 2008 at 07:39 PM
Obviously most of you posting have no idea what it is like to be the wife of someone who is high profile. It is not all glamorous. Normal wives can do and say whatever they like without worrying about impacting their husbands career. Normal wives have a name, they are not usually referred to as X's wife. No matter how accomplished a person is, this is difficult. The truth is that no amount of money can compensate for many of the struggles that all human beings go through. People need to stop believing Madison Avenue. Being 'pampered' and having more than one needs is only an opiate. Being human is at times wonderful and at times a struggle, no matter what your bank account.
Posted by: andrea | April 16, 2008 at 08:38 PM
I love Maria Shriver. I truly do. She has remarkable integrity to share her story with us. Sharing is not moaning. This is about her being honest about what she's experienced and what she's learned.
Even 'pampered and privileged women' have many, many challenges and plenty of worries. Just having money and power doesn't make everything perfect in a person's life. In fact, it frequently just makes it a whole lot more complicated.
Posted by: Kim | April 17, 2008 at 09:39 AM
I say Bravo Maria. Many of us women out there have went through the same thing. It isn't talked about. Thank you for expressing and putting the age old struggle of ones idenity into words.
Posted by: Linda Mitchell | June 23, 2008 at 03:15 PM