Kelley Paul gets ready for her media blizzard
Lisa Belkin
March 25, 2015
Kelley Ashby Paul was dressed for the weather as she trudged through the last storm of the Washington, D.C., winter to meet a reporter. Fuzzy woolen hat, complete with earflaps and pompom, on her head. Knee-high waterproof boots with faux fur trim on her feet. Puffy white parka zipped in between.
Her husband, Rand, meanwhile, was home, still dry and warm, in the couple’s tiny Capitol Hill apartment. The junior senator from Kentucky and presumed presidential candidate had nowhere to be on this weekday morning because the federal government, in fact the entire city, was shut down. (No, not by the Tea Party; by the snow.) That Kelley was out in the storm made metaphorical sense, because she isn’t really “of” D.C., and unlike Rand, she doesn’t officially work for the government.
Home, for her, is still Bowling Green, Ky., where she was raising her three sons as a stay-at-home wife of a small-town ophthalmologist in the 20 years before Rand ran for office. Where she lived full-time until this year, when she finally took the next step in the transformation and enrolled her youngest in a D.C. private school. Now her tight circle of hometown friends takes care of her house — dealing, for instance, with the time a bird got inside and “pooped all over the bathroom” and picking her up at the airport when she manages to fly back once a month or so.
Politics, like the clergy and the military, is one of the few fields where it’s assumed that the spouse — particularly the wife — will take on part of the job. It is an anachronism from a time when all wives were defined by the work of their husbands, and it’s an increasingly tough role to navigate now that the political spotlight is brighter and the political pace is faster.
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Originally Posted by francisco
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