BOSTON — After all is said and done, I’m still trying to figure out how he got away with it.
I don’t mean how he got away with hawking virtue and hiding vice in public. Bill Bennett isn’t the first in the crowd to pull that off.
I can’t figure out how he got away with it at home.
Let me put it this way. If my husband had fed $8 million into the slot machines I might have noticed before I read it in Newsweek or The Washington Monthly.
A few days ago, some folks at the casinos dropped a dime on Bennett and passed a passel of documents to reporters. The GOP’s favorite moralist defended his gambling by saying, "I don’t play the milk money. I don’t put my family at risk, and I don’t owe anyone anything."
Anyone? Anything? Not even an explanation to the wife who shares the milk money?
When Bennett dedicated his defense of marriage, called "The Broken Hearth," to his wife Elayne, he wrote: "And no matter what I do, Elayne keeps the hearth: warm and secure." It’s pretty clear that this designated hearth-warmer — founder of a program for teenage abstinence — didn’t know the extent of her husband’s risk-taking with the high-rollers.
When asked, she had three memorable comments: (1) "We are financially solvent." (2) "All our bills are paid." And then the clincher: (3) "He’s never going (to the casinos) again." The next day, Bennett said, "My gambling days are over." Bingo.
Never mind morality tales about vice and virtue. This is a classic fable about marriage and money.
At every altar we merge two souls into one … financial life. But you can count on a single hand the number of couples who arrive at that union with an economic theory of marriage.
As sociologist Pepper Schwartz says, couples talk about everything before marriage except money: "The great taboo isn’t who you slept with but how much do you have in your bank account and am I entitled to it?"
The difficulties of intermarriage between the tribes of Spenders and Savers are well-known. But money is at the heart of questions about the "me" and the "us" in every marriage. It’s about independence and partnership. Not to mention power and control.
We live with a cultural clash over love and money. At home we are designated partners. In the workplace we are paid as individuals.
It gets tricky when the romantic ideal of a 50-50 marriage comes up against the economic reality of 70-30 or 100-0 paycheck. Schwartz has left hundreds of interviews with one impression: "The person who is the high earner tends to think it’s his or her money. ‘I made it, I’m responsible for it and I should have the veto power or the larger vote.’ "
This may go unstated or even underground. Many spouses only experience the subtle power struggle when one loses a job or decides to stay home with the kids. Many only discover in divorce court that "our" money was actually "his paycheck." Some only find out who makes the decisions when the $50,000 speaking fees are fed to the one-armed bandit.
I know that every couple also needs some de-coupled dollars. Breathes there a wife who never cut the price tag off a dress before it went in the closet? A husband who never fudged how much he spent on a round of golf?
After the milk money is paid, we can afford a bit of mad money. But anything over a couple hundred dollars defies my family’s definition of mad money.
In the end, it’s not the little green lies that threaten the sense of union. It’s the whoppers. Quick, quick, which would ring your marital betrayal meter first: Tripping over a couple of receipts for double rooms at strange motels or finding the chit for $500,000 gambled away at the Bellagio in Vegas? As Desi Arnaz would say, this spouse has some "splainin’ to do."
Did you think it was odd that Bennett’s book of virtues didn’t mention gambling? The same man’s book on marriage barely mentioned money.
As for partnership? "The greater equality between the sexes in marriage," he wrote in one throwaway line, "is one of the most significant and welcome advances of modern times." But anyone who believes Elayne co-signed his hobby must also believe that, "over 10 years, I’d say I’ve come out pretty close to even."
Toward the end of his marriage treatise, this gambling man did offer up one insight that proved prescient. "The truth is marriage can lead to some startling revelations." Now there’s something he can bet the ranch on.
Ellen Goodman can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or send e-mail to EllenGoodman@Globe.com.
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