The media frenzy (okay, it’s a mild frenzy) over the end of the Gore marriage reminds of something that occurred to me (it may have occurred to others as well) a decade ago, during the 2000 presidential campaign.

Back then, Bill Clinton was still president, and the scars, such as they were, of the Monica Lewinsky impeachment proceedings were still fresh in the public memory. During his campaign, George W. Bush put his faith — and his own conversion story — front and center. Stories trickled out about his drinking and drug use and hell-raising, all before he had his 1986 heart-to-heart with Billy Graham and found Jesus. Even his harshest critics agreed that in the years since his transformation, W. had been faithful to Laura and had stayed away from alcohol. Al Gore, meanwhile, had this image as a “goody two-shoes”, an almost impossibly earnest and clean-cut sort of fellow, the kind who really had only been with one woman in his entire life, the high school sweetheart whom he had married.

I remember thinking that Clinton, Bush, and Gore represented three different (but familiar) kinds of men. Clinton was the womanizing bad boy who had never really grown up; a man of unmatched political skill, intelligence, and charm, he had impulses he simply could not or would not control. George W. Bush, on the other hand, was the “reformed bad boy”, the man who had struggled with youthful recklessness but through spirituality and hard work transformed his life and become faithful and responsible. But Gore struck me — and of course, I didn’t know the man and was basing this on the media image — as the sort of fellow who had never known any real temptation, never tasted what it was like to fall, to sin, to betray. I wondered if Al Gore had ever known the guilt and shame I was confident both Clinton and Bush had tasted.

I thought to myself, politics aside, that I’d rather be led by the reformed bad boys of the world than men from the other two categories. The “Clinton type” was dazzling but heartbreaking; we progressives can only weep at the opportunities squandered because of the 42nd president’s inability to control himself sexually. (However loathsome his persecutors were, no one can deny that Clinton gave them the opportunity to come after him and to derail his agenda.) The “Gore type”, meanwhile, was impossible to identify with. There was a sense I had with men like Gore that they couldn’t possibly know what I had struggled with, had endured. I was certain of Gore’s decency, but not of his capacity to empathize with human weakness. And while I loathed W’s politics, I liked his life narrative, naturally because it was so similar to my own. I could identify with the “reformed bad boy” because that’s what I was trying so hard to be. (The reformed part, silly. I’d been the bad boy/black sheep for years.) And perhaps narcissistically,I suspected that a great many Americans felt the same way: repulsed by Clinton, befuddled by Gore, inspired by Bush’s story (if not his wooden rhetoric or his conventionally right-wing views). On a purely archetypal level, W. had an appeal that the other two didn’t.

For the record, I voted for Ralph Nader.

A decade on, I can only imagine how different our world would be if Al Gore had prevailed in that disputed Florida recount. And a decade on, we learned this week of Al’s separation from Tipper, his wife of 40 years. At Feministing, Miriam asks a sensible question about the media response to the news:

…why does it have to be framed as a failure when a marriage ends? The questions about what went wrong display this narrative perfectly. I hate how we shape relationships around the premise that if two people don’t go to the grave together, it was a failure. How can forty years of loving companionship be a failure? Or even two years of it?

I touched on this subject in a May 2008 post: Three Divorces, Four Successful Marriages.

A marriage is a failure if it inhibits the growth of either party; it is a success if it becomes the catalyst for individual and mutual transformation. Though all three of my divorces were painful, all three of my former marriages were, to my mind, ultimately successful in accomplishing the goal of facilitating the personal growth of the two parties involved. None were failures. I was not and am not a failure, and neither were my ex-wives.

There must be more to the definition of success than the mere capacity to endure. As Hall and Oates sang, “the strong give up and move on / while the weak, the weak give up and stay”. Marriage isn’t a marathon where you get medals merely for gritting your teeth and finishing. Marriage is a living, breathing, constantly-subject-to-renegotiation arrangement. As I wrote in another post: Quitting at the first sign of trouble is the sin of weakness, no doubt — but continuing to remain in what is loveless and lifeless is the sin of pride and stubbornness.

I don’t think that Al and Tipper are loveless and lifeless. They are clearly still friends; they have children and grandchildren in common. They have built something marvelous and enduring together. They have shaped and sharpened each other as husband and wife for forty years, and they will carry the marks of that work with them for the rest of their lives. And now, having finished the work that could be finished together, they are separating. In their grace and their generosity towards each other, they are an example to be celebrated, not pitied.