March 13 (Bloomberg) -- There's been almost as much talk about Silda Wall Spitzer appearing with her disgraced husband as about her disgraced husband, about why women in politics put up with so much from the men they love and why those men let them down.

I barely noticed Governor Eliot Spitzer during his resignation press conference. I was too drawn to Ms. Spitzer and her colorful silk scarf, a touching effort to dress for success, not embarrassment.

A scarf takes a lot of care to drape just right. Perfectly composed, the former corporate attorney gazed into the distance throughout the ordeal, the way someone prone to seasickness looks to shore for steadiness.

As Ms. Spitzer stood there, former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey's ex-wife, Dina Matos, was on television defending her from the chorus of female critics.

Matos, who appeared under the klieg lights with her husband when he announced he was a ``gay American,'' said she concentrated the whole time on the fact that no matter how awful he'd been, he would always be the father of her daughter. She was there for her, not him.

This latest scandal is a Rorschach test of our sexual politics. Many of my calls and e-mails since the Spitzer story broke are from women (and some men) who say the whole mess shows how much better the world would be if there were more women in these top jobs.

No Airport Restrooms

There'd be no seducing underage pages, no foot-tapping in airport restrooms, no comparison shopping at escort services, no more cringe-inducing press conferences. I can't remember seeing a man in similar circumstances standing by his woman.

Consistent with that group but adding a loud fillip are those who come down on Silda Spitzer as if she were the one who spent a reported $80,000 on hookers. I was at a dinner with some of them, all ardent Clinton supporters, appalled that she hadn't hit her husband over the head with a frying pan instead of appearing with him.

This is the definition of cognitive dissonance.

If you ever bring up the Clintons' marital history, as Republicans surely will, Hillary Clinton supporters, back in touch with their inner feminism, will clobber you for blaming a woman for saving her marriage.

Forget that Hillary publicly forgave Bill on multiple occasions, and Ms. Spitzer did it but once. By putting down Tammy Wynette in a 1992 TV interview -- she was not ``some little woman, standing by my man,'' Hillary said of herself when questioned about Bill's extramarital activities -- Clinton was saying her marriage was not a merger of ambitions but the real thing. She implicitly promised to be on Bill's case.

Dog on a Leash

Yet to paraphrase Hillary herself, he was a hard dog to keep on the White House portico.

Now women are fretting over Spitzer's victims, who were paid by the prostitution ring on a sliding scale, depending on their natural allure and the safe or unsafe practices they were willing to engage in.

Their sympathy goes to Kristen, the happy hooker who serviced ``Client 9'' in a way it didn't go to Bill Clinton's victims, who his female supporters cast as unstable, untruthful stalkers, egged on by a vast right-wing conspiracy.

Women have a hard time being consistent. Listen to Geraldine Ferraro charge that Senator Barack Obama wouldn't be able to step onto the same podium as Hillary Clinton if he were white, when Ferraro wouldn't have been a vice presidential candidate in 1984 if she were a man.

Political Drubbing

After then-San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein protectively confided to Democratic nominee Walter Mondale that year that her husband's perfectly legal business dealings could become an issue, they moved on to their only other prospect, Ferraro.

Ferraro said the activities of her husband, John Zaccaro, would present no such problem. The result was one of the larger drubbings in political history.

This week, Ferraro was only saying out loud about Obama what Clinton supporters say when no one's taping them. Couched in tut-tutting concern for the country, they worry that the upstart Obama has jumped the line to challenge a much more qualified woman simply because he's black.

If you were to turn that on its head and say that Clinton is running because she's a woman, indeed that she was only able to make a run for the Senate after she was embarrassed by her philandering husband, you are a traitor to your gender.

In their view, she's running because she's a virtual incumbent who oversaw domestic policy while bringing peace to numerous countries in her spare time.

Hillary's Fiction

Everyone responsible for bringing peace to Northern Ireland is on the record saying her claim to involvement there is complete fiction. But question that, or her ``35 years of experience,'' and you'll be accused of sexism.

As the media delivered every detail on Spitzer down to his hassles over deposits and getting a room key to Kristen, Clinton said she didn't know enough to comment on the governor, one of her top supporters in New York.

``Let's wait and see what comes out over the next few days,'' she said. After Spitzer's resignation, Clinton said in a statement that her thoughts were with the family ``during this painful time.''

The New York Times, which broke the story, said Ms. Spitzer fought against resignation. In 2005, before she became first lady of New York, she went to visit Senator Clinton to get advice -- lawyer-to-lawyer, mother-to-mother -- on how to help her family survive the spotlight.

She didn't ask for counsel humiliated wife-to-humiliated wife. She should have. With Clinton as her role model, Ms. Spitzer could someday be the senator from New York.

(Margaret Carlson, author of ``Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House'' and former White House correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Margaret Carlson in Washington at mcarlson3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: March 13, 2008 00:01 EDT