Jim doesn’t want to talk about it, all Dawn wants to do is talk and the media can’t help but listen.
The sensational spectacle of the first family’s dissolution has, naturally, become the most-discussed story in the state, especially because it features a governor seeking to evict the first lady from the mansion, where she has resided alone for weeks with his blessing, and because it co-stars a stand-by-your-man wife now openly playing the woman scorned, not just privately but with Fourth Estaters.
This is excruciating to watch. But like any train wreck — and make no mistake, this is a train wreck — it’s impossible to avert your eyes. Divorce often is an agonizing private matter and should generally be left private, even when public figures are involved.
But this is no ordinary divorce and this is no ordinary couple. The Family Gibbons has made some prying legitimate and relevant, with no question more puzzling than this: Why now?
That is: Why, 16 months into a perpetually troubled term, would the governor decide to divorce his wife, with whom he has not lived full time for more than a decade and who, judging by her desire to move to D.C. after he decided to come back to Nevada, was not thrilled with the idea of resuming cohabitation?
Has familiarity so bred contempt between these two that none of what seems to have been percolating for years can be contained anymore? And what, if any, impact does this distended grotesquerie have on Jim Gibbons’ ability to govern and to be anything more than a neutered laughingstock as a legislative session and reelection loom in the distance?
There are those now taking immense pleasure in the first family’s breakup and the accompanying media sensation. The blogosphere is alive with the sound of schadenfreude. Despite my low regard for the governor’s performance and my wonderment at the first lady’s erratic behavior, I take no pleasure in their pain.
But the governor’s penchant for secrecy, beginning with his clandestine swearing-in premised on an untruth, and now his attempt to cloak the divorce proceedings, make some questions relevant. And remember this is a couple that only too happily played the beatific Ken and Barbie during his various campaigns, with Dawn being the dynamic, energetic campaigner and Jim being the phlegmatic automaton.
Now that the mask is off, even though we may never know exactly how this unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, the political and personal histories have become intertwined and, perhaps, all too telling.
Dawn Gibbons, who replaced her husband in the Assembly to rave reviews in 1991 while he went off to war, then watched him go off to D.C. without her in 1996, has slowly deteriorated on the public stage. She was well-liked but seen as detached and erratic during three terms in the Assembly; her subsequent attempt to leave the state and be away from him by running for Congress two years ago was seen as quixotic and sad. She finished third in a three-way primary and then had to endure a Tammy Wynette stint as the soon-to-be governor had his infamous night out with Chrissy Mazzeo in a bacchanalian revel at McCormick & Schmick’s.
The first lady’s plight is almost heartbreaking, no matter what her ambitions, no matter how she used her husband’s prominence to help herself, no matter what Faustian bargain she made long ago. The governor’s situation, though, is less heart-wrenching than perplexing and whatever questions are being raised, he has brought on himself.
Is this affecting his ability to do the job? He looks somewhat gaunt, and any emotional trauma can be distracting. But how much focus does it take to walk into the office, remind everyone, “It’s No New Taxes Day again!” and then flip a coin to see if the chief of staff or chief operating officer is running the Lack of Administration that day?
And yet this cannot help but impinge on the governor’s effectiveness at some point. Reno is even more small-town than Las Vegas and Carson City is even more small town than Reno. Rumors, innuendo and speculation are bubbling to the surface (even punching through on blogs) like a noxious stew about to overflow.
The Family Gibbons has played the two-for-the-price-of-one shtick for nearly two decades. If nothing else, that phony game is about to become all too real in a way neither of them ever imagined, and both are going to pay a very heavy price for the charade.
Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program “Face to Face With Jon Ralston” on Las Vegas ONE and publishes the daily e-mail newsletter “RalstonFlash.com.” His column for the Las Vegas Sun appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday.
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