Success Quote by John N. Mitchell

A line like this lands with the bleak punchline of a man trying to shrink catastrophe down to something almost manageable. John N. Mitchell - Nixon's attorney general turned Watergate defendant - isn’t offering marital advice. He’s drawing a map of power, the kind that measures a life in two currencies: public standing and private loyalty. When both collapse, he suggests, you’ve already paid the maximum price.

The specific intent is defensive and oddly consoling: once the worst has happened, fear loses its leverage. It’s the rhetoric of someone staring down indictment, humiliation, and the long comedown from proximity to the presidency. Mitchell frames ruin as a kind of grim freedom. If reputation is gone, the social world can’t punish you the same way; if your wife is gone, the last intimate witness and partner in your ascent (and your fall) has walked away. The line doesn’t just lament loss - it normalizes it as the logical endpoint of political life.

The subtext is more revealing, even cynical: reputation isn’t character; it’s an asset. A wife isn’t simply a person; she’s part of the scaffolding that makes authority look stable. Coming from Mitchell, that instrumental view carries an unintended self-indictment. It echoes Watergate’s core moral: once politics becomes pure management of appearances, the crash isn’t tragic; it’s procedural. And the darkness is the point. He’s telling you what power actually fears: not prison, not even disgrace, but the moment when no one is left to vouch for you.