What is it with the wives of politicians making us wish they were running instead of their husbands? Heidi Nelson Cruz, wife of political dingbat Ted Cruz, certainly fits that bill, if a new New York Times profile of her is to be believed. Or does she? [Cue ominous music]
Heidi has an impressive job; she’s a managing director at Goldman Sachs – very nice Heidi! – and still makes time for her kids (though the couple does employ a live-in nanny). The Times‘ Ashley Parker describes her as “a complex study in contrasts to her husband”:
She describes herself as instinctively collaborative, and her husband as a man of big, fearless ideas — a seemingly polite way of saying that, yes, Mr. Cruz breaks a few pieces of china every now and then.
“Ted is very much a visionary,” she said. “He is very strategic, and he’s very practical, and he does what needs to be done, not what everybody wants him to do.”
Of herself, she said: “I want to make sure that everybody is comfortable. I want to make sure that everybody is talking to each other.”
Cool, Heidi! Communication is 9/10ths of the law or whatever they say. What else should we know about you?
While Mrs. Cruz comes across as confident but gracious — she disarms by asking personal questions, and answers those put to her directly and candidly — her husband tends to filibuster. Still, when Mr. Cruz stopped by last week for the final 15 minutes of the interview, he often listened attentively, resting his cheek on his clasped hands as he gazed at his wife. She, meanwhile, occasionally cut him off with a joke or a quip.
She’s like a conservative Michelle Obama, always there with the laughs about her clearly dumber husband, a fair and balanced voice in the life of a man who wouldn’t know fair and balanced unless it was on Fox News.