Jenny Sanford was a role model, until she wasn’t.

Or, to use the phrasing of the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus, “Jenny Sanford was my role model, until I read her book.”

Following South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s summer disappearing act, so-called “feminist” writers hailed her as a trailblazer for wronged political wives, a paragon of female independence who refused to stand wordlessly by her man and provide cover for his transgressions. Barbara Walters ranked Jenny Sanford among her “most fascinating people of 2009,” while Slate’s Hanna Rosin dubbed her a “romantic heroine” and the aforementioned Ruth Marcus penned a Washington Post column last July that provided a laundry list of reasons why Sanford was a “new role model for all wronged spouses, not just political ones” (to quote selectively from that Marcus column: “What I admire most about Sanford’s response ... I admire her ... I admire, too ... And I admire ...”).

Except now her image has lost some of its feminist sheen. In her recently released memoir, Sanford records incidents that make her appear every bit the traditional political spouse-as-doormat. At one point she allows a god-squad of congressional evangelicals to convince her to remain kind toward her cheating husband, while at another point she allows the governor to visit his mistress without her in New York City while one of Mark’s friends “chaperoned.” And what kind of neo-women’s libber doesn’t blink an eye when her soon-to-be husband strikes the fidelity clause from their wedding vows?

The fault, however, hardly lies with Jenny Sanford. Raising her up in the first place — and, implicitly, castigating Hillary Clinton, Silda Spitzer, Elin Nordegren, Elizabeth Edwards and all those political spouses who made different marital decisions — was always quite mindless and more than just a little vulgar.

Who’s to say, almost two years later, that Silda Spitzer — whose glum, motionless stand next to Eliot Spitzer during his resignation press conference was panned nationwide — acted any less nobly than her South Carolina counterpart? The Spitzers had three teenaged daughters whose mental and emotional well-being needed safe-guarding; who’s to say keeping her family intact was not, in that instance, a legitimate decision by a self-actualized, formidable woman? And maybe, just maybe, she actually cared for her husband, whose private transgressions had already cost him the public standing he had spent a lifetime building up.

Today, as Eliot Spitzer makes the rounds of the political and business media circuits — most notably the “Colbert Report” — he comes off as humbled man, secure with his own faults and better positioned than ever to talk frankly about the country’s economy during a time of severe recession. And as his public life shows flickers of rejuvenation, one has to image that his family life has also been reasonably repaired — at least one imagines it must be, for Silda to allow him to slink slowly back into the public eye.

A successful post-scandal life for Jenny Sanford (even now, she’s still living under — and, to a certain degree, exploiting — the shadow of Mark Sanford’s indiscretions) will probably not resemble that of Silda Spitzer, or any of those other wronged spouses of public cads. But whatever that life winds up being for Jenny Sanford, it will hopefully be her own, unswayed by media criticism or collective judgment. She is not, at least not yet, a politician — and she has no responsibilities to anyone but herself and her loved ones.

That much should have been obvious from the get-go. Furthermore, it should have been obvious not just last summer but also two years ago in New York, 12 years ago in Washington, D.C. and three months ago in Jupiter Island, Florida when police responded to reports of a busted fire hydrant outside the Woods’ mansion. And when it is obvious, that’s when the assembled punditocracy can declare victory on behalf of the feminist cause.

Editorials Editor Asher Smith is a College junior from Great Neck, N.Y.