His head was still in the clouds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI read Amy this passage last night from the best interview I\u2019ve ever read,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s about myth and different religions. And it said, much the way your unconscious and subconscience .\u2009.\u2009. sorry .\u2009.\u2009. I\u2019m saying both of these words wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
He turned to Amy for help.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour subconscious<\/i>,\u201d said Amy, who like Beto is thin and angular but whose tawny hair is not yet streaked with gray.<\/p>\n \u201cOkay, yeah, the same way your subconscious is the author of your dreams,\u201d Beto said, leaning forward to rub his bare feet \u2014 which elicited a slight groan from Amy. \u201cIn that same way, your will is the subconscious author of your life.\u201d<\/p>\n Beto took a breath. Amy, as if watching her favorite television rerun, offered a flat smile.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the end of your life,\u201d Beto continued. \u201cYou can see a line, and there\u2019s a story, a narrative that only makes sense at the end. Somebody had to author that; it\u2019s not a series of accidents.\u201d<\/p>\n This rumination on fate had come from\u00a0\u201cThe Power of Myth,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0a book-length interview between Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers. It was typical reading for Beto. Before he ran for Senate, he reread \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d the epic poem about one man\u2019s voyage home to his wife. Then, like now, Beto had decided to set out on a journey in the opposite direction, one that would separate him for weeks on end from his family.<\/p>\n [Beto O\u2019Rourke\u2019s immigration plan: No wall, few specifics<\/a><\/em>]<\/p>\n For most of history, it\u2019s been a given that a man would set out to fulfill his destiny, and that a woman would take care of the home \u2014 from Penelope to the last aspiring first lady from Texas, Laura Bush. Today, though, those rigid gender roles and hardened ideas of family life have shifted. Scores of female candidates are running for president, backed by potential first dudes. There\u2019s Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who has never been married, and the mayor of South Bend, Ind., Pete Buttigieg, who\u2019s married to a man.<\/p>\n Then, there\u2019s Amy and Beto. They are at once the most modern and most conventional of the families running for president in 2020. They are pioneers of social media, broadcasting much of their lives in real time; affluent, white and traditional \u2014 the political equivalent of \u201cThe Truman Show.\u201d They captured the hearts and minds of the left in their 2018 run for the Senate, but now, Beto won\u2019t call himself a progressive. Amy, before putting her career on the back burner for her husband, ran a charter school.<\/p>\n Critics are asking whether Beto has benefited from having a rich father-in-law, and paint him as \u201cprivileged\u201d; the kind of bro-philosopher who would take an emo road trip away from his family to try to decide if he\u2019d like to spend more time with them or run for office; and the kind of presidential candidate who would have his wife sit, silently gazing at him, for the entirety of his 3\u00a01<\/sup>\/2<\/sub>-minute announcement video.<\/p>\n In truth, even though Amy is fully on board, this isn\u2019t the life she would have chosen.<\/p>\n She recently finished Michelle Obama\u2019s\u00a0\u201cBecoming.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Like Michelle, Amy says of being first lady, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t put it on the list of things that I\u2019ve ever aspired to.\u201d<\/p>\n Chief among the concerns: The Senate run had been hard on the three children, especially their eldest, Ulysses, who at 12 is old enough to remember a time before Congress, a time when his father was around a lot more often. (By Beto\u2019s own admission, while campaigning in Iowa, he is only \u201csometimes\u201d helping raise the children, a comment that Beto later told reporters Amy had found \u201cflip\u201d and asked that he \u201ctreat it seriously.\u201d)<\/p>\n In life, there are no choices bigger than who you want to be and who you want to be with. For Beto and Amy, the choice to be together seemed easy. The second choice was harder: Who did they want Beto to be and what would that make him to Amy and their kids?<\/p>\n Democrats, too, have a decision to make about what this would-be first family represents in a crowded field: something old or something new? A vision of the future or a reflection of the past?<\/p>\n B<\/span>efore Amy and Beto decided to run for president, before they were married or even born, Amy\u2019s dad took Beto\u2019s mom out on a date.<\/p>\n It was 1970 when Bill Sanders picked up Melissa Martha Williams in his Porsche and sped 45 minutes from El Paso to Radium Springs, N.M., for a double date with one of his friends.<\/p>\n Melissa can\u2019t remember the second woman who joined them, but she remembers Bill\u2019s friend clearly \u2014 his handsome face, large forehead and even larger personality; how he, too, drove a Porsche.<\/p>\n His name was Patrick O\u2019Rourke, and less than a year after that first meeting, Melissa would marry him, and the two would be on their way to having their first child, Robert Francis. They\u2019d call him Beto for short.<\/p>\n \u201cSo that\u2019s how my parents met,\u201d Beto said. \u201cOn a date with Amy\u2019s dad.\u201d<\/p>\n Cosmic coincidence? A parable about the insularity of the moneyed class? Fate? Whatever led to this encounter would eventually lead to Beto and Amy.<\/p>\n Bill Sanders moved out of El Paso, got married to a woman who raised their five children while he was mostly away making so much money that he\u2019d be called the \u201cWarren Buffett of real estate.\u201d<\/p>\n Beto\u2019s dad would stick around, climb the local political ladder and make jokes that if Melissa had only played her cards right, Beto could be Bill Sanders\u2019s son.<\/p>\n But Beto was stuck with Pat, who for better or worse ended up shaping the man he would become while Amy \u2014 nine years younger \u2014 would become a \u201ccarbon-copy\u201d of her stay-at-home mom.<\/p>\n After a punk-rock sojourn in New York City, Beto returned to El Paso and came to resemble his father: ambitious politician, devoted cyclist, caring but occasionally distracted dad. They hadn\u2019t gotten along early in Beto\u2019s life \u2014 Pat was hard to please, and Beto didn\u2019t especially love trying to please him.<\/p>\n Pat\u2019s political career had been derailed in the 1980s when cops found a condom filled with white powder in his Toyota Land Cruiser. He claimed it had been planted by his enemies, and though he was never charged, his reputation never fully recovered.<\/p>\n When Beto came back to Texas in 1998 and started an online alternative newspaper, Pat began filing travelogues from long cycling trips. The two were getting along for the first time in a long time.<\/p>\n In 2001, Pat was killed on his bike by a passing car.<\/p>\n \u201cPat O\u2019Rourke is dead,\u201d Beto said at his funeral, \u201cbut he\u2019s alive in me.\u201d Two years later, the man who had never wanted to be a politician growing up decided to run for El Paso city council.<\/p>\n [Beto O\u2019Rourke went to the dentist \u2014 and brought his Instagram followers with him<\/a><\/em>]<\/p>\n Around the same time, Amy came to live in El Paso.<\/p>\n She was born in Chicago but grew up on a ranch outside of Santa Fe. Her father was often gone, traveling for work, leaving her mother to look after Amy and her four siblings. She had high expectations for her children, which Amy met in the classroom and on the tennis courts.<\/p>\n Amy was a born competitor, playing to win in everything she did, from varsity tennis, to family board games, to bobbing for apples at a college party. (Later in life, on the heels of Beto\u2019s defeat in the Senate race, even friends who knew she didn\u2019t care for political life weren\u2019t surprised to see her jump back in; she hated losing that much.)<\/p>\n She went to Williams College with dreams of working in education and raising a family; moved with a boyfriend to Guatemala for a year to teach English, break up and move back to the states.<\/p>\n Amy\u2019s family had relocated to El Paso, so she did, too. And her aunt had just the young man, also recently single, to set her up with.<\/p>\n A<\/span>my and Beto crossed the border, to Juarez, and ended up at a bar called Martino\u2019s, where they drank martinis and laughed about how they both had big noses. A Mexican crew filming a commercial in the bar tried to get the couple to kiss on camera, and Beto got them out of it by saying Amy was his sister.<\/p>\n He proposed on April Fools\u2019 Day, four months after they\u2019d first met. It seemed appropriate. That\u2019s how Amy knew him then and even now \u2014 impulsive and puckish: He told her on one of their first dates that he planned to name his first son Ulysses (which they did, about a year after marrying, followed by a Molly and a Henry). He dubbed their dog Roosevelt before realizing that the dog was a girl (who now goes by Rosie).<\/p>\n And then there were the pranks: the remote-controlled cockroach in the kitchen, the \u201cPsycho\u201d-style scares in the shower. One time, according to a friend, Beto collected an especially verdant turd from one of their kids\u2019 diapers and put it in a bowl, telling Amy it was avocado. (Neither would confirm this, though Beto did allow it sounded like something he\u2019d do.)<\/p>\n [Beto O\u2019Rourke joins the 2020 Democratic presidential contest<\/a><\/em>]<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Screen-Shot-2019-03-19-at-3.05.43-PM.png\")
Amy Hoover Sanders, left, walks with daughter Molly O\u2019Rourke as Amy\u2019s husband and Molly\u2019s father, Beto O\u2019Rourke, walks on stage at the Paramount Theatre after a documentary on him was shown March 9 in Austin. (Matt McClain\/The Washington Post)<\/span><\/div>\nBeto O\u2019Rourke and his wife, Amy, at a rally in El Paso Nov. 5, 2018. He lost the midterm election to incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). (Michael Robinson Chavez\/The Washington Post)<\/span><\/div>\nBeto O\u2019Rourke and Amy at Beto\u2019s mother\u2019s house in 2006. (Melissa O\u2019Rourke)<\/span><\/div>\nPat O\u2019Rourke, father of Beto O\u2019Rourke. (Melissa O\u2019Rourke)<\/span><\/div>\nBeto O’Rourke and Amy arrive for his election night party Nov. 6, 2018, in El Paso. (Eric Gay\/AP)<\/span><\/div>\n