Jenny Sanford did not stand beside her husband when he publicly admitted to having an affair.

Editor's note: Gloria Borger is a senior political analyst for CNN, appearing regularly on CNN's "The Situation Room," "Campbell Brown," "AC360°" and "State of the Union With John King," as well as special event coverage.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — After years of watching those wives stand (sadly) by their men, there was something refreshing — and real — about Jenny Sanford's decision to be far, far away from the governor's apology tour.

After all, what would she have done when he rambled on and on about his love of his "adventure trips" on the Appalachian Trail when, it turns out, he wasn't hiking?

And would she have had to sweetly smile as her husband paid homage to her as a terrific "campaign manager"?

And what affect would she have had to adopt when the governor spoke about "that whole sparking thing" — his peculiar way of describing how an e-mail relationship developed into something else?

The accepted political guidelines for jilted wives (see: wives, jilted) have always decreed that the wounded ones be seen, but stay silent. They are the suffering partners willing to literally remain in the picture out of political necessity. Their very presence helps to suggest that this love is worth saving, because this man is so special — to all of us.

Well, forget it.

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Even before President Obama chose Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, he let it be known that he was looking for a justice with, among other things, something called 'empathy.'

By that, he said, he meant someone who understands "ordinary Americans so that everybody is heard." And that quality, we can infer, comes largely from life experience and background. Ipso facto, Sotomayor's up-by-the-bootstraps life story could well make her a more empathetic justice.

It's a notion that clearly horrifies conservatives. "It opens a grand debate of the president's own making," Manuel Miranda, chairman of the Third Branch Conference, told me. For conservative purists, empathy is all about feelings, which have no place in the law. It's also about experiences-even ethnicity-which should also have no place in the law.

As a defiant Justice Antonin Scalia said in 2007, "…just as there is no 'Catholic' way to cook a hamburger, I am hard-pressed to tell you of a single opinion of mine that would have come out differently if I were not Catholic." And I'm sure he's telling the truth.

But there's more to it than that. If empathy means you "understand what other people are thinking," says one senior White House advisor, "…you would think you would want a judge with empathy." That's also true.

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A source tells CNN that President Obama was looking for a nominee with the ability to win over Justice Anthony Kennedy.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Contrary to conventional wisdom, President Obama was not looking for someone to balance the more flamboyant conservative firepower of Justice Antonin Scalia, according to one senior administration official involved in the process of picking, vetting and promoting the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

He was looking for someone with the ability to win over Justice Anthony Kennedy, the crucial swing vote.

"[Obama] was very struck, when he met with her, about how thoughtful she was as a judge," says the source. "He believed she had a precise approach to cases that would be effective in winning over Kennedy when possible."

The president considered Sotomayor's opinions to be "rigorous, precise, not overly flamboyant." Reports have called her more workmanlike than visionary – a precision that impressed Obama, who is looking to turn narrow decisions his way.

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WASHINGTON (CNN) — Heading into the selection process, Sonia Sotomayor was the Supreme Court candidate President Obama knew the least. But her six-hour White House visit last Thursday — including an hour-long meeting with the president — clinched her the spot, according to a senior administration offficial.

Obama was not asked about Iraq or Afghanistan.

(CNN) – It's astonishing President Obama was not asked more about foreign policy.

The president himself had to raise the issue of his Iran tape. There was some talk on Mexico and a tad on the Middle East, but NO Iraq and Afghanistan???

How can that be?

And when was the last time a president had a press conference without mentioning those, or without being asked about those?

(CNN) — The president didn not call for a permanent middle class tax cut.

A temporary one is in the stimulus package, but when pressed, the president outlined his budget priorities: health care, energy, education, and deficit reduction.

(CNN) — President Obama made it clear that Americans “are sacrificing left and right…”

And the folks who are getting the bailout money are going to have to sacrifice more.

He did take the turn to make it clear he still intends to pack his agenda—with health care, education and energy for the “longterm growth” of the economy.

Jury is still out on whether the public will buy that, given the economic mess

WASHINGTON (CNN) – When the White House first got wind of the executive bonuses at American International Group, the disbelief was palpable.

"You smack your head and you say 'You've gotta be kidding me,' " senior presidential adviser David Axelrod tells me. "It put another brick on the load we're carrying."

Or a concrete block.

Just as the White House readies its long-awaited plan to bail out the banks — having presented its plans for housing and small business — a new wave of anger is precisely what it doesn't need. And to make matters worse, it's a widespread anger that is not grounded in the more ordinary resentments between economic classes.

In fact, this new populism is almost unanimous: The banks were greedy and reckless. They took us down with them. So why do the bad guys deserve a government cushion?

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The president has a hard message to sell: Without aid for banks and Wall Street, we'll all sink, Gloria Borger says.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — In case you hadn't noticed, Americans are having a rough time with the New World Order as it applies to saving the economy.

That is, the ordinary moral instincts we use to guide our daily lives don't seem to apply to economic policy: We can't simply punish the bad guys. Alas, we have to help the bad guys — in order to help ourselves.

For most — angry at the stupidity and profligacy of both Wall Street and the big banks — saving that bunch is not an easy notion to accept. And if you're the president, it's even a harder notion to sell.

People are losing wealth every day. Those close to retirement are putting it off. So are those who want to sell their homes or get a loan. So what's a president to say: You need to root for the bad guys to get back on their feet first?

Well, yes. Someone needs to say it. The president dipped his toe in the treacherous water in his joint address to Congress earlier this month when he allowed, "I know how unpopular it is to be seen as helping banks right now, especially when everyone is suffering in part from their bad decisions. I get it. But I also know that in a time of crisis, we cannot afford to govern out of anger, or yield to the politics of the moment."

Exactly right. But why has the argument stopped there?

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(CNN) — I'd give the president's performance tonight a solid B: Substantive, not inspirational. Sober, more programs than hope. Lots of promises — details to come.

(CNN) — President Obama has made his priorities very clear: health care, energy and education. The speech is more like a standard State of the Union address — with an added element of extreme urgency, given the fiscal crisis.

If it somehow seems that we have heard this before from Obama, it's because we have. Which raises the question: have we been seeing him too much?

My answer is no. We know where he stands and what he intends to do. Now voters can hold him to his promises.

President Obama has chosen pragmatism over ideology as he has navigated the stimulus debate.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — It is not unusual for a presidential candidate to try to win friends and influence voters. That's what elections are about, so we tend to excuse political posturing when we see it — because we have come to expect a certain amount of it. Besides, we like people who pay attention to us.

But once a president becomes president, we expect other things. We expect him to keep his promises (particularly if we liked them). We expect action and decision. And, most of all, we expect to come to learn who he is, and where he really stands — by virtue of what he decides.

And what we've been watching over the last few weeks is just that: the very public development of a new president who is more pragmatic than ideological by nature, testing his instincts against the divided realities of Washington.

It's been a balancing act — in which we've seen President Obama as both cheerleader and Chicken Little, as a partisan Democrat and a bipartisan negotiator and, finally, as both an insider leading a well-worn Washington-dominated Cabinet and an outsider railing against Washington's business as usual.

In many ways, the deck has been stacked against the president's instincts: Washington hasn't been hospitable to bipartisanship for decades.

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Obama is holding his first prime time news conference. (Getty Images)

(CNN) — President Obama made the points he needs to make to the American public:  If we don’t act now, this economic crisis will become a catastrophe.

He also made the philosophical point that tax cuts alone cannot solve this problem, as some Republicans suggest.

He conceded that we can't depend on government alone to solve the problems, but made the point that only government is large enough to solve the problems of this size.

President Barack Obama has pledged to work with Republicans on his economic stimulus package.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — If there was one message that resonated loud and clear from the Obama campaign, it was this: Let's get past all of the partisanship and work together to get something done.

Turns out, President Barack Obama actually meant it. He's been meeting with congressional Republicans (and will trek to the Hill again Tuesday).

He's been listening to their ideas, incorporating some tax-cut ideas. And, yes, he's also been turning some down. After all, as he told Republicans last week, he was the one who won the election.

So what we're watching now as the stimulus package takes shape is the legislative equivalent of the first date: Republicans meeting with the new president, sizing him up. Obama deciding whether the GOP is serious about working with him.

"He [Obama] came to a conclusion early on in his political career that partisan polarization is a large part of the problem," says a senior Obama adviser. "Both in reality and in the minds of the American people."

Ah, but it's never that simple.

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Some key Democrats are balking at President-elect Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Yes, it's early. Very early. Barack Obama hasn't even moved into Blair House yet.

But it's time — for an intervention.

How else to confront the oddly self-destructive behavior of congressional Democrats? How else to figure out why they seem intent on depriving their new president of a swift — and truly bipartisan — victory on his all-important economic stimulus package?

Watch Candy Crowley report on Obama's sales pitch

It's as if they haven't quite figured out what the public meant when it voted to change business as usual. Or that sometimes, in order to get something done, the perfect is the enemy of the good, as the cliché goes. Or to effectively cripple the Obama presidency in its infancy would be, er, bad for them.

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(CNN) – Two sources close to the transition say that New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner is “on track” to being offered the nomination for Treasury Secretary. The announcement will happen within days, possibly Monday, potentially with another member or members of the Obama economic team as well.

Current Defense Secretary Robert Gates is likely to stay at the post, a source tells CNN.

(CNN) – Barack Obama is considering a mix of Washington insiders and high-profile business executives to head various cabinet positions, one source involved in the cabinet gathering process told CNN.

For Secretary of State, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry is high on the list. Also on the list is Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, a former presidential candidate who endorsed Barack Obama early in the Democratic primary season. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke are also interested in the job.

For Secretary of Defense, there are indications current Defense Secretary Robert Gates will stay at the post "for a certain period." Gates, the former CIA Director under the first President Bush, has been praised by members of both parties for his leadership at the Pentagon over the last two years. Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, a former United States Army Captain and a member of the Armed Services Committee, is acting as the go-between with Gates.

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, who also served as that state's attorney general, is said to be a "very real possibility" for U.S. attorney general. Napolitano, who also endorsed Obama early in the primary process, was named earlier this week to the Obama transition team.  She's also served as a U.S. attorney from Arizona.

For Secretary of Commerce, former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, Time Warner Chairman Dick Parsons, prominent Chicago Businesswoman Penny Pritzker, and University of California economist Laura Tyson are all under consideration.

One problem: the Obama administration wants a diverse cabinet, and that means everything is still up for grabs.

(CNN)– It's very hard to see a path to the White House now for John McCain. He put everything into Pennsylvania, and it wasn't enough.
Obama understood his challenge in the state after he lost to Hillary Clinton in the primaries, and it became a turning point in his campaign.

While making the rounds in Virginia Thursday, Sen. Obama told reporters that he'd decided on a running mate but refused to say any more.

(CNN) — The VP choice was a difficult one for Obama, a source close to the Illinois senator tells CNN's Gloria Borger.

Watch: "I've made the selection," says Obama

Specifically Obama was "very hung up on the experience versus change,” the source said, and how his message of change may conflict with a longtime Washington insider.

The source doesn't know who Obama ultimately chose, but confirms Sens. Joe Biden and Evan Bayh, along with Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine are all in the running.