Are Amy and Beto O’Rourke the future of politics?

Beto’s campaign for president has put his marriage in the spotlight, showcasing a relationship that is at once the most modern and most traditional of any 2020 candidate.

Beto O’Rourke plonked down on his living room sofa beside his wife, Amy, and promptly removed his shoes and socks. It was a late February morning, weeks before announcing his candidacy for president, and Beto had just returned from his favorite hike in the nearby Franklin Mountains.

His head was still in the clouds.

“I read Amy this passage last night from the best interview I’ve ever read,” he said. “It’s about myth and different religions. And it said, much the way your unconscious and subconscience . . . sorry . . . I’m saying both of these words wrong.”

He turned to Amy for help.

“Your subconscious,” said Amy, who like Beto is thin and angular but whose tawny hair is not yet streaked with gray.

“Okay, yeah, the same way your subconscious is the author of your dreams,” Beto said, leaning forward to rub his bare feet — which elicited a slight groan from Amy. “In that same way, your will is the subconscious author of your life.”

Beto took a breath. Amy, as if watching her favorite television rerun, offered a flat smile.

“At the end of your life,” Beto continued. “You can see a line, and there’s a story, a narrative that only makes sense at the end. Somebody had to author that; it’s not a series of accidents.”

This rumination on fate had come from “The Power of Myth,” a book-length interview between Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers. It was typical reading for Beto. Before he ran for Senate, he reread “The Odyssey,” the epic poem about one man’s 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.

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