I am the woman I grew to be partly in spite of my mother and partly because of the extraordinary love of her best friends and my own best friends' mothers and from surrogates many of whom were not women at all but gay men. I have loved them my entire life even after their passing.

This has always been the way of presidential politics. The president rises above the fray while his surrogates go on the attack. They throw the spears and fling the mud he sits upon the throne.

George W. Bush attended the intelligence briefing every day. Obama has not even attended half of them. He sends surrogates. That to me is significant.

My parents have always been cool. They even became surrogates to friends of mine who didn't have such supportive parents.