"I bring the everyday American perspective to the table," says Kathleen Parker. "I get 'em. I've been living with them."
"I'm not gonna concede that we aren't real Americans up here in the big urban," says Eliot Spitzer.
"I'm not saying New Yorkers aren't. I'm just saying you aren't."
They are sitting with two producers in a small CNN office at Columbus Circle, hours before their 16th rehearsal of the prime-time show that launches Monday night. All the attention has been on the former New York governor, who resigned two years ago, and it is clear that Parker, the right-leaning columnist syndicated by The Washington Post, is, in television terms, his escort back to polite society.
Spitzer faces a huge hurdle: He must somehow persuade those tuning in to put aside the image of a prostitute-patronizing politician who humiliated his family and view him instead as a thoughtful and engaging personality. The images from the scandal that drove him from Albany -- Ashley Dupre, his designation as Client 9, his pain-stricken wife Silda standing beside him -- are draped around him like a ragged old coat.
Why is Parker, whose husband remains in South Carolina while she commutes, willing to lend her Pulitzer Prize-winning credibility to a role as half of a fondly bickering couple? When Spitzer stepped down, "I remember making a conscious decision not to write about it," she says. "We all struggle in our lives. . . . I didn't need to pile on."
"There's a maturity to her," Spitzer observes from across the room.
Read more: Kathleen Parker and Eliot Spitzer, CNN's duo of civil dispute
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