I was a pessimist from the moment I got the bid. I vividly remember that first glass of champagne after I swept the primaries. My husband said a toast, standing across the crowded hotel room with this crazy look in his eyes. He was so excited. He didn't just wear it on his face. It was in the way he couldn't seem to stand still or catch his breath.

It took me back to the first time I saw him. He was leaning in the door frame of the senior commons during my junior year at Dalton. I was in show choir rehearsal and he just watched; reacting to every step-ball-change like it was the first one he'd ever seen. Nothing went over his head. He absorbed everything, and appreciated it with intoxicating enthusiasm.

That sparkle he had the night I got the nomination was one I hadn't witnessed in years. He announced to the team that he had never been more proud of me. I watched him intensely, unable to smile or cross the room to accept his congratulations. I wanted more than anything to be able to feel that moment, but I'd already gone numb. It was like I was looking into a crystal ball, and the inevitability of the image it presented – the image of monumental disappointment – had me tail spinning into a drowsy depression that I may or may not still be recovering from.

We knew I'd lost eight days before the polls opened. Both of us knew, and we didn't even have to discuss it. When I walked into the hotel room, he was sitting on the foot of the bed, his sport coat crumpled up beside him and his tie on the floor. His shoes were still on, though, and his feet planted firmly on the carpet as he folded his hands and leaned forward, his head bowed.

"What, are you praying now?" I asked weakly; cynically.

"No, I'm not praying." He said plainly. His face was impossible to read as he looked up at me. "I'm just… sitting."

I nodded, removing my own jacket as I made my way to the mini bar. It felt like the first time in months that he and I were alone in a room together without members of the campaign. It was a moment I'd been waiting for, and now that it was happening, I wished he wasn't there.

"Do you want to talk?" He asked me cautiously.

I silently opened a tiny bottle of scotch and took a long swig before tersely answering, "No."

I turned around, and finally, I could read him. I recognized the look on his face. It wasn't disappointment. It wasn't anger. He was worried about me. It was almost enough to make me break down completely.

I knew what he was doing. He was putting me before his own questions and insecurities. I knew what we'd be dealing with once he'd helped me through the concession, and the fact that he was willing to postpone it, because he knew it would be hard enough as it was to get through it, just killed me. I didn't deserve him. I had never deserved him, yet there he still was: Blaine Anderson, the most nauseatingly forgiving person I have ever met.

And for some reason he's still around today, proofreading manuscripts and continuing to watch my every move with the boyish fascination that I fell in love with. He tells me constantly that he believes in me, and for reasons I've yet to figure out. The bottom line is that nothing would be possible without him. He has enough optimism for the both of us.

I could very easily write this whole book about him, but that would imply that all I am is that man I'm married to, and clearly there's much more to my story. Anyone who's ever followed current events could tell you that.

I was fourteen when I lost my virginity. As much as I'd love to rub the gory details in the faces of the dirty conservatives who made up their minds to give this book a negative review before cracking the spine, I think it's more fun for all of us if I leave something up to the imagination.

There are two things you need to know about it. The first is that I paid for dinner. The second is that I was tragically unaffected by the ordeal. I was so thrown off by my own apathy, as a matter of fact, that I fell into a deep depression and landed myself in therapy.

I met with a lady shrink; a middle-aged woman who wore cable-knit halter tops and had a series of distracting and misshapen moles on her arms that I hope, for her sake, she eventually got checked out. For two weekly sessions in a row, she asked me boring questions about my appetite and study habits. She read points off of a clipboard; as if her job was some open-note midterm she hadn't bothered to study for. I remember sitting across from her, biting my tongue to stop myself from calling out her failure. I quickly realized how irrelevant she was – even how irrelevant my assumed depression was. I had no choice but to drop her.

My parents and I agreed that there would be someone who suited me better in Paris, where we were set to spend the next year. For one reason or another, I never saw a therapist again. To this day, I've found no reason to regret it. Honestly, I think the idea that a stranger could fix my problems better than I could fix them myself is just a tad bit ridiculous.

As for personal issues, I've been told that I possess a delightful assortment of them. Although I believe that my illusive complexities are what have been seducing voters since my first Senate race, I assume they also cost me this last election.

In my concession speech, I said, "If every man is a sum of his passions, I am doubtlessly a bigger man that my opponent. However, I recognize that we need a leader who has the leftover room to carry the weight of the nation". I didn't write these words. They were written by a member of a team that traveled with me through months of campaigning; by someone who's known me at every hour of the day; someone who I've never had the time to filter myself in front of. This person found a nice way to get me to admit to being stubborn, or hot-headed, or whatever it is that I come across as. I've thought about these words endlessly. I've realized that I don't know if my alleged flaws are irreparable, or if a few more sessions with the Madame melanoma could have transformed me a more pleasant person.

What I know is that I would have made a damn good president. I recognize that I've made some mistakes, and probably at the worst possible times. I accept the likelihood that I will be ostracized for my decisions until the day that I die, whether the public disapproves fundamentally, or if they're just looking for another dinner-table conversation topic that will justify how much they already dislike me. But I would have made a damn good president. At the end of the day, I'd do right by my country. If anything, a little hot-headedness could have been the thing to save us.

These memoirs aren't meant to glorify my political career. Rather, I'd like my readers to see this as a most revealing self portrait; something that enables a view of the man I really am; the kind of president I could have been. I am in the right state of mind to lead. I am in a better place than I've ever been.