Here’s what Edwards had to say about Bill and Monica in 1999: “I think this president has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter. It is breathtaking to me the level to which that disrespect has risen.
Different people, to be sure, will react differently to Edwards’ tawdriness or, if you’re a liberal, “weakness.” Some will point out that politicians, even great ones, have known to philander and that character doesn’t matter in governance. They will say that FDR had an affair and was a great leader and RN didn’t and was one of the worst presidents ever.
But Roosevelt lived in a vastly different era — it was a time when reporters considered it improper to disclose to the public that their president was a cripple. (JFK, too, was lucky that the media then were not as, well, carnivorous as they are now.) It is now known, in any case, that FDR’s wife considered sex an ordeal and that the couple never slept together again in the 29 remaining years of their marriage. They had separate bedrooms and took over different wings of the White House.
Nixon, for his part, wasn’t a “player,” but his character defect was just as bad. He seethed with hatred and class envy.
Character matters.
Some will insist that politicians are people just like you and me, and people are “only humans.” According to the Associated Press, 22 percent of married men and 14 percent of married women in the U.S. have had “an adulterous affair”: 19 million men and 12 million women who are married have committed adultery. But not everyone can run for president of the world’s most important nation. And those who are running are expected to be a little better than us, more competent, more trustworthy. Otherwise, why hold elections? Why should candidates campaign and tout their credentials?
In this era of the Internet and news by the minute, a politician who fools around and lies about it when caught is too reckless and too dumb to hold elective office.
How can you rely on the word of someone who betrays his own family? And how can you believe an elected official who likes to chase skirts?
I do not trust politicians who go to bars and cheat on their spouses. Adultery, after all, is about broken promises. Adulterers place their own “needs” above everyone else. This is not about morality. But as elected officials they must have more self-control. They have to comply with high standards of conduct. Leadership starts from within. Good government, says Plato in “The Laws,” starts with governing one’s self.
A person who can’t control his privates is unfit to hold public office. Voters will always prefer a politician who can be focused on his job and not distracted by his gonads. No one respects a sex maniac.
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