The State of Affairs
As ideal as it would be for politicians to have the privacy of their bedrooms (or hotel rooms) respected, this is presently an unrealistic expectation—and it is therefore a harmful one. Under the Panopticon of today’s mass media, politicians cannot possibly hide their personal lives from the public eye.
Amid a confused array of accusations last week, Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC) took to the podium to clarify the nature of his romantic life. With honesty that would make a pilgrim proud, he confirmed the media’s suspicion that his love had been divided between two parties: his Argentine paramour Maria Belen Chapur and – with recently compromised commitment – the hiking trail of the Appalachian Mountains. Sanford’s tearful, sniveling reference to Chapur as his “soul mate” made his attempted reconciliation with his wife a blanching display of equivocation; but there was one topic about which the governor was not conflicted—he would remain in office.
Jefferson, Kennedy, Clinton, Spitzer: Our country has accumulated an impressive litany of statesman whose reputation, at one point or another, became eclipsed by the shadow of a monolithic libido. Sometimes the affair entered the public eye years after the fact, other times almost immediately; but the vox populi has long portrayed the Seventh Commandment as a political code.
Many believe that the U.S. has only recently favored a stricter scrutiny of the personal affairs of public officials—due, they claim, to the influence of the Christian Right on modern politics. Many also believe that the choking grip of an affair squeezes all the potency out of an elected statement’s political promise: “If he’s lied to his wife,” goes the logic, “what will prevent him from lying to the public?” But do the coup-de-foudre exploits of American politicians consistently entail, and consistently merit, the coup-d’état consequences?
Some will say that Governor Sanford dug his grave by fashioning himself as a zealous Christian and advocate for “family values.” Upon becoming a congressman in 1994, Mark Sanford vociferously supported President Clinton’s impeachment; in keeping with his vaguely nonpartisan standard, then-Representative Sanford even opposed Bob Livingston’s rise to the position of Speaker of the House, saying, in response to Livingston’s extramarital trysts, that “we as a party want to hold ourselves to high standards, period.”
Eight days before Sanford’s recent act of contrition, Senator John Ensign (R-NV), a fellow socially conscious conservative, admitted to having an affair with a married campaign staffer whose husband worked for the senator’s office. Katon Dawson, onetime chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party and former candidate for the chairmanship of the R.N.C., noted the Grand Old Party’s “political” affliction with concupiscence; it’s “the damnedest thing I’d ever seen,” he said; “whether it was the Nevada senator or Larry Craig, we’ve been struggling with our elected officials. We run on values, and we’ve been struggling.” It seems that every time the G.O.P. achieves an organized grasp on effective policy positions, another family-values Republican steals the moment away because of his personal penchant for, well, other positions.
Certainly, sexual hypocrisy has plagued the Democrats as well. Former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, decried in various arenas as the “crusader who cut off his own head,” had spearheaded a crackdown on prostitution while paying $80,000 for the pleasures of the flesh. “I cannot allow for my private failings to disrupt the people’s work,” Spitzer said; and he resigned from office. Consistency of word and deed may have strongly contributed to the political preservation of politicians like Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who never touted a Puritan moral code and survived, respectively, a confession of adultery and accusations of sexual harassment.
Despite endless opportunities to acclimate their expectations and reconsider the basis for their judgments, Americans remain needlessly scrupulous in their scrutiny of politicians’ personal lives; as in the case of Spitzer, for example, it takes just one revealed misadventure to eradicate public confidence in a passionate and determined statesman. Other countries seem to respect the private nature of politicians’ bedroom proclivities and disregard their wayward antics; for the rest of the watching world, America’s swift judgment seems to indicate a deep-seated sexual repression.
