Are we better off now? Or not?
Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had active sex lives with women to whom they were not married. Actually, lots of women. Their wives knew about it. (They evidently decided that it was better to enjoy the perks of being First Lady than to make a scene.) Lots of people knew about it when it was happening. But their behavior didn’t become public knowledge until well after they were both dead.
Then Newt Gingrich decided to make President Clinton’s momentary thrill with Monica the centerpiece in his naked grab for power and everything changed – it seems, permanently. (See Note 1)
Now, every time anyone in the spotlight has some sex that is, in our theoretical western moral code is, “off limits” – we find out about it in every lurid detail. Without even thinking about it very much …
- Tiger, who seems to have a port at every hole.
- South Carolina’s Governor Sanford and his Argentine obsession.
- Nevada’s Senator John Ensign has enlisted his whole family in a failed attempt to cover up his own vacation to “Sexland”.
- Former Senator Edwards. Cheating on your wife when she’s in the hospital must be a political thing. Both Newt Gingrich and John McCain did it too.
- There have been several aide molestors who have quit Congress just in the last few months.
I received an email recently that asked, “It seems that we learn about another one every other day. Are people getting that much worse today?”
My one word answer was, “No.” IMHO, about the same proportion of people have always been that way. The only thing that has changed is that today, we splash it all over the news. It’s become a spectator sport. But not, it seems, a political liability. Clinton survived. Sanford and Ensign are still in office and even plan on winning the next election.
The question is, “Are we better off knowing whenever one of our ‘leaders’ starts thinking with the little head instead of the big one — or not?”
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Note 1 – There are two other peripheral issues that are interesting to me about the Newt and his fight for power during the Clinton years.
The first is how relatively modest and brief President Clinton’s indescretion actually was compared to the huge political firestorm Newt made of it. There was no actual intercourse, just a few brief encounters in the hallway. I believe it was Monica herself who said that she told people that she didn’t have sex with Clinton because she didn’t. She said that if what happened with Clinton was “sex” then she had “sex” with lots and lots of people. But it wasn’t sex. Whatever it was, it was enough to leave a testable stain on the infamous “blue dress”.
The second is the blazing red hypocrisy of Newt Gingrich. He married his former high school geometry teacher when he was 19 years old. She was seven years older than him. It’s not a stretch to imagine that there might have been some statuatory rape going on a few years earlier. But she got cancer, and while she was in the hospital, Newt couldn’t keep it in his pants, so they got divorced and he married the new thang. A few years later, at the very same time Newt was leading the crusade to grab power from Clinton, he was cheating on his second wife – frequently – with his third. It’s difficult for me to imagine how Gingrich could stand in the House and preach so convincingly against Clinton and then sneak off and have real sex on the sly.
I hadn’t known, before I read this blog, about this (“. . .at the very same time Newt was leading the crusade to grab power from Clinton, he was cheating on his second wife – frequently – with his third.”). Seems to me that definitely would have taken some of the wind out of his sails in his attacks on Clinton if this had been made public then. Did the Clintons know about this at the time of Monica-gate?
And I also hadn’t known that he married his seven-years-older-than-him high school geometry teacher when he was 19. What a hypocritical ass he is!
Politics often is a very nasty business when power is THE very and only reason people are in the game. I wish their was an “ideals” test we could give people before we put them on a ticket to run for office so we could keep the bastards out!
P.S. – Why’d you let McCain and Guiliani off the hook, by the way, in your Hall of Shame above?
Whoops, don’t want to make Lena responsible for my irresponsible remarks. the above Reply is from PEGGY.
Yeah … Kinda sounded like “Peggy” from the get-go.
I don’t know if the Clintons were aware or not. They don’t remark about that period of time much. My guess is “no”. But the other incidents earlier in Newt’s record were pretty much public record.
Just as a matter of tactics, I think they decided at the time that throwing the mud back again wasn’t going to work. Newt was certainly one of the most prominent of Clinton’s persecutors, but even if they had elimininated him at the time, it really wouldn’t have made much difference in the overall battle. And it would have made Bill look much less “Presidential” to climb into the same mud pit with Newt.
Newt did resign, partly for these reasons, not too much after that. But people need to be reminded about him … as your message shows.
I didn’t let McCain off the hook. And there are just too many to list them all.
I appreciate the amount of time TV “news” programs spend on the sexual peccadilloes of people that have absolutely no impact on my life like Woods, Sanford and Edwards.
I gives me that much more time for doing more important things – which is almost anything.
It is interesting to speculate about what might have been – had Edwards been elected Pres or VP or been made a cabinet secretary.
Yeah … I tend to agree. Quite frankly, the sex lives don’t seem to me to be important at all. Kennedy and Johnson did pretty good jobs in spite of their choice of recreation.
But their choice of methods once they’re caught will sometimes reveal character flaws that probably do have a bearing on whether we should to continue to employ them. For example, flying to Argentina like a love-sick albatross? And then trying to charge off expenses? Paying off the husband with a political job? Come ON! (No pun intended.)
Clinton, while even slipping over the edge with at least one outright falsehood while under fire, never really did anything except give in to poor judgment in a hallway.
The American people have it all backwards again. It’s not the sex that is wrong, it’s the lies to cover it up.