Let’s begin with a logically sound axiom: What you don’t
know about moral delinquents – particularly if they are politicians – can’t
hurt them.
During the administration of John Kennedy, a likeable,
highly charismatic president, it was no secret among reporters whose business
it was to keep people informed that the president had a woman problem: He liked
them – very, very much -- and bedded as many of them as possible.
The attitude of the media towards Kennedy’s satyriasis was enlightened: Why make much ado about hypersexual disorder
if Kennedy’s affairs did not materially affect his presidency? Suppose Mr.
Kennedy had been a genius mathematician. Would his frequent sexual encounters distort
the veracity of his mathematical computations? Of course not. Why then make
much ado about Kennedy’s erotic liaisons if they did not interfere with the
functioning of his office? This separation of eroticism and the man was, during
the Kennedy years and before, the operative attitude of the media. Of course,
less adept politicians than Kennedy occasionally flubbed up and let the cat out
of the bag, in which case the media was free to treat them as lambs leading
themselves to the slaughter.
The Profumo affair, a 1963 scandal in Britain involving
Secretary of State for War John Profumo and Christine Keeler, a reputed
mistress of a man thought to be a Soviet spy, created a small lake of spilled
ink. One of Kennedy’s several conquests was Judith Campbell Exner, thought to
be a mistress of Mafia boss Sam "Momo" Giancana. In a People magazine
interview in 1988, Exner said she had set up an initial meeting with Kennedy
and Giancana during the presidential election of 1960 and for several months
afterwards had served as a courier between the two, carrying messages
concerning plans to assassinate Cuban Communist dictator Fidel Castro.
At some point between the Kennedy administration and the
present day, the media became less shy about reporting sexual skullduggery
among politicians. Over the years, however, the moral “do-nots” have evolved.
Politicians now regularly put away their wives and remarry
without incurring the kind of public disfavor that earlier might have deprived
them of office. Here in Connecticut, three prominent and long serving U.S.
Senators – Lowell Weicker, Joe Lieberman and Chris Dodd -- traded in their
wives for newer models without any damage to their careers. In nearby
Massachusetts, founded by morally uptight Puritans, U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy
ended his 23 year marriage, having been granted a faux annulment by the
Catholic Church, and went on to happier days with a less conflicted wife.
Dodd and then U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy ran into some media enforcers when
they sandwiched a waitress between them in a Washington bistro, but this
indiscretion was quickly put down to drunkenness rather than sexual impropriety
and the political careers of both survived media scrutiny.
The career of presidential aspirant John Edwards came to an
abrupt end when he admitted to a sexual affair with Rielle Hunter, a filmmaker attached to his
presidential campaign. The happy issue of the prolonged, much denied affair was
a child, but Edwards’ political prospects were left in ruins, as was his
marriage and his honor.
All of which
brings us to postmodern times and Elliot Spitzer who, like his counterpart in
Connecticut, former Attorney General Dick Blumenthal, achieved fame by
flagellating with litigation moral cretins, Wall Street Lords of the Earth and
Big Business, after which Spitzer fell, exhausted, into the soft arms of a few
high end prostitutes. Driven out of office by something resembling a sense of
shame, Spitzer is now back in the political stream, running for Comptroller of
New York, a post for which he is well suited, according to most libertine
journalists.
The libertines,
considerably more at liberty than they were in the Camelot days of Kennedy, now
ask: If the Marquis de Sade were an accomplished New York accountant whose long
suffering wife were to hit the campaign trail with him in an effort to convince
New York voters that his past sexual exploits should not serve as a bar to his
political ambitions, would New York commentators pump his campaign by hauling into print ancient
canards concerning the wall of separation between sex and politics?
And, while we are
on the point, does anyone know what length of time should pass before a
politician’s disgraceful sexual acts should reasonably be discounted by voters?
The time between sins and elections in the postmodern era appears to be growing
alarmingly short.
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