Sex Scandals Know No Party Lines
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Amanda, it’s funny: My first thought when I saw the JFK photo wasn’t a parallel to other politicians, but to Tiger Woods. As in, given the attention that the Woods’ scandal created, perhaps if we’d had TMZ back in the 1950s then JFK wouldn’t have been president. But since you brought it up, do you really think that Republicans are such horrible people that the politicians get away with being hideous spouses and their followers keep voting for them anyhow? And that Democrats have some moral high ground here?
If my years of following politics have taught me anything, it’s that our representatives might have differing opinions on taxes and spending and foreign policy but other than that they are more alike than different. They can lie and cheat and bend rules equally well: For every Duke Cunningham, there’s a William Jefferson. And being a bad husband (or wife) doesn’t seem to be a particularly red or blue trait. If it was a sin for John McCain to leave his crippled wife for a younger woman back in the ‘70s, it was a sin for John Edwards to cheat on his terminally ill wife with Rielle Hunter in 2007. (We could swap names all day. Fortunately, this blog post from Newsweek’s Gaggle blog spares us from having to do that. And it looks like we’re about even.)
If anything, I think GOP voters might be less forgiving off their politicians’ scandals. Sure, Sen. David Vitter is still going strong despite his links to the D.C. madam a few years ago. But John Ensign and Mark Sanford were both touted as possible presidential candidates before their affairs were discovered and now, even though both are still in office, their chances for 2012 are nil.
You should actually thank the GOP for being so hard on its scandal-ridden politicians. Back in 2004, the party distanced itself from Jack Ryan after the Chicago Tribune nosed around in court documents related to a custody agreement and revealed that he had wanted to have kinky sex with his own wife. At the time, Ryan, as CNN put it, was “locked in a tight race” for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois that went to … Barack Obama.
*Update, December 28, 2009: TMZ is now reporting that the photo was not of JFK. It was from a 1967 issue of Playboy.
Photograph of Bill Clinton by Tim Sloan/Getty Images.
Rachael Larimore Slate copy chief and mother of three. Addicted to coffee, Facebook, and the Sprout channel.
Comments
Define carefully...
By: nagatuki | Tue, 12/29/2009 - 10:24
"The difference between touting "family values" while screwing around, versus openly opposing what conservatives call family values while screwing around ..."
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Okay, the rest of your analogy makes little sense, so I'll just focus on your first part here and suggest that what the GOP defines as "family values" is a Mom-and-Dad, _Christian_ household, and that's about it.
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There's nothing in there about morality, really; it's all about image, and this is solely what more liberal-minded individuals "object" to, and it could simply come down to Mom-and-Dad but _not_ Christian.
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And to argue that they "openly oppose" is your rationalizing a debate that exists primarily in your head, along with a few at the Fox network.
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Newsflash: we don't care. WE don't have any discussions, and we don't sit around "opposing" family values. That's an illogical fallacy on the Right so they can rail against it and win points. That they've convinved some voters that there's really a debate on it is appalling, to say the least.
The meaning of hypocrisy
By: fsilber | Tue, 12/29/2009 - 08:45
The difference between touting "family values" while screwing around, versus openly opposing what conservatives call family values while screwing around ...
...is like the difference between sending your child to a near all-white private school while touting racial integration versus openly advocating racist segregation.
Hypocrisy is not ideal but it is better than openly advocating vice.
Look at DoubleX and Broadsheet's defense of Dave Letterman
By: Amanda has alwa... | Tue, 12/29/2009 - 05:00
Amanda is lying and disingenuous, as usual.
Just go back a few months and see how many so-called feminists defended Dave Letterman and his affairs with the women. Then laugh at Amanda's claim:
"Republicans are the defenders of the patriarchy, and the patriarchy only considers cheating a problem if women do it."
I love Dave Letterman the comedian, but clearly his behavior was harmful to the women who didn't sleep with him, to the men who didn't get promoted, and the modern feminists could never admit that as they defended the so-called patriarchal cheating.
Bitter Democrats
By: lawdog67 | Tue, 12/29/2009 - 03:56
Wow, you left-wing New Yorkers just can't see two sides of an issue, can you? Rachael has done nothing more than point out that Amanda'a comment was a bit absurd, and you all can't wait to pile on and find new ways to divide the examples she's given you. The point is, cheating has nothing to do with parties. But Oh! The GOP must be "more cuplable" because as a whole, they believe in family values! So when one of them screws up, they're all hypocrites! So - it's far more honorable to eschew family values, then?
Look, we can all go backwards in time (or probably forwards) and find our own favorite pet examples. My personal favorite? How N.O.W. - the National Organization for Women! - having supported Bill Clinton throughout two campaigns, at the moment of truth, completely abandoned every one of their stated principles and refused to condemn his "activities" with Monica Lewinski. Any other guy abusing his position of power in the workplace and philandering around with an intern - and then lying about it to his wife, and in fact the entire country - would have been hunted down and killed by their organization. But not our Bill! In for a penny, in for a pound, said the N.O.W. And they somehow justified continuing to back him. And probably, in the process, continuing to excoriate any non-Democratic politician who so much as winked at a waitress. But hey! Hypocrisy knows no bounds, either.
Illinois Senate Race
By: Madeline | Tue, 12/29/2009 - 02:12
This, of course, leaves out the part where the Illinois GOP fought tooth and nail to prevent Ryan's divorce records from being unsealed. Or is that part of "being so hard on its scandal-ridden politicians"?
ETA: From the Chicago Tribune article to which you linked:
That statement was made after the allegations became public. Is that also part of the GOP "being so hard on its scandal-ridden politicians"?
@pixie
By: Caerolle | Mon, 12/28/2009 - 19:16
Whenever I see the self-referential phrases 'editorial standards' or 'high-quality content' used on DoubleX, my first thought is always of Rachel, who starts with her beliefs about a subject, then throws shady 'facts' at it, and wraps it all together in a willful disregard for the actual context. She is known as 'Rachel Palin' for her disingenuous posts based on right-wing propaganda (which fact is as well supported as most that she dreams up herself).
Comparing Scandals
By: Xando | Mon, 12/28/2009 - 18:53
Many of these comparisons fail to distinguish between current events and past events. The fact that you stole a pack of bubblegum when you were 8 should not preclude you from the Presidency. The fact that you stole $15 million from orphans when you were in charge of a government agency probably should.
Cheating vs. Lying
By: Timo Ericsson | Mon, 12/28/2009 - 18:52
The issue isn't who cheats more. The issue is hypocrisy. The party that crows about "family values" is the more morally culpable in this case.
if there were a special prize
By: pixie superhero | Mon, 12/28/2009 - 17:22
Rachael, if there were a special prize for missing the point, you'd win it on a daily basis. You're special. Very, very special. I don't know anyone else on the planet who's as good as you are at missing the point. You're so good at it, I almost think you're doing it on purpose.
John McCain's sin has cost
By: pampl | Mon, 12/28/2009 - 15:59
John McCain's sin has cost him much less than Edwards'. I hope you don't honestly believe that Sanford and Ensign would still be competitive in the GOP primaries if they were better husbands, and that Republicans have no problems with completely irresponsible absenteeism and covert payoffs to a lobbyist.
I don't know whether the GOP is harder on its bad spouses than the Dems are, or even if there's any good way to find an answer to that question. I do know that those examples are a really bad start.