If Republicans weren't supposed to care about Bill Clinton's philandering, is it fair to ask Democrats to ignore Newt Gingrich's serial monogamy?
Politicians can’t any longer talk about “moral character” without sounding like a stuffy Baptist deacon or a stiff Presbyterian elder. “Moral character” is no longer important in a presidential campaign, even to many conservatives and evangelicals. If it is important anymore, it is only as a talking point.
I'll say the same thing about Gingrich I said about Clinton: It matters. You can't separate officials' public and private lives and pretend they don't affect each other. Morality (how you treat other people) is morality, and how you behave in one realm of your life you will behave in others. I'm not saying whether a specific act, such as cheating on your spouse, should disqualify someone from office, only that it is one factor to take into account. You can't just peel something off and declare it off limits just because it's part of a candidate's "private" life instead of his "public life."
Despite the cynical start to this article, the writer actually does seem to get it:
Good ol’ Bubba, bless his pea-picking heart, had a Hot Springs sense of shame that instructed him to lie about it, even though it led to impeachment and the humiliation of a nation that twice bestowed its highest honor on him. “I did not have sex with that woman,” he famously said, and then, as if trying to remember which one, added: ” … Miss Lewinsky.” Newt not only has no shame, but doesn’t understand why anyone thinks he should. “It’s not about sex,” says Victoria Toensing, a sometime television commentator and the lawyer for Wife No. 2, nor was it “about a wife rejected. Rather it was an insight into the persona of Newt. When he gets power he believes the rules do not apply to him.”
A lot of politicians -- hell, maybe most -- don't believe the rules really apply to them, and not just when it comes to matters of sexual fidelity. Bubba and Newt are just so blatantly obvious about it.
