public affairs
by Sandra Kinne
Published: March 27, 2008
There is no shortage of political sex stories lately. With all the scandalous headlines and salacious details in the news, it’s as though Larry Flynt infiltrated both major political parties or US Weekly started a Washington, D.C. bureau.
Since 2006, we’ve had dozens of dalliances by elected officials come to light: former Florida Representative Mark Foley, Louisiana Senator David Vitter, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome, Florida Representative Bob Allen, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Idaho Senator Larry Craig, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. This is to say nothing of the particulars still coming out (no pun intended) in former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey’s on-going divorce trial and the recent revelations by newly-installed New York Governor David Patterson.
Apparently, reaching across the aisle to show bipartisanship involves reaching out to touch someone who isn’t your spouse. I’m starting to wonder if I need to get married, cheat on my husband and enter marriage counseling just to be eligible to run for office.
Sex and political scandals are nothing new. Thomas Jefferson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Newt Gingrich - all had female “friends with benefits” who weren’t their wives. Neither are political sex scandals All-American. No, in addition to toast, kisses and fries the French seem to have bested us in the political mistress department. Is the fact they get away with it the real reason Washington conservatives hate our Parisian pals?
What strikes me as novel these days about elected officials are the public comments on their marriages’ extra-curriculars, their insistence on remaining in office despite the enormous distractions and standstills they’ve created, and their inexplicable ability to profess it as a “private matter” even when it has become all-consuming.
When Spitzer first commented on The New York Times’ report, he called the issue “a private matter.” In The New Yorker, Villaraigosa called his affairs - yes, plural - and their fallout, “matters of the heart” and not for public discourse. According to the Associated Press, Vitter’s statement included, “Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there - with God and them.”
They’re right; these are issues for their families. The families - spouses and children - should deal with them as best they see fit; it’s up to them whether that’s divorce, counseling or paying homage to Lorena Bobbit. You’d think, though, they’d have shown respect for their family or had the conversation with God before patronizing a prostitute, soliciting sex in a public restroom or using that cigar for unintended purposes. Regardless of their stupidity, as elected officials these are also public matters.
When a sitting U.S. senator or a city’s mayor are arrested, charged with misdemeanors or felonies, and do the perp walk, complete with mug shot, it’s a public issue. When a sitting president or governor has to take time to give a taped deposition or hold a press conference to address the reports and confirm the facts; clearly, the actual issues affecting the public are not being handled; their - our - problems are not being solved. Furthermore, the time spent investigating the role of an assigned security detail or the money spent by an independent prosecutor, are all done on the taxpayers’ dime. That’s most definitely a public issue.
It’s not as though personal time was taken to handle an unpreventable personal problem. No one’s spouse had cancer, no one had to bury a loved one, and no one had to take care of a child’s emergency. These were unnecessary, foreseeable matters; by their very nature, addressing them could be anticipated. Battling for their own livelihood is not why we elected them; battling for our livelihoods is why we elected them.
Public officials are not only just that, public officials, but they are elected and “solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States” and the laws governing their state or country. There’s an implicit expectation that the people we choose to create our laws and policies abide by them, too.
If politicians disagree with existing laws or policies, they should, in their capacity as policymakers, work to change those laws and policies. Whether this means legalizing prostitution or not being a hypocrite and actually voting for sex education, gay rights legislation or family planning funding; it is up to those officials to act within the boundaries of the law. Lying about their actions, fiercely prosecuting prostitution rings or actively fighting against child exploitation and sexual abuse in an effort to hide their own behavior or cleanse their guilty conscience is an abuse of the power given to them by the public. It’s an abuse of the trust we placed in them and a violation of the character we expected them to show as standard-bearers of our society.
The only private parts to these matters are those on their body that got them in trouble in the first place.
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