This comment was from Copyleft on Tom Matlack’s post “Is There a Moral to John Edwards?“
Throughout the whole manufactured Clinton “scandal” (originally about a failed land deal, morphed into a consensual affair) I kept hoping Bill would go on camera and say “Heck yeah! I banged her like a screen door, and we both loved it! Sure, Hilary’s upset with me… but frankly, that’s none of your business. G’night, I got a country to run.”
This whole notion of “powerful men caught in sexual misconduct” seems (to me, at least) to overlook an important point. The hand-wringing “Why do they do such stupid things?” questions contain an assumption… that using your power to get access to sex is somehow a stupid thing. Try talking to the guys who have affairs instead of making assumptions about them; you might find that their actions are not “aberrant” or “stupid,” but actually make perfect sense if you don’t buy into the same value system as our puritanical society pushes.
Dilbert: “Do you think you might be abusing your power?”
Wally: “And what would be the other reasons to have power?”
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photo: Farther Along / flickr
By all accounts, Hitler was very faithful to Maria Braun. I’m not sure that fidelity is a good measure of a good president.
Sure, if you think it’s absolutely okay to cheat on someone you’re supposed to be faithful to. If you can’t even be faithful to your wife, why should we as a country expect anything more from you?
Is this even a serious viewpoint?
If I was going to have heart surgery, I would REALLY care about how many operations my surgeon has performed, his success rate during those surgeries, and potentially where he went to school.
I would not care if he cheated on his wife. Nor would I ask him about it.
Why would I want more from my President than I want from my heart surgeon?