Sex, Lies & Trousergate: Why Powerful Men Cheat (part 6 of 6 essays)
Politicians are the last people in America outside the military who are expected to live by 1950s marital rules: faithful husband; loyal, submissive, gamely smiling wife. It doesn’t seem to matter how often reality intrudes on the fantasy—remember Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich (twice!), David Vitter, Larry Craig, Rudy Giuliani (as well as FDR, Eisenhower, JFK . . . )? The faithful-husband myth is of a piece with all the other political family values myths that leave us shocked-shocked-shocked every time they explode in our faces. (Like the idea that immensely wealthy and powerful politicians are basically just folks. Or the one about how potential first ladies not only bake but also possess a treasured cookie recipe not to be found in any cookbook.)
Yes, I was as appalled as anyone by the John Edwards bombshell. His infidelity was hurtful to his wife, who is in the advanced stages of breast cancer. It also involved his staff and perhaps others in all sorts of deception and may have produced a “love child” who, along with her mother, will be a permanent fact in his children’s lives. And as an Edwards supporter, I’m enraged that he would risk his presidential campaign for sex.
Still, there’s something equally reckless about a system that sidelines important voices for failings that have nothing to do with public life. John Edwards may have been a jerk, but as long as he didn’t misuse campaign funds to support his mistress, he’s not a criminal—and he did have the best campaign proposal for universal health care.
Oddly, it’s a fresh “scandal” from the other side of the aisle that may actually—finally!—start dragging our expectations about political family life into the twenty-first century. It is quite astonishing to hear longtime ferocious enemies of working mothers—Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, for example, who’s spent her entire life trying to keep women in the kitchen—praise Sarah Palin, vice presidential hopeful, governor of Alaska and mother of five, as a feminine role model.
