Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 2, 1992 TAG: 9202020247
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SALLY QUINN
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
CLINTON'S CONTROVERSY
Once again, charges of sexual philandering are dogging a presidential candidate. And once again, we find it necessary to confront basic feelings about fidelity, honesty, character, judgment and leadership.We are faced with making judgments that leave us uneasy, glancing nervously into the mirror for proof of our own sense of right and wrong.
What's OK and what's not OK? Will the '92 presidential race become known as the Tabloid Campaign?
In the case of Bill Clinton, the candidate knew he had a problem from the start in regard to sexual allegations - a problem now thrust into the spotlight by statements from Gennifer Flowers that she and Clinton had a 12-year affair that began soon after his marriage to his wife, Hillary.
There is nothing new, of course, about sex-and-politics scandals.
During the 1988 campaign, there were rumors about George Bush, never substantiated, that have dogged Bush for years.
The reality is that Franklin Roosevelt did it. Ike did it. Jack Kennedy did it. Lyndon Johnson did it. Did it make any difference in their presidencies?
In deciding what we think of these various presidents' indiscretions, is there a difference between one affair with the love of your life and a compulsion to knock off the entire Swedish bikini team? Was there a difference between Lucy Rutherford and Judith Campbell Exner?
More to the point, should the issue of marital fidelity be part of the national debate along with health care and relations with an independent Bosnia? Should all candidates be subject to the same scrutiny that Clinton has been subjected to?
People I've talked to about this don't know what they think.
People are confused because they haven't separated the difference between what they think and what they feel. Intellectually, what someone might have done in the past has no bearing on what kind of president he'd make. Viscerally, however, it makes people uncomfortable. Is it possible, they ask themselves, that a candidate could get himself involved with the sort of woman who would tape conversations and sell the story?
That kind of thing makes people uneasy.
What forced Gary Hart out of the race was not adultery, but dishonesty, hypocrisy and appalling judgment. Yet it is a fact that this is a country with a residual puritan ethic.
In our hearts, we know adultery is not right. It doesn't make us feel good about the person doing it. And we believe the person doing it doesn't feel good about himself.
In all the agonizing we did about Hart and the press, our declarations that adultery was not the issue were not entirely true. It just didn't seem modern somehow or sophisticated or open-minded to say that adultery made us squirm.
Americans do think there are certain standards of behavior, character and morality that a president must maintain - and women, in general, seem to care more about the issue of presidential character than men.
That doesn't give people the right to know every detail about a person's private life, but a general idea helps.
We need to know a lot about the psychological and physical makeup of the person who has the power to send our sons and daughters to war. Gary Hart was an announced candidate for the presidency. We expected better.
We expected better of Jack Kennedy, and that is why the revelations about him disturb many Americans.
"I think presidents are people," Bill Clinton said in a recent interview, "and I think there are lots of different flaws and shortcomings people have."
Kennedy, Clinton said, "obviously was a man who thought he was ill, was in a hurry in life, grew up in a different time, was raised in a home where the rules were apparently different than most of us believe they should be now and where the role of women in society was different than it is now."
Said Hillary Clinton: "The fact that there was never a hint of any misconduct about somebody else, like Richard Nixon, does that make him a better president? Who knows? These questions are simplistic in their intent that one area of a person's life - their sexual conduct - is their defining characteristic. And it may be for some people and it may not be for others."
All this is very titillating and produces good ratings on "Nightline." But the sad thing is that this campaign is about serious issues. America is in a recession. People are homeless and jobless and hungry, worried about crime, health care and AIDS.
Bill Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, cannot be happy that his own campaign risks becoming a sideshow.
What no one knows, of course, is whether any of this matters to voters - in New Hampshire and elsewhere.
Sally Quinn is a Washington writer; her new novel is "Happy Endings." This article was written for The Washington Post.
Keywords:
POLITICS