Posted on 03/25/2016 8:13:32 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
You may not be interested in the alleged affairs of the presidential candidates, but the affairs of the candidates are very interested in you. Our media flask is now overflowing with smutty stories primed by the forthcoming issue of the National Enquirer, which alleges on its cover that Ted Cruz has had “5 Secret Mistresses.” Only by depositing yourself in a news quarantine this weekend will you escape the story’s heavy breathing.
Cruz denounces the piece, which I’ve not yet obtained, as “utter lies,” and claims it was planted by Donald Trump. (Trump denies it.) But either way, it restarts the journalistic debate over whether the press has any business reporting on the sex lives of politicians. At one time in Washington, politicians—even the president—could have lovers on the side and get away with it as long as they were circumspect about it (Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, and so on back to the founding). But that arrangement changed in 1979, when the Washington Monthly published Suzannah Lessard’s killed New Republic piece about Ted Kennedy’s dalliances. Since then, a dozen major politicians, including Rep. Robert Bauman in 1980; Rep. Dan Crane in 1983; Sen. Gary Hart in 1987; President Bill Clinton in 1998; and Sen. John Edwards in 2008 have been accused in the press for having participated in bedroom rodeo with someone other than their spouse.
Story Continued Below
More of a meta piece than an exposé, the Lessard article presented for public consumption what was widely known within official Washington but was only whispered about elsewhere: Ted Kennedy, who was running for president against Jimmy Carter, was sleeping around. A lot. Titled “Kennedy’s Woman Problem; Women’s Kennedy Problem,” the piece named no names and made no attempt to document his sexual adventures. It merely presented them as a given to argue that Kennedy’s philandering and treatment of women deserved public discussion “as a legitimate issue in the campaign.”
Lessard raised many of the issues we still bat around every time a politician is accused of—or gets caught—having sex outside of marriage. (It should be noted that Kennedy separated from his first wife in 1978, and they divorced in 1982.) In her view, a candidate who campaigns or governs as a family man—especially one who also makes a big deal about being religious—is guilty of credibility-destroying hypocrisy if he or she also has extramarital affairs. Another criticism of office-holding philanderers, especially presidents or officials holding high security clearances, is that they injure the nation by making themselves vulnerable to blackmail by foreign powers or other unscrupulous operators.
Blackmail aside, why do a politician’s dalliances matter? Why do we care? Why do we hunger to read about them even if we don’t care about hypocrisy or the national security implications? It would take an anthropologist to explain that, but who is shtupping whom is of high interest in almost every culture, and has been so ever since we left the trees for the veldt. Even the sex lives of the low-status fascinate us. Whether valid or not, an individual’s sex life has come to stand as a marker of trustworthiness. Once the subject is breached, it takes superhuman powers by the press to avoid talking about it.
Candidates seek extramarital sex for the same reasons civilians do—for adventure, to express status within the group, for love, to obey the command of the selfish gene to throw itself into the next generation. The difference, of course, is that politicians play to a crowd that’s a million times the size of an ordinary civilian, and for that reason the collective judgment is much greater. So is the collective obsession. That’s why we’re all happily gossiping about Ted Cruz’s sex life today: It’s not that he’s sexy (perish the thought), it’s that he’s high profile and high status.
If, as Andrew Marr writes, “Journalism is the industrialization of gossip,” it’s remarkable how little sex-tattling gets published. It was not always so. Sexual gossip can be found in America’s first newspaper, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign And Domestick (1690), which makes mention of the French king’s affair with a prince’s wife. (The publication was shut down after one issue.)
How much damage will the National Enquirer allegations do to the Cruz campaign? According to Gawker, which has read the story, none of the alleged paramours are named, and their photos reproduced in the piece are pixilated, presumably to deter speedy identification. How can we convict on such sketchy evidence, even if that sketchy evidence appears to be more substantial than Lessard’s case against Kennedy? On the other hand, the publication has a pretty good track record catching cheating notables (Hart, Edwards, Tiger Woods, Jesse Jackson). Maybe it has temporarily vagued-out the specifics of Cruz’s alleged affairs because it plans to drip-drip-drip the details into the public over the course of several issues to sell more copies.
If true, the story will be damaging. But even if false, which is entirely possible, the charges will be almost as damaging to Cruz, because he can’t afford to spend scarce time and political capital on the controversy to refute and erase the stain. He’s too busy fighting Trump for the nomination!
Here’s what haunts me most about this story. Today, the cable channels and the Web are filled with high-speed speculation about a story that many of us (including me) have not yet read. What if Cruz is innocent? To borrow a phrase uttered by an exonerated Reagan administration official, where will Cruz go to get his good name back?
This has been smoldering in the background for quite a while and it doesn’t look like Trump had much, or anything, to do with it. You can bet that IF Cruz ever became the nominee this would have been used against him. So be glad it coming out now. He can deal with it now. The alternative would have been to deal with during the general campaign.
It’s like this... as a Trump voter, I can guarantee you that if this was about Trump and it was recent like this appears to be with Cruz, then I wouldn’t be supporting Trump. A person who runs for president — or any political office like senator or rep — is asking his/her voters to trust in him.
If all this about cruz is true, that he’s been doing all this with 8 or more women all this time, then it’s more than just a simple “affair.” It’s a sickness. And very blackmailable, i might add.
Not.at.all.
And I support Trump over Cruz. I would still vote for Cruz over after Trump over any of the other fecal establishment slime.
Eh, I frankly haven’t seen anything all that convincing yet. Just a bunch of gutter-trash silliness.
But if it’s true? Well, I guess I’ll have to conclude Cruz is some kind of moral degenerate. But where does that put me? Trump has demonstrated he’s more than a bit of a moral degenerate as well, whose personality often elicits an additional dosage of revulsion in me.
Oh, well. I’ll just sit back and continue to derive some kind of warped humor out of watching the pathetic, ugly remnants of this once-great country succumb in its death-spiral. At least, until the ferals reach my doorstep and put a bullet in my head.
I don't care if the charges are true or not. The thing is that cruz held himself up to be a paragon of virtue. Trump has never held that attitude about himself. That right there is what insulates Trump from these types of attacks. He's been pretty open and honest about his past. And he's been pretty open and honest that it's in the past. Not Cruz.
Thank you. If you don’t mind i want to read it again!
If they get Ryan/Romney/Kasick in, we get amnesty.
If they all lose to hillary, or any dem, we get amnesty.
Seems to me, the ONLY ONE standing up against this monster, is TRUMP.
That is ALL I’m focused on currently. Forget the chicks, it’s his problem to work out, not mine. >>
What is odd to me is if the allegations are true dont’ you think if you were going to run for President especially being a Republican that this stuff would come out and possibly do damage to your campaign?
Every election cycle you have good ole Larry Flint willing to pay money to get the goods on republicans. I guess the politicians really are out of touch.
You seem to know your Bible. Can you tell me if God was wrong to allow David to continue to serve as King after the Bathsheba incident?
Do you support Trump?
tough statement, but beautifully and succinctly put. Reminds me that I have been too involved in the world recently with all this politics and have not made my usual time for God. Thank you for reminding me what is important.
Sadly, Trump is for amnesty as well—”touchback” amnesty, which was the form of it that the GOPe tried to trick its base into supporting about a decade ago.
Sadly, Trump is for amnesty as well—”touchback” amnesty, which was the form of it that the GOPe tried to trick its base into supporting about a decade ago.
Well, there's this: When they were in Congress, John Kasich, Gary Condit and Joe Scarborough purportedly chased women together.
Condit was banging Chandra Levy when she was murdered...and he got hung up in the investigation. Kasich and Scarborough abruptly resigned from Congress. Then, a young lady staffer was found mysteriously dead in one of Scarborough's local Florida offices.
Nothing was ever pinned on Kasich, but his running buddies were dodging a lot of flak.
Obviously you missed my tag line. ;-)
True that we shouldn’t care because in the long run, it’s not what matters however, Cruz is using his family life and Christian standing to win elections.
Now I never liked that to begin with but if these allegations are true, Cruz has been winning with lies, even more egregious lies.
I did not write your quote, bu the answer is easy.
It is obviously a human failure that he thought he was smarter than the rest of us.
The same reason people steal, embezzle and murder.
Gary Hart, Clinton, JFK LBJ.....an old and often told story.
Watch out for those smooth talking guys. Politicians and preachers have something in common—their gift for persuasion, that can get them a lot of perks.
A..........Lot
I wish Trump weren’t for amnesty too, but he is—for “touchback” amnesty.
I’m for Trump at this point over Cruz, however, because I think a solid first ballot victory is the only thing that will keep the GOPe from stealing the nomination at the convention.
All Cruz could do right now is throw it to the GOPe by thwarting Trump.
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