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.
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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?
Moderates like Kasich and actually no, he has done an ok job in Ohio, but definitely is a RHINO.
But I guess I’m still hung up on ‘character’ as a guiding light. Those 1992-2000 memories of Clinton’s reign and all the slime and sleaze are still as vivid in my mind as though they were yesterday. Used to make me almost viscerally sick. Especially the way the people would make arguments and justifications to shrug it all off.
Yesterday, Trump re-tweeting those juxtaposed ‘wife’ photos, which seemed to be conveying “hey Ted! look at my super-sexy, super-hot wife, compared to that old frump of a woman you have”... there’s just something rather ‘off’ about doing such a thing. Especially from a grown man. It really, really made me turn a corner, and wonder if something is actually wrong in Trump’s head. Who the hell DOES something like that?
Yes he is. Bill is running for First Lady.
More recently, the “gang of eight bill”. Sadly, Trump’s policy is “touchback” he just hoodwinked people by pretending to be a tough guy. “They’re going back but the good ones can come back in.”
The perfect is the enemy of the good. I believe that is Trumps approach to life. We need to stop people coming over the border and we have to deport as many as we can depending on the circumstances.
Everything in Trump’s life is a trophy. As winning the nomination would be.
The irony. Ted is Cruzified on Good Friday.
ProstituTED
Who the hell DOES something like that?
I agree! This election season is really out of hand.
You might want to google an interview Trump did last year where he said that after deporting the illegals, he will bring back the good ones and expedite the process for them. I believe it was a CNN interview.
You really are disgusting and a moral hypocrite.
You want to talk about Cruz; keep sucking up for the two-time wife dumper and serial adulterer. TRUMP IS ALL YOURS.
Your name is very fitting.... Trump is no Democrat
Change your allegiance to another guy who cheated on his wife?
Gata’ go somewhere. Only other option is to not vote at all and give Hitlary her moment in the sun.
Call me old fashioned but I believe if you want hold high office and the public trust that goes with it you need to hold yourself to a higher standard. At least while you are running for and in office.
That's what the CruzBots seem to not want to deal with. EVERY SINGLE backer of amnesty is with Cruz. NONE with Trump.
Frankie Fane: ...The Oscar.
Do you think Trump is screwing everything in sight today?
I don’t. He has a great relationship with Melania and they are doing a bang up job raising another fantastic citizen.
I don’t defend everything Trump has done in his life. I can’t defend everything I’ve done in my own life.
I do think he values this nation, wants to do what’s right by it, and I plan on supporting him.
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