Replies

I think it was Henry Kissenger who said that power is an aphrodesiac. The names of powerful men in history who have been rapacious with women is legion.
But since our aspiration is a government of laws, not men, it is no accident that rapacious men have not been elected President of the United States. Our model is not a Saddam or even a King David, but George Washington. While it is true that General Washington held slaves, there is no record of any accusation of personal abuse of them lodged against him; to the contrary President Washington is lauded for not desiring power, twice retiring in honor from it--in contrast to, for example, Fidel Castro.
The difference in perspective between Democrats and Republicans is such that Ann Coulter can entitle a polemic Treason with an entirely straight face, and essentially that is because liberals trust a Democrat-run government. Surely Republicans trust a Republican-run government? Not in the same way.
Liberals have too much hope in the power of the government to do good, and too little confidence it the individual decisions of the people, to be seriously concerned over a little license on the part of a political leader who presents himself as what is by liberal standards a doer-of-good. That confidence in government maps to a confidence in the establishment which is journalism, which liberals actually trust as the center of government.
Liberals consistenly manifest a cavalier attitude toward (essentially uniformly Democrat) vote fraud. The record of the journalistic manipulations in the Nixon and Clinton impeachments and in covering for vote fraud in the 1960 Kennedy victory and making Florida 2000 as close and judicially contested as it was is perfectly clear to liberals. Liberals heard, without any hint of exception from the journalism establishment, Mr. Daily's comment in the middle of Election Night that the Democrats actually had won Florida. A son of a noted machine politician declaimed something which he had no credentials to know, and which would have created an uproar if said by a Republican operative in remotely similar circumstance--and liberals approved. Liberals know and approve of the fact that journalism will go all out to install Democratic presidents and defeat Republican ones. Ultimately liberals consider the PR power of the journalism establishment, and not individual voter decisions reflected in election results, to be the center of political legitimacy.
And that is the heart of what Ann Coulter calls "treason."
Conservatives, OTOH, respect the danger in the power of government too much, and place too much confidence in the individual decisions of the people, to consider it either wise or necessary to trust that governmental office will always be used wisely and temperately.
Furthermore liberals are as a group distinctly less respectful of religious traditions than are conservatives--are in fact noticeably enthusiastic about criticizing prominent Christians. The net result is that liberals aren't seriously concerned with the character of their politicians--and that conservatives are far more so.
One would therefore logically expect that charismatic and notably libertine leaders could arise among Democrats far more easily than among Republicans, and that is IMHO the case. To give the Democrats a head start, consider presidents since FDR, and ask if their names are associated with any, or multiple, women to whom they were not legally married.

Democrats

Truman - none
Kennedy - multiple
Johnson - multiple
Carter - none
Clinton - multiple

Republicans

Eisenhower - one (prepresidential)
Nixon - none
Ford - none
Reagan - none
Bush 41 - one, prepresidential
Bush 43 - none
So in the last half-century there have been 5 Democratic presidents, three associated with multiple marital infidelities in the White House. There have been 6 Republicans over that span, and none are associated with any marital infidelities in the White House.

Now consider the Governor-elect of California:

a) not nominated in a Republican primary
b) lost a significant margin of conservative votes to conservative with no libertine credentials that I ever heard of.
c) attracted significant Democratic support.
d) nearly all of the charges seem to predate his marriage.
e) all charges predate his political career (short and recent as it is).

Yeah, I guess the two parties are equivalent. </sarcasm>

John Edwards . . . argues that most voters do not place candidates on a neat left-right continuum. But they are really good at sensing who shares their values. They are really good at knowing who respects them and who doesn't. Edwards's theory is that the Democrats' besetting sin over the past few decades has been snobbery.

The concensus of journalism--what defines journalism's outlook--is driven by commercial (but remarkably little by any particular advertiser) considerations. That commercial interest of journalism as a whole produces a cult of celebrity in which all who attain notoriety are welcome to participate.
Those who do not participate--go along to get along--pay a heavy price. The price of admission is to never see anything which is outside of journalism's superficial, negative outlook. That is, you cannot have a celebrity good guy image projected by journalism without being a liberal. And since the individual journalist is simply a celebrity, that restriction emphatically applies to the individual journalist. Whoso would break out of that concensus does not become a more conservative journalist, nor even a former journalist--they become an unperson who never was a journalist.
The liberal politician, that is, is a celebrity good guy by vitue of being useful to journalism in precisely the same way that any individual journalist is useful to journalism--by edifying the impression of the public that journalism is the ~~gospel~~ objective truth.
Even granting the truth of journalistic reports, journalism can be no more than a portion of the truth. The entertainment value of a report lies not in its historical significance but, far more typically, in its atypicality ("Man Bites Dog") or putative cause for concern ("Is Your Drinking Water Safe?"). Journalism is anticonservative precisely because its filter passes to the public only entertaining reports. The everyday blessings of God are great--and conservative--truths. But they don't make "good copy" and are simply not information of interest to journalists.
All of which is the long way of saying that although liberals are not paragons of wisdom they have the system for appearing wise down pat. Liberals are "elitists" only in the sense that they project that appearance; in fact they are sophists ("wise" in their own conceit) rather than philosophers ("lovers of wisdom"). They are indeed therefore better characterized not as "noble" but as "lacking nobilty."
In the context of a school largely for the education of the sons of noblemen, those lacking title of nobility were designated as such. As the French word for "without" is "sans", the customary abbreviation for such youth--notorious for putting on airs to compensate for being considered out of place--was "s. nob".
It is the nature of a liberal to be a snob.
The record of the journalistic manipulations in the Nixon and Clinton impeachments--and in covering for vote fraud in the 1960 Kennedy victory and making Florida 2000 as close and judicially contested as it was--is perfectly clear to liberals. Think of it! Liberals heard, without any hint of exception from the journalism establishment, the son of a noted machine politician declaiming in the middle of Election Night that the Democrats actually had won Florida. Mr. Daily's declaration as fact of something which, as a matter of law, he had neither ability nor legal right to know would have created an uproar if said by a Republican operative in remotely similar circumstance--and liberals approved.
Liberals consistenly manifest a cavalier attitude toward (essentially uniformly Democrat) vote fraud. Liberals know and approve of the fact that journalism will go all out to install Democratic presidents and defeat Republican ones. Ultimately liberals consider the PR power of the journalism establishment, and not individual voter decisions reflected in election results, to be the center of political legitimacy.
Although liberal contempt for ballot integrity is directed at Republicans in the first instance, contempt for ballot integrity is contempt for the vote itself--as much exploitation of the Democratic voter as cheating of the Republican. It is contempt for the voter.
Rescuing the Democrats
New York Times | 10/21/03 | DAVID BROOKS