The Sunday Essay: Political Adultery
The Scotsman - United Kingdom; Nov 18, 2001
BY NIGEL HAMILTON
WHEN rumours of a long-term adulterous affair surfaced in 1992, Governor Bill Clinton's chances of being nominated by the Democratic Party for the US presidency looked bleak. After all, Senator Gary Hart had been forced into withdrawal in the 1988 campaign by press revelations of his promiscuity; the same appeared to be Bill Clinton's fate.
Clinton, however, decided to stand his ground. With his wife Hillary by his side, he admitted to an affair with Gennifer Flowers in the distant past. His wife knew all about the matter, thought it inconsequential in modern day society, and in any case thought it nobody's business but theirs.
Not only did Clinton win the party nomination, but he won the United States presidency, too, by a wide margin. It seemed as if, finally, politics had triumphed over media trashing.
Such hopes proved short-lived. First, Paula Jones raised accusations of a more recent peccadillo - and then, in 1997, well into Clinton's second term of office, rumours surfaced of a current affair in the White House, this time with a young intern.
Spreading like wildfire, the entire business of politics in the United States ground to a halt as the nation went to war with itself over sex, privacy, and the possible abuse of presidential power.
Instead of leaving the matter to the First Lady to handle, the press, public, special counsel and then Congress took it upon themselves to judge the president, who had relived a moment of adolescent infatuation. To his shame and chagrin Clinton was forced to give the most intimate details of his relationship - and was impeached for not providing more.
He survived, just, but it was a "near-run thing". He became a lame-duck president. The office of president was demeaned, and Clinton's great contribution to American prosperity in the 1990s, to multi-cultural pride, and to international peacemaking, was obliterated.
And now, only a few years later, Scotland is going through what has been dubbed 'Trousergate', as the Labour Party's foremost candidate for First Minister is coerced by the media into a pre-emptive confession of adultery, Bill-and-Hillary style - and the rumour-mongers busy themselves looking for other skeletons in the closet.
Such witchhunting is sad to watch, given the tender infancy of the Scottish parliament as it prepares to elect only its third First Minister. Getting leaders of any calibre to come forward - Jack McConnell is a former teacher and general secretary of his party - to help to advance the political process in Scotland is essential for the healthy development and maintenance of democracy.
If politics is permitted to become a sexual bear-baiting sport, we will all suffer.
Politicians, male and female, often have strong libidos, and the history of political leadership is full of the amorous exploits of prominent figures, from Anthony and Cleopatra to Catherine the Great and Charles II. With the rise of "respectability", however, and the extension of the electorate in the 19th century, private life became increasingly conflated with public morality. Parnell was ruined by the revelation of his affair with Kitty O'Shea, and Oscar Wilde was sent to prison for his homosexuality.
For the most part, however, thanks to stiff libel laws and an "old-boy" agreement between politicians and journalists ("no access unless you protect my privacy"), most politicians were able to lead normal private lives (ie, with the same amount of sexual licence as anyone else). Some were even permitted extra licence; President Kennedy, for example, was permitted to indulge in repeated sex with two interns ("Fiddle" and "Faddle"), repeated sex with his wife's staff by the White House swimming pool, even, on occasion to invite his mistress, Mary Pinchot, to dinner together with Jackie in the West Wing.
Lyndon Johnson, likewise, bedded interns, staffers and students with impunity - his wife Ladybird admonishing anyone who raised an eyebrow. The press, in such cases, was fully aware of such behaviour. Indeed, journalists themselves sometimes partook of such offerings. But in their newspapers they turned a blind eye.
What changed all this? Cultural historians are still examining the reasons for the tremendous increase in "outings" and revelations by the paparazzi in the 1970s and thereafter, but clearly the change had little to do with the "better" behaviour of politicians. Rather, as sexual attitudes became liberalised in the aftermath of the 1960s, a vast market opened up, with readers curious to know more about the private lives of film stars, television stars, pop stars and other celebrities.
Before long, no detail was too sordid or salacious to be kept from the public. Newspapers which had once prided themselves on publishing "all the news that's fit to print" now prided themselves on publishing all the news that had traditionally not been fit to print.
Free-market competition, in the 1980s, made this trend a matter of press survival - and we, the public, lapped it up. Nor was the news all bad, though it was often hurtful for the celebrities - fatally so in the case of Diana, Princess of Wales. The fact is, we learned a lot about other people through such intimate information - and about ourselves.
Dr Johnson, in promoting the cause of the new "warts and all" approach to biography in the 1750s, had foreseen this, pointing out the benefits we would derive from knowing about the real lives of our heroes - thus recognising they are no more perfect than our own, indeed provide essential lessons in the storms, pitfalls, trials, errors and disasters that punctuate our own journeys through life in a free society.
Sadly, however, our attitude towards politicians adopted a different focus from that which we applied to other celebrities. Instead of learning to love our political representatives as we do our stars of film, television, radio and theatre, we allowed ourselves to pose as judges of their newly revealed sexual morality - or amorality - when selecting or reselecting candidates in the 1980s. This was disastrous.
In our rational minds we know politicians are no different from other leaders in our society - whether bank managers, entrepreneurs, teachers, even religious ministers; but only politicians were forced, on pain of dismissal, to pretend to live Christ-like private lives to appease the very press who delighted in retailing every detail of the private lives of popular celebrities in every walk of life other than politics.
The media thus began to amass extraordinary new power, not as the Fourth Estate fulfilling its traditional and crucial role as the guardian of financial propriety and responsible representation, but as a Fifth, almost religious Estate, imposing impossible standards of morality for politicians in comparison with the rest of society, on pain of resignation.
The ruination of Gary Hart and the impeachment of Clinton ten years later, brought this unfortunate process to a head. After Clinton's survival (his approval rating among the public never dipped below 60%), as in some classic play it was found his detractors and condemners were the worst hypocrites - having indulged in similar or even more adventurous liaisons themselves. Like a balloon that has been pricked, the great bubble of sexual righteousness burst - and today, President Bush's private life is once again his own, his exotic youthful peccadilloes ignored by a somewhat shamed press.
Let us hope, then, for the good of Scottish politics, that we can learn the lessons of the quasi-lynching of Clinton. Alan Derschowitz, the famous American lawyer, considered the trial of the President to be "sexual McCarthyism" - and he was right.
Either we should permit politicians to maintain the privacy of their private lives, or, more realistically, if we wish to see and read about them as celebrities, then let us exercise the same standards as we do for film and television stars.
Whether our favourite actors have or haven't committed adultery is fascinating to contemplate, given our curiosity about human sexuality in others as in ourselves, but we know it has nothing to do with their ability to perform as artists. So it should and must be in politics.
Politicians, male or female, are not superhuman: they are people just like ourselves, subject to the same temptations and peccadilloes that grace our own lives - but they are attempting to get a job done that all too few of us are willing to undertake, and which is crucial to the continued success of western society, especially when under economic, terrorist or other threat.
Imposing Victorian expectations of "respectability" not only makes us look foolish, in a sophisticated third millennium, it actually endangers - by encouraging mediocrity, pretence and hypocrisy among candidates - the survival of modern democracy: a sort of Scottish Taliban in the making.
Adultery in modern secular society, let us be clear, is a private matter, to be negotiated between the several parties involved. It has no intrinsic relevance to politics, or to any other profession, but provides wonderful gossip, insight and even food for self-examination among those of us who read about it.
We are simply voyeurs, though, and should gratefully recognise ourselves as such. We cannot pose as judges of other people's morality and should beware lest others judge our own private lives in return.
Jack and Bridget McConnell should be permitted to confront their own marital relationship. They are to be congratulated for still trying, while all too many couples abandon the ring. For us to try McConnell in a tabloid "people's court", in advance of his holding office, is to ignore the painful but important lessons of the 1990s.
Scotland, I fear, will be the poorer if it pays no heed to the Clinton story.
Nigel Hamilton is visiting fellow, McCormack Institute, UMass Boston, Massachusetts, where he is writing a life of President Clinton.His most recent book is The Full Monty: Mongomery of Alamein 1887-1942
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