Confronted on television with his alleged history of adultery, the candidate denied the affair, but acknowledged "causing pain in my marriage."
With no more than that, we Americans decided the matter was one between the candidate and his wife — and we elected Bill Clinton the 42nd president of the United States.
That was 1992. Here we go again.
Two decades later, it seems that our obsession over the private lives of our public officials has been renewed.
I had thought that, post-Clinton, we had learned our lesson, but former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's admission that he fathered a child as the product of an affair with a woman who was not his wife has become a singular focus.
The Schwarzenegger news is tragic, certainly for the heartbreak its apparently causing his now-estranged wife and their children.
And Schwarzenegger's years as a Hollywood movie star before entering the governor's mansion almost certainly meant that this new marital scandal would become gossip fodder.
Let's be clear, however. That's all this news is: tabloid trash.
The birth of Schwarzenegger's "love child" took place years before he became California's 38th governor, the separation of he and his wife as a result of the affair occurred after his term had ended, and no one has suggested that the old affair or the child affected Schwarzenegger's performance as chief executive.
Further, long before this news broke, Schwarzenegger had declared that with the end of his governorship, he would seek no other elected office.
All of this means that the news of his infidelity should never have taken on a political dimension, if even it should really have been made public at all.
The fact that it's done so sends precisely the wrong message.
Public officials ought to be allowed to have a private life, provided that the conduct of that private life doesn't inhibit an official's public job.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Baronius
First of all, Scott, America didn't decide that personal lives don't matter. A plurality of Americans decided that Clinton was the better choice than Bush, on balance. Secondly, private lives of politicians have been in the news a lot since 1992. Sanford and Edwards have been the biggies, but there have been plenty of others. Thirdly, I don't think that the Schwarzenegger scandal is related to politics: he and his wife are world-famous.
For me, character, experience, and policy all matter in a candidate. There are several candidates with whom I agree on policy but couldn't support due to their poor character and/or lack of experience. I also think the public/private divide is fictitious. Clinton and Gingrich have character problems, not private character problems.
2 - Glenn Contrarian
Scott -
The president of the United States and his family lives in a publicly owned home, yet we have no expectation - nor should we - that we would be privy to the intricacies of Barack and Michelle Obama's marriage, or details involving their daughters.
I disagree strongly with that statement! Given the rabid hatred the Right has for President Obama, if there were any kind of infidelity or impropriety by Obama, do you really think the Right would stand respectfully off to one side? No, they would not! You'd see a political circus that would make the Lewinsky matter pale in comparison.
The days of Camelot, when anyone who knew what the president was doing wrong in his off time, are gone, and never to return.
3 - Baronius
Another thing, that article you linked to was tabloid trash. It pretended to be a discussion of the campaign, but the whole point of it was to shine a light on embarrassing stories from the candidates' home lives. As far as I know, everyone knows about Newt's marital history, and no one knows about Mitch's. Mitch's story doesn't say anything about the man's character. So why bring it up?
And the story was wrong about the focus on Clinton's marriage being a new thing in politics. I remember comments about Carter's and Reagan's marriages, and rumors about GHWB. The new thing was that a known philanderer made it through the guantlet, not that a gauntlet existed.
4 - Clavos
Presidential infidelity has never been an issue for a president who was otherwise popular; Kennedy was a philanderer and nobody on either side of the aisle cared.
5 - El Bicho
Aside from the odd abundance of single-sentence paragraphs, which give off an air of ADD, this article is bizarre.
On page 1 you dismiss the Arnold coverage as tabloid trash and then on page 2 the article becomes tabloid trash when it focuses on Republican-candidate wives (and, yes I know Daniels isn't official yet).
Are you trying to put one over on everyone or is the reader supposed to believe that you forgot the lesson of Clinton within the middle of your own article?
"the news of his infidelity should never have taken on a political dimension, if even it should really have been made public at all."
This makes it sound like you aren't even aware of the story you are covering. It's political because the affair occurred while Arnold was Governor. It's fair for the people of CA to wonder if anything improper happened with funds, et al, considering Arnold commuted the murder sentence of a political ally’s kid. Who knows what rules he might have bent/broken for the mother of his child?
As far as whether "it should really have been made public at all", the other woman was going to come out so Arnold's hand was forced.
6 - Robert
I agree with Baronius........character is the issue. A politician who deceives his wive certainly wouldn't have a problem lying to the "people".
7 - Meg
Honestly, I think that America's obsession with physical fidelity does a few things:
1) It conflates sexual compatibility with compatibility: are having the same sex acts-style-frequency preferences really that important when choosing who you will live with, make financial decisions with, have children with, and share life with?
2) On this note - it creates this obsession with sexually pleasing your partner. (OK, most often, it makes women become obsessed with pleasing their partners. I mean, that's what Cosmo and Glamor are about, no?) Because...if they aren't getting it from you, they might get it from someone else. Which means - you're a failure, as is your marriage. Which leads to
3) (Kinda sorta agree with Mackinnon on this one) Women engaging in sexual activity that isn't exactly geared towards their own pleasure, but towards pleasuring their partner. (And female narcissism, and insecurity, and obsession with being an object of physical attraction.)
4) And...enmity between women: so - either you have to be physically perfect in every way, or someone else might seduce your partner. And because physical infidelity equals failure of marriage, any other attractive and flirty women becomes a threat. Women who catch their husbands cheating are more likely to call the adultress a whore than their lying, cheating husband.
5) Leads to lying, victimizes women whose husbands cheat, leads to divorce. So - if a couple discusses and sets boundaries for extra-marital relationships...and certain things are ok and not ok, the husband's less likely to cheat and fall in love with his secretary, and infidelity no longer produces a cataclysmic existential relationship crisis.
Maybe if America had gotten over it's fairy-tale conflation of sexual, romantic, emotional, and familial love in marriage, Schwarzie wouldn't be alienated from his wife and kids right now.
8 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
Presidential infidelity has never been an issue for a president who was otherwise popular; Kennedy was a philanderer and nobody on either side of the aisle cared.
But times have changed since then. I suspect you'll find that a president's - or most politicians' - personal failings when it comes to sexual matters were essentially ignored before the Clinton era. IIRC, FDR and Jefferson both fooled around, and I'm pretty doggone sure that a few other presidents did too...but it was never made a national issue.
But our culture has changed - we desire, nay, demand news that is up-to-the-minute, and look down our noses at those who don't know what happened in the past week. I think Kenny Loggins' song Dirty Laundry perfectly caught the nature of the coming change in our culture.
9 - Cannonshop
I have a different take than most of the conservatives here... Infidelity? well, it may be a POSITIVE trait, or even a useful one. A famous general once said "a man who won't fuck, won't fight."
And there have been numerous examples of people we lionize now, whose peccadillos both before office, and in office, would be major scandals today (including one major scandal from just a few years ago, revolving around Thomas Jefferson, who actually went and BOUGHT himself a mistress.)
How seriously a man takes his wedding vows, versus how seriously he takes his job, might actually be a better metric for judging his character than merely whether or not he's faithful to his wife...or she to him. Politicians Lie, kind of like how mammals breathe, water runs down-hill, and gravity holds us to the earth.
besides, sex-scandals are far and away easier to use as a distraction, than military expeditions.
10 - Glenn Contrarian
Meg -
Maybe if America had gotten over it's fairy-tale conflation of sexual, romantic, emotional, and familial love in marriage, Schwarzie wouldn't be alienated from his wife and kids right now.
As a happily-married-with-children man (nineteen years and going strong), I very strongly disagree with you.
I do hold Ah-nold fully responsible. Why? Many (perhaps most) decent-acting-and-decent-looking married men will tell you (quietly, and if they trust you not to tell their wives) that after they got married, after a few years women begin dropping hints, or begin standing a little closer, or otherwise begin making themselves - ahem - obviously available. I don't know the percentages, but many men fail that test...but many men still pass, thank God! Those of us who make the right decision can't help but think back, on the one hand wistfully thinking what a wonderful roll in the hay that one girl would have been...but on the other hand thanking God that we were strong enough, that we loved our wives and our families enough, to resist the temptation presented. The stories I could tell....
So Ah-nold, for all his legendary physical strength, was not strong enough to say no. It's with no small amount of pride that I can say that (if only in this way) I'm a stronger man than Arnold Schwarzenegger!
That said, despite a man's or a woman's failings in their personal lives, such does NOT mean that he or she can't be a good or even a great politician. Thomas Jefferson comes to mind. The only difference is that our modern media culture and our daily, even hourly demand for 'dirty laundry' won't allow it.
11 - Baronius
If a guy wants to keep chasing skirts, physical perfection or a great time in the sack isn't going to stop him. It'll distract him for a bit, that's all. If he's looking to settle down, and he has more maturity than a 17-year-old, he knows what compatibility really means.
Anyway, this isn't about America's hangups; it's about the Schwarzeneggers'. A lot of couples have come to terms with extramarital relationships, or at least one spouse thinks they have, but choosing someone else even for a night is an implied rejection of the spouse. No terms can eliminate the pain of rejection.
12 - Jordan Richardson
Glenn #10, well said.
It sounds like Meg is doing a little conflation of her own. If nothing else, she's moving the goalposts: if you "allow" a husband or wife to fool around, it's not really cheating. I've heard lots of rationalization to this effect, how we're not monogamous after all, etc. But it always seems like wounded people trying to sell a bill of goods to justify the hurt they feel deep inside.
Like Baronius says, "No terms can eliminate the pain of rejection."
Faithfulness to one's spouse is not a fairy tale, a myth or an "American thang."
13 - Clavos
I do hold Ah-nold fully responsible.
Doubtless, he doesn't care whether you do or don't. Nor should he, it's none of your business, anymore than it was our business when Kennedy was humping Monroe or Lewinsky was swallowing Clinton -- except when it's on company time or our dime
Now, if they're spending tax revenues recklessly, THAT'S our business, but where they put their penises is not.
14 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
I agree - it truly is none of my business. But it is still his fault and no one else's for his failure to be strong enough to stay true to one's spouse. He failed the test.
That said, I do extend all sympathy not only to his "love child", but also to his child by Ms. Shriver that was born the same week. My wife has often told me how hurt she was to find that her dad's mistress was pregnant at the same time her mother was pregnant, and I suspect that his children within the marriage may feel the same way.
Was he a bad governor? I don't know - there's good and bad to be said about his tenure...and part of me still really likes the man. It's not because he's a famous actor - I used to really like Mel Gibson, but now I won't rent his movies at all, simply because of his racism. But Ah-nold is human, and while I hold him responsible for his failings, at the same time I understand that he's only human, and I understand the temptation he felt. You probably would too, if the one doing the tempting was not only something that stepped out of your puerile fantasies, but whose ex-lover was a Playboy model. I'm not kidding. What really gets me is that even though I'm not exactly a Greek icon of manliness, the attraction was certainly mutual.
I stayed true...but I was so incredibly tempted - it's hard to put it into words. Imagine, if you will, working beside your own personal sexual fantasy for a couple years, and then effectively turning her down when she made herself available to you. What's left is admitting anonymously on some blog the great trial that your marriage faced that you dare not admit to your wife...and she will never know the temptation you resisted to stay true to her.
That's why, while I do hold him responsible, at the same time I don't utterly condemn him. It ain't easy.
15 - OkayDokey
"there's good and bad to be said about his tenure"
um, the good was...?
16 - Lee
I don't think extramarital affairs are morally wrong. When you say someone has to be faithful to their spouse, it amounts to saying that their spouse owns their sexuality. I believe consensual sex between consenting adults, who ever they are, is a fundamental human right, just like freedom of speech or freedom of religion. It's one thing to say being faithful is a good idea, but it's quite another to say not doing so is actually wrong.
And as to the argument that affairs are wrong because they break a promise or agreement to be faithful between couples, I think an agreement that involves restricting fundamental rights is by its very nature nonbinding.
17 - Jordan Richardson
So deception isn't wrong because we have the "freedom" to lie to other human beings?
Interesting, Lee, but I think that's a load of shit.
18 - Clavos
So then, if I were married, had an affair and came home and told my wife about it, it would then not be a "deception," and therefore not wrong.
I like that.
19 - Lee
Jordan,
People lie and deceive each other all the time about any number of things. I don't think you can say lying and deception are automatically wrong--it depends on the context and subject matter.
20 - Clavos
Yeah, Jordan, haven't you heard of Situation Ethics?
21 - Jordan Richardson
Lee,
People lie and deceive each other all the time about any number of things.
Absolutely. And? People do a number of things. Human nature generally sucks donkey balls.
I don't think you can say lying and deception are automatically wrong--it depends on the context and subject matter.
Well, you can say it's "automatically wrong" to deceive another human being. You can suggest that you lied for their best interest or whatever. In the context of this discussion, though, I would argue that your spouse would find deception very wrong indeed. Of course, I don't know your spouse. He or she might get off on being lied to.
The point of my statement, something I thought was kind of clear, was that having the "freedom" to do something doesn't magically make it the right thing to do.
What you argued, Lee, was that "not being faithful" was not "fundamentally wrong." Why not? Because sex between two consenting adults, ANY two consenting adults, is a "freedom" we enjoy by the societal rules we invented? Hardly. Not being faithful is by nature fundamentally wrong because you're breaking the covenant you presumably made with your spouse when you got married. Did your spouse "consent" to your other relationship?
If you've got some other sort of arrangement, ie. an open relationship or whatever, you're clearly not "in the wrong." But then you wouldn't be "cheating," either.
22 - Jordan Richardson
There are a number of "fundamental human rights" that I have that aren't "right" in all situations, nor do they actually work out.
I have the right to luxuries, vices and personal pleasure, for instance, but I don't have the right to those pleasures if those pleasures are illegal. While the fundamental human rights presumably exist to me without "cost of privilege," that's not really true unless I consider any other rules or regulations or laws null and void. My exercise of my fundamental human rights isn't limitless, either, because I'm bound primarily by laws, rules and responsibilities. I apparently, under the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, have the right to property. But I have to take on a number of responsibilities to exercise that right. I have to pay for it. I have to maintain it and "keep it up to code." And so on.
The UN also says that I have the right to leave my country and return to it. But I don't unless I satisfy a number of terms (I need a passport, I can only be gone so long, and so forth).
When you enter into a covenant of marriage with a life partner, you presumably assume other binding responsibilities that you agree on with your spouse as you go through life. Perhaps you agree to provide a safe place, for instance, or you agree to remain faithful to one another. If you violate those responsibilities, I would argue that such a violation was morally wrong and akin, if not equal to, deception. In that deception can be defined as a series of acts to propagate "beliefs" that are not true, cheating on your spouse would certainly count because you are betraying the fundamental trust your spouse is entitled to. If your spouse is not under the belief that your marriage is one built on "faithfulness" in that sense, you clearly aren't betraying any trust.
But to suggest that it's "right" because you have the fundamental human right to have sex with another consenting adult is simply hogwash. It might not be wrong depending on the terms in your marriage, but it's those terms that make it "not wrong."
23 - Jordan Richardson
Yeah, Jordan, haven't you heard of Situation Ethics?
Pffft. What's love got to do with it?
24 - zingzing
frankly, i couldn't care less what anyone else is doing in the bedroom. (unless they're actively trying to legislate against their stupid guilt, that is. or unless it's jessica biel. oh, to be a fly on the wall...)
i've cheated and i'm 99% sure i've been cheated on (no sense directly confirming the matter), so i'm no better. arnold and all the others will get their comeuppance within their families. and they'll deserve it. but the public sphere is not for private matters.
let the one without sin, etc, etc.
25 - Lee
Jordan,
Why exactly does someone have a "right" to trust their spouse? That sounds childish to me.