Politics of Marriage
Personal lives of politicians should be off limits in most cases, but Conservatives has made morality a political issue in which they are superior to
Perhaps it is a coincidence - some may call it karma - but two of the three presidential front-runners in the self-described ‘party of personal responsibility’ have, to put it mildly, sloppy private life stories.If part of your political ideology is to claim moral superiority over your opponents, then your leaders should at least live up to your own high standards.
Republicans have long chastised Democrats as the party of loose morals yet while Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-New York) try to court the support of social conservatives, both have at least one failed marriage and bouts of infidelity. Rumored presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has a lot of both.
McCain married his second wife a month after his previous marriage, which included an affair, was dissolved.
Giuliani was married to his second cousin for fourteen years - illegal in dozens of countries and forever dubbed ‘the weirdness factor’. He had an adulterous affair while married to his second wife and publicly announced his intention to separate from her before he informed her. (However, it is not even close to former House Speaker Gingrich, who served his first wife and former high school math teacher, with divorce papers while she was in the hospital for cancer. It takes a certain kind of assholeness to do that.) Giuliani is currently working on a third marriage and appears to have forgotten about his past.
posted by Eloy @ Wednesday, February 14, 2007
2 comments
2 Comments:
At first, I'm inclined to agree with you.
On the other hand, going into public life takes a certain kind of person (most people dream about it but eventually realize that risking their personal relationships is not something they're willing to do...and they realize the virtue of privacy, and it's one of the most stressful things a person can do.
It's not a shock that marriages are strained and relationships go awry. Many people in high stress positions have personal lives filled with adversity as a result.
As far as my thoughts on personal lives and their relevance to politicians in general, I really hated it when the Monica thing got so much freaking press. I could care less what the man did with his personal time-I hired him to govern. Nothing less, nothing more.
That's my meandering, stream of consciousness, two cents. :)
Hello KC
Thanks for the comment. I agree with you. It’s getting to the point that the good people do not want to run for office in the fear of having their personal lives drag thru the mud. It must be hard for families of politicians to have a constant focus on their lives.
But, Conservatives have made personal lives a political issue. During the 2000 campaign, Bush and this Republican Party made the issues of Clinton’s marriage to attack the whole Democratic Party as unfit to lead. Then Conservatives during the 2004 campaign used Gay marriage to attack Democrats as unmoral.
I wish we could debate the important issues of the day, rather than attack persona lives. But, it’s not going to happen.
The personal lives of leading Conservatives are fair game, until they change their ways.
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