It seems that Americans have been obsessed with the sexual escapades of their public officials since the founding of the nation. Yet the response of the citizenry, or at least the electorate , was different in the conservative Victorian 19th century then it has been in the liberal modernistic 20th century.
When Alexander Hamilton was found to have had an affair with a married woman (he was also married) it became quite a sensation in the 1790's. In fact Congress sent a delegation to meet with Hamilton (including among the three delegates James Monroe) to determine if the blackmail that caused the affair to become know was inappropriately affecting the Treasury Department. Hamilton made a complete confession, some felt he wrote too much, President Washington stood by him, and his political enemies gave him a pass so as not to adversely impact the financial situation of the new government.
Only a few years later came the Jefferson scandal, known at the time as his keeping a mulatto concubine with some theorizing that she bore him a child. Added to what was a political misrepresentation of his Deism as akin to Atheism one would have thought that Jefferson would not have been twice elected President, but he was and he doubled the size of the United States, among other things of note. In the late twentieth century people were more excited by the Jefferson-Hemmings relationship than they were in the 1800 and 1804 elections.
Andrew Jackson was accused of living in common law status with a married woman, Rachel Robards (whose divorce hadn’t gone through), and it became an issue that dogged him in three Presidential campaigns - he won the popular vote each time and was elected President twice.
And then there is the case of Grover Cleveland, admittedly the father of a child born out of wedlock (although he may have covered for a relative or friend); his opponents even turned it into a song “Ma, Ma where’s my PA, Gone to the White House, ha ha ha”. Three times he won the popular vote in the key years of the Victorian era 1884-92 and served twice as President.
Of course, after the two world wars Americans became liberal in their attitudes toward sex. Right. With birth control, acceptance of differing sexual life styles, sex outside marriage, illegitimacy no longer having any negative meaning, even miscegenation finally rejected as even a concept. But what happened to the attitude toward public officials Well President Bill Clinton engaged in oral sex performed by a White House intern and his opponents spent a year and half trying to remove him from office through impeachment. Congressmen who pushed that impeachment had to resign due to their own sexual affairs. The list of Senators, Congressmen and Governors who have been involved in sexual scandals in the last four years alone is too large to review here. Spitzer of NY and Sanford of SC; Vitter of La.; and Edwards of NC.
And now of course the latest, Congressman Weiner of New York -- found to be sexting. I don’t really understand the attraction to sexting - I suppose if I had a great body I might want to show it off but on a cell phone or the Internet - I don’t’ get it. And I am appalled that the public is so quick to pillory a man who succumbed to some sort of addiction or narcissistic impulse and engaged in this practice. It should be a matter for his wife and family to resolve and if he needs psychological help he should get it. But he, like Presidents Jefferson, Clinton, Jackson (I left out the stories on Wilson, Harding, FDR and JFK because they didn’t get much traction until the men had died) should be judged by his public official actions not his private peccadilloes. Weiner went on national television and humbled himself and humiliated himself in a way that most of those in the past few years have not. And his political career - at least as far as advancement is likely over. He and his wife have surely suffered enough. It’s not like he lied to the country to get us into a war that cost thousands their lives (oh, but that’s ok in America today.)
We would be wise as a body politic, when the next great political sex scandal erupts in the media, to remember the words of the world’s greatest preacher who two thousand years ago faced down a mob determined to stone an alleged prostitute: “Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone.” To that I can only add “Amen”.
12 June 2011
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