He wrote florid love letters to his wife’s social secretary, and later romanced his own assistant under the White House roof. The First Lady took several lovers of her own, including another woman; to facilitate this arrangement, she and the president slept in separate wings. By the standards of modern politics, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s unorthodox marriage would render FDR unfit to serve. But in the 1930s, the press did not pry into politicians’ private lives; FDR was judged by what he did in the Oval Office, not upstairs in the bedroom. What a quaint notion. In this more sophisticated and transparent age, Indiana’s widely respected governor, Mitch Daniels, can’t run for president because his wife, Cheri, once left him, married another man, and then came back. Daniels calls their re-marriage a “happy ending.’’ But for him to have a real shot at the nomination, Cheri would have to sit for a tear-filled, squirm-worthy TV interview, begging 300 million strangers to forgive her. She wouldn’t. So Daniels is out.
How did we get from there to here? It was a gradual process, to be sure, but the turning point was the public humiliation and impeachment of Bill Clinton. Under the Clinton rules, in which all sexual matters are fair game, scores of politicians of both parties have been driven out of office. To serve the public, you must have a private life free of messy episodes, unless you’re willing to fall to bended knee and plead for the voters’ absolution. This standard certainly serves to screen out hypocrites and predatory creeps, but it also rules out Mitch Daniels and legions of intelligent, accomplished people who don’t want the scrutiny. I wonder: Have we set the bar too high?
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Should Sonia Sotomayor retire from the Supreme Court?Talking Points Democrats worry about repeating the history of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
-
China tries to bury deadly car attackSpeed Read An SUV drove into a crowd of people in Zhuhai, killing and injuring dozens — but news of the attack has been censored
-
Senate GOP selects Thune, House GOP keeps JohnsonSpeed Read John Thune will replace Mitch McConnell as Senate majority leader, and Mike Johnson will remain House speaker in Congress
-
Editor's letterfeature
-
Editor's letter: Are college athletes employees?
feature The National Labor Relations Board's decision deeming scholarship players “employees” of Northwestern University has many worrying that college sports itself will soon be history.
-
Editor's letter
feature
-
Editor's letter: When a bot takes your job
feature Now that computers can write news stories, drive cars, and play chess, we’re all in trouble.
-
Editor's letter: Electronic cocoons
feature Smartphones have their upside, but city streets are now full of people walking with their heads down.
-
Editor's letter: The real cause of income inequality
feature When management and stockholders pocket all the profits, the middle class falls further behind.
-
Editor's letter: The real reason you’re so forgetful
feature When you consider how much junk we’ve stored in our brains, it’s no surprise we can’t remember our PINs.
-
Editor's letter: Ostentatious politicians
feature The McDonnells’ indictment for corruption speaks volumes about the company elected officials now keep.