I'm willing to make an exception on health issues. If a candidate has been diagnosed with some imminently life threatening or debilitating disease, voters need to know about it. Not so much because the natural death or disability of a politician in office is such a threat to the republic but because it's disruptive and annoying, especially when your regularly scheduled programming is preempted for tedious and soporific coverage of the state funeral.
Also, anything already on the official record is fair game. If a candidate turns out to have had half a dozen arrests for driving while impersonating a Kennedy, have at him. Otherwise, "That's none of your business." Mere rumors are circulating about the candidate's three 8-ball a day crack habit, membership in a cult that worships a graven image of Carmen Miranda or has an unusual fondness for barnyard animals? I'm sorry, "That's none of your business."
Now the Drudge Report is leaking the "juicy tidbits" from a Mike Wallace interview with Mitt Romney scheduled for airing on Sunday. Drudge writes:
Romney's wife, Ann, who converted to the Mormon Church before they were married, is also interviewed. When asked whether they broke the strict church rule against premarital sex, Romney says, "No, I'm sorry, we do not get into those things," but still managed to blurt out "The answer is no," before ending that line of questioning.
Assuming the Drudge report is accurate, this puts Wallace in roughly the same category as whoever once asked Bill Clinton whether he wore briefs or boxers. The American people do not need to know whether Clinton wears briefs, boxers or frilly silk panties with lace trim. We do not need to know whether Mitt and Ann slept together before they were married. We do not even need to know if they sleep together now.
We didn't need to know whether Clinton smoked pot at Oxford or whether he inhaled, and we especially didn't need to know about his Oval Office ménage à trois with Monica Lewinsky and a Cuban cigar. Clinton spent a lifetime successfully weaseling out of scandal after scandal, and so naturally he tried to weasel out of that one, too. But the nation would have been far better served if he'd simply stuck to his guns and refused to answer questions about such things even under oath. Even if he was the one wearing the blue dress and someone had pictures. Sure, he might have faced a contempt charge as a result. Big deal.
Let me preemptively respond to the argument that such questions inform the public about the real character or expose the hypocrisy of the candidates. No, they don't. All politicians are liars and hypocrites because (1) they're politicians and (2) they're human beings. (Well, for the most part.) None of these people are running for sainthood and Messiah isn't an elective office. I understand people love gossip about the prurient details of the rich and famous, but that's what we have show business celebrities for. And isn't it more fun to learn the ugly secrets of beautiful people than the largely hum-drum peccadilloes of people so boring they willingly chose politics as a career?
We don't need to know anything about the purely private failures, foibles or follies, sins of commission or omission, minor vices or squalid little secrets of our politicians or their spouses or family members. Not only do we not need to know these things, I insist on believing, eternal optimist that I am, that the majority of us really don't want to know them, either. Hence, the "It's none of your business" Pledge. Candidates must promise to repeat this one and only one acceptable answer to all such "gotcha" questions from the press and public, preferably with the same facial expression appropriate to witnessing the questioner pick his nose in public.
The only permissible variation on this theme is that if the questioner is within smacking range and the candidate happens to have a large trout on hand, smacking the questioner over the head with the trout is encouraged. Candidates should, in fact, keep a large trout on hand at all times for this very purpose. Whatever ratings boost Mike Wallace might have hoped to garner from asking about the Romney's sex lives in the first place, it pales by comparison to the millions upon millions of Americans who would tune in specifically to see him get whacked with a trout.
I know I'd watch.
4 comments:
But the nation would have been far better served if he'd simply stuck to his guns and refused to answer questions about such things even under oath.
That would be fine if other defendants in sexual harassment suits were similarly entitled to refuse to answer questions about their sex lives. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening any time soon.
You have a point, Seamus. Whether, by way of a solution, sitting presidents should enjoy temporary immunity from civil suits for this very sort of reason is an interesting question, and I found myself leaning one way and then the other throughout the Clinton scandals about such things. Still, that's one of those "hard cases make bad law" situations, at least I hope it is.
How about "for the good of the nation Clinton should have kept his mouth shut and suffered the adverse inference at trial his failure to answer would have invoked"? I mean, the guy's a patriot, right?
Whether, by way of a solution, sitting presidents should enjoy temporary immunity from civil suits for this very sort of reason is an interesting question, and I found myself leaning one way and then the other throughout the Clinton scandals about such things.
Ditto, I go back and forth on that one.
But how do you feel about if, say, Ted Haggard had run for Congress on a platform that included criminalizing homosexual sex and enhancing penalties for crystal meth use? Isn't his own behavior than at issue, by his own choosing?
Again, I see the point. And once the hypocrisy is indeed exposed, the politician should be nailed for it.
What I particularly object to, however, are the routine "gotcha" questions, the personal and private poking and prying that has become acceptable to ask any candidate for office.
The fact is, even in your scenario the more important question is whether those espoused policies are worthy or not of support. Whether the proponent is a flaming hypocrite in espousing them, though not entirely irrelevant, is largely irrelevant to that question.
I don't want to argue the point absolutely, but what someone does or will do in his official capacity is a hell of a lot more important to me than his private life 99.9% of the time.
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