Bill’s Affair in the Information Age

So, President Bill Clinton had extramarital affairs and then lied
about them. "Bad president!", said the Senate Judiciary Committee
Chairman Henry Hyde. Henry Hyde had an extramarital affair with a married
woman. "Bad Chairman!", said the woman's husband. The House of
Representatives elected a speaker because Newt Gingrich, the last
speaker, was not effective with all those ethical problems. "Bad
speaker!", said Robert Livingston who then went on to become the speaker
elect. Robert Livingston had extramarital affair(s), he announced
later after he got the wind of media trying to expose his past
indiscretions.

The common thread that connects all these powerful men with otherwise
different backgrounds is infidelity, as does their admission of guilt
under pressure. Infidelity is not a new phenomenon, history ( American
or otherwise) is full of powerful men who were known to be
philanderers.

There is a clear divergence of opinion between the majority of American people
and the Republican majority on how severe should the punishment be for
having an affair, and then lying to hide it, yet all agree that he
should be punished. He must pay for his actions, the forms of
appropriate retribution ranges from public apology to censure to
impeachment in people's opinions.

Depending on which study one picks, 26% to 66% of American men are
estimated to have extramarital affairs, which makes an extramarital
affair a commonplace phenomenon (more common than natural blondes for
example). Yet the society is scandalized every time a new affair
becomes public knowledge. In keeping with the American puritanical
traditions, the society expects the accused to forego public office
candidature (as in the case of Gary Hart) or leave the office ( as in
the case of Bill Clinton). It demands an admission of guilt, and
public humiliation. There was little public outcry and examination of
facts when a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan was bombed, no
president was impeached for the needless loss of American and Vietnamese
lives, yet a tryst in the Oval office will ultimately bring
down the president of United States of America.

Whether it is a racist comment made in a Texaco meeting, a sexual
escapade with a prostitute named Divine, or any other publicly scorned
action, in the present day world of information, getting away with
things is increasingly difficult. It is hard to imagine that Thomas
Jefferson, the first president to be inaugurated in Washington D.C.,
could've gotten away with fathering biracial children and disowning
them, had DNA testing been available in his time.

Today's American society has an unprecedented ability to get
information, and that includes information about people's private
lives. With that ability comes the added burden to judge those
actions, and the responsibility to make those judgments in accordance
with common sense.

Assuming that elected officials are truly representative of the
electorate, their norms of sexual behavior should be similar . If
Americans continue to expect their leaders to have pristine private
lives, they will have to accept the likelihood of 26% to 66% of their
men being unable to run for a public office. So how will this society
resolve this obvious mismatch between its expectations and the
people's actual code of conduct? Perhaps the only good thing that may
come out of the melee in Washington D.C., will be a re-examination of the
mores of the society, and an open dialogue about the present day norms
of behavior by the American people.