The Character Thing

Looks like it’s time for the quadrennial discussion about the character of our next President, and whether a track record of marital cheating is cause to conclude a candidate isn’t qualified to run the country. All things being equal, it’s clear to me that a clean record in this area is important. Trouble is, all things aren’t.

Rick Perry says if a man will cheat on his wife, he will cheat on his business partner. The buzzer’s going off on that one – it’s wrong. Those are two entirely different things. There are plenty of examples of swindlers and scam artists who have impeccable family values.

My problem with extramarital behavior on the part of a candidate – or a sitting President, for that matter – is that it’s a security risk. If a President fools around, as Bill Clinton did, he is, by the very act, supplying someone else with damaging personal information about himself. What is the other individual going to do with it? Blackmail? Give it to foreign agents? These are extremes, which – fortunately – Monica Lewinsky apparently wasn’t interested in. But when the information came out, it did seriously limit President Clinton’s effectiveness, and the political fallout wasted a lot of time.

Is a President’s hanky-panky anyone’s business? Absolutely. What would the cable news operations have done with JFK’s activities? Or Eisenhower’s? or FDR’s? Plenty! And how effective would they have been after that?

One of my favorite sayings is, “Every saint has a past and every sinner a future.” Bill Clinton, for example, walks on water now – but are Republicans – or other voters – willing to give Newt Gingrich a pass?

It seems the only way to handle the character thing is to assign a value to it, making it like a credit score element – paying bills on time, 30 percent, proportion of balance to credit line, 20 percent, something like that.

I’ve always believed that we elect human beings to office, not simply positions on issues. The issues that are top-of-mind now may not be there several years from now – but we’re still stuck with our choice till the end of the next term. So we’d best try to get it right.