4.4 Why the President’s Sex-Life Matters

We have been told, over the past days of the Presidential/Lewinski "sex scandal", that it is unfair or unreasonable to hold the President of the United States to a higher moral standard than ourselves. Further, we have been told that there are much more important things for the public to worry about (China and Iran and world hunger, etc.) than the president’s sex-life. I would like to point out what this attitude means and why we as citizens should be concerned with the President’s sex life.

First I want to point out that the first statement by itself is a slap in face of humanity in general and any one with any self-respect ought to cry with indignation: "But I do hold myself to that standard!" But instead let’s discuss the relevant political question.

A man’s (or a woman’s) attitude toward sex is perhaps the best litmus test for a man’s soul. Whether a man is attracted to a woman of self-respect and self-esteem; a strong, resilient and ambitious woman—or a compliant, weak woman devoid of ambition or the capacity for self-assertion indicates his attitude toward himself; his strengths (or their absence); his self-esteem and his self-confidence (or their absence).

Does a man believe that sex is an expression of the highest form of love of which he is capable—in which case he will sleep only with the highest type of woman he can find and will devote himself to her monogamously—or does he think that sex is nothing but a way to try to fake a self-esteem he does not possess—in which case he will try to sleep with any woman who happens to present herself.

Do we want a sniveling, self-loathing weakling running our government? Do we want a man who lacks the courage to make difficult decisions as comander-in-chief of the men and women in our armed forces?

Does a man honor the contract of marriage, the moral implication being that he is a man of honor, integrity and honesty—or is unfaithful; breaking his word?

Do we want such a man making our foreign policy; with his finger on the button of our nuclear arsonal?

I don’t know any of the details of this particular scandal nor even whether the actions which are alleged ever occured. The issue here is not that the President should be liable under the law to any greater extent than anyone else. The issue is not that the President should be impeached—he should not. The President has as much right to sleep with whomsoever he chooses as does anyone else. (Besides which I might mention the result of such an impeachment: Al Gore.) The issue is the importance of the moral character of the person in the oval office. "Moral character" is not an empty catch-phrase. One cannot separate the man from the president. If a man chooses to break his word; his marraige vows to his wife—the woman whom he presumably loves better than anyone else—what are the implications about his statements to a public he does not even personally know?

But, you may protest, the president may not love his wife better than all others. Do you advocate that the president sacrifice his happiness? That is true, he may not love or even like his wife, and in fact he has a perfect right to fall out of love with her—or in love with someone else—or to simply to not possess the capacity to experience love at all (this last being common among those who profess a nebulous "love for humanity" in general and for no one in particular—and the psychological solution for such persons is often a non-selective promiscuity). If such is the case, however, the proper course of action is action based on reality—which means: a refusal to evade the reality of (A), his marraige contract and/or (B), his love or attraction for another woman.

Bill Clinton (and anyone else) has a right to devorce his wife, or to renounce any unfaithful intentions he might have, but he does not have the moral right to try to "have his cake and eat it too". If one wants the fact of mariage one must be willing to act accordingly. It is one or the other—either you are married and faithful, or you wish to sleep with someone else and do so—after getting a devorce.

Whether or not the president is or should be held legally liable for his actions, it is totally reasonable that the American public is and should be intensely interested in the affair. Whether or not the method by which the issue was made public was proper or whether Clinton has a right to have not voluntarily made the issue public (which right he does have), the issue is public now and the public is right to be concerned and to act on the knowledge they have gained in the way that is proper for them—not by legal action, but at the polling booth.

1998.1
Based on an unprinted letter-to-the-editor
sent to the Colorado Daily newspaper