I love hearing the dirt or reading about it in the checkout line, but I’ve always thought it slimey and wrong to dredge up the private lives of political candidates. The press corps was right not to pester JFK for his randiness. Jimmy Carter shouldn’t have taken heat for admitting to “lust in his heart.” Beating up on Bill Clinton for Monica Lewinsky was absurd — his absolute refusal to talk plainly or honestly to Ken Starr‘s inquisitors was one of the moral high points of his administration.
Granted, John Edwards was an absolute fool and a scumbag to have run for the Presidency when he knew his affair with Rielle Hunter would come out sooner or later. If he had won the nomination and then the scandal has broken, John McCain would almost certainly be the next President. But in most cases sex should be private and left alone. It’ll never happen, but Americans would do well to think and act like the French.
So as much as I despise and fear Sarah Palin, I don’t think people should go after her for an extra-marital affair that she apparently had twelve years ago. With a guy named Brad Hanson. Whatever. The tabs won’t drop it, of course, but this kind of material should be off-limits in a campaign. In this respect she just succumbed to a normal impulse or need or weakness.
The reasons to not vote for Palin-McCain are ample. The focus should be on her primitive attitudes, her ignorance, her myopia and general unsuitability for the job of Vice-President. It should stop there.