Andrew, I did not say a “rigorous attachment to monogamy” is the only voting factor, so we would pick Carter over Churchill. That’s a straw man argument.

But “who cares about sex?” (I’d start with “God.”) That’s a complete cultural surrender of a sentence. In reference to other posts today (as in: Jonah’s on Sullivan), objections to Clinton were not based on “sex panic,” but on the notion that Clinton always treated public office like a Howard Stern would: as a goldmine of sexual opportunity more than a public trust. From the first national scandal (Gennifer Flowers), objections to Clinton’s sexual recklessness focused on how he used the power of the state for his pleasurable ends, giving Flowers a state job to keep her happy, playing peek-a-boo with state employee Paula Jones, using state troopers and then Secret Service personnel as pawns in his sex games. If Clinton was a conventional adulterer — with a single, tight-lipped mistress without any connection to government — none of the “sex panic” would have ever made a second on the evening news.