The Week

Attorney Bob Bennett assures us that there was “absolutely no wrongdoing by the President” in the Paula Jones affair, which the faithful will hear as a denial that anything happened, but which is lawyerese for the fact that he wasn’t President when it happened. Lawyers like to talk that way and need constant watching.

Defense Secretary William Cohen concluded that Gen. Joseph Ralston’s decade-old affair with a civilian while separated from his wife did not prejudice good order and discipline in the ranks, and he stuck by his top candidate for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Cohen recognized that in the aftermath of the Kelly Flinn case his decision would be unpopular, but he knew the cases were easily distinguishable and so refused to sacrifice Ralston, a much-decorated Vietnam veteran. But Ralston removed himself from consideration when it became clear that disgracefully few senators were willing to help Cohen end the witchhunt for miscreants in uniform. There is indeed a moral component to leadership; some great military leaders have been serial adulterers (both Napoleon and Wellington spring to mind); and any contradiction has traditionally and reasonably been resolved by treating adultery in the context of maintaining order and discipline. The fact that many commentators have understood nothing of this, seeing only that Gen. Ralston is a man and Lt. Flinn a woman, says plenty about the media’s subservience to the feminist agenda. (Other agendas are also at work: when feminists called for a halt to prosecutions of consensual sexual activity, gay activists quickly grasped the implications for them.) Kelly Flinn played to this prejudice, declaring: “I don’t know all the facts of Gen. Ralston’s case, but I know enough to realize that in most important respects, we were in the same situation.” Except that Gen. Ralston had not disobeyed a direct order or lied under oath. Above all, his affair was not with the wife of an airman under his command. There is indeed a double standard—but not the one Kelly Flinn perceives.

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Attorney Bob Bennett assures us that there was “absolutely no wrongdoing by the President” in the Paula Jones affair, which the faithful will hear as a denial that anything happened, but which is lawyerese for the fact that he wasn’t President when it happened. Lawyers like to talk that way and need constant watching.

Defense Secretary William Cohen concluded that Gen. Joseph Ralston’s decade-old affair with a civilian while separated from his wife did not prejudice good order and discipline in the ranks, and he stuck by his top candidate for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Cohen recognized that in the aftermath of the Kelly Flinn case his decision would be unpopular, but he knew the cases were easily distinguishable and so refused to sacrifice Ralston, a much-decorated Vietnam veteran. But Ralston removed himself from consideration when it became clear that disgracefully few senators were willing to help Cohen end the witchhunt for miscreants in uniform. There is indeed a moral component to leadership; some great military leaders have been serial adulterers (both Napoleon and Wellington spring to mind); and any contradiction has traditionally and reasonably been resolved by treating adultery in the context of maintaining order and discipline. The fact that many commentators have understood nothing of this, seeing only that Gen. Ralston is a man and Lt. Flinn a woman, says plenty about the media’s subservience to the feminist agenda. (Other agendas are also at work: when feminists called for a halt to prosecutions of consensual sexual activity, gay activists quickly grasped the implications for them.) Kelly Flinn played to this prejudice, declaring: “I don’t know all the facts of Gen. Ralston’s case, but I know enough to realize that in most important respects, we were in the same situation.” Except that Gen. Ralston had not disobeyed a direct order or lied under oath. Above all, his affair was not with the wife of an airman under his command. There is indeed a double standard—but not the one Kelly Flinn perceives.