The Huffington Post offers us a malodorous slice of 1992-primary nostalgia by insisting America is positively prehistoric in caring whether its presidential candidates lie about sex. London-based columnist Johann Hari says if we really cared about non-adulterous leaders, we can have Hitler or Cheney (no moral equivalance there?):
Since Elizabeth Edwards published a book about the supremely trivial fact that her husband had an affair, the cable shows have been endlessly debating the “issue” once again.
Memo to America: Grow. Up. Have you forgotten the lesson of Lewinsky so soon? While al-Qa’ida plotted a murderous attack on the US, the twice-elected president was busy being impeached over a few bouts of consensual oral sex. It meant nothing. It was nothing. But it skewed your politics for years.
If you think a politician’s fidelity to his wife reveals his character, then you believe Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King were deeply immoral people, while Adolf Hitler and Dick Cheney are moral paradigms.
Oh, America, you could be “mature” like Europe: “It doesn’t have to be this way. Continental Europe has a mature model where politicians’ affairs are considered irrelevant.” Talk about feeling stuck in a Gennifer Flowers-era time warp.