by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
The news media seem obsessed with the serial affairs of a younger Newt Gingrich back in the last century. The anger of his second of three wives mysteriously became national news on ABC\u2019s\u00a0Nightline<\/em>\u00a0on the eve of the South Carolina primary. Millions watched Mrs. Gingrich II complain that Newt and the present Mrs. Gingrich had done to her (while ill) just about the same thing that she and Newt had earlier done to Mrs. Gingrich I (while ill).<\/p>\n Do these marital dramas involving our leaders matter that much? At some point, does long-ago adultery earn a statute of limitations? Do we forgive a few, but not serial, transgressions? Do we really care to learn the back-and-forth, he said\/she said details? And do leaders have to be exceptionally talented to atone for extremely poor marital behavior?<\/p>\n There have been plenty of unfaithful presidents, a few who could not even suppress their libidos upon entering the White House. Long before Bill Clinton\u2019s dalliances, John Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, and Warren Harding allegedly had been unfaithful to their first ladies.<\/p>\n Given the value of stable marriages to society, it would be nice to think that such moral failure in our presidential candidates would be a telltale warning of later flawed governance \u2014 and that anyone who cheated on a spouse would also somehow cheat the country. But the truth unfortunately is more complex. The extracurricular Clinton proved a better president than the faithful Jimmy Carter. The reckless Kennedy served more honestly than did the seemingly devoted Richard Nixon. And the two-timing FDR was considered more successful than the monogamous Herbert Hoover.<\/p>\n There are so many factors involved in both successful marriage and skilled leadership that it is impossible to isolate one trait \u2014 even one as critical as fidelity \u2014 as an absolute barometer of future success. Some of our most inspired civilian and military heroes \u2014 Charles Lindbergh, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton, Martin Luther King Jr. \u2014 were rumored to have had relationships outside of marriage. New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was courting his third wife while still married to his second wife when 9\/11 occurred, and yet he proved steady and reliable in a way mayors more monogamous have not during lesser disasters.<\/p>\n Why, then, are the marriages and indiscretions of an ascendant Gingrich now such an issue, apparently bothering the media more than primary voters?<\/p>\n The media usually prefer liberal politicians. Washington\u2019s newspaper editors kept quiet about JFK\u2019s frolicking, a silence that became near-conspiratorial. The renegade tabloid\u00a0National Enquirer<\/em>\u00a0alone had to pursue the sordid affair of presidential candidate John Edwards. Matt Drudge forced the mainstream media to follow up on the recurrent but ignored rumors of Bill Clinton\u2019s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office. The feeling of most in the media is: Why sidetrack a fellow progressive\u2019s enlightened agenda for America over an occasional hormonal urge?<\/p>\n But conservatives should expect such extra scrutiny. Just as populist Democrats raise eyebrows when they cozy up to Wall Street one-percenters, so too does the party of traditional family values set a higher bar for marital fidelity \u2014 and so faces the greater wage of hypocrisy. We don\u2019t expect Bill Clinton to preach about the sanctity and stability of marriage, but we often heard that sermon from a sanctimonious Gingrich.<\/p>\n We are now an electronically wired 24\/7 nation of the Internet, cable news, Twitter, and Facebook, and sex is in our faces everywhere. In 1961, the old-boy newspaper guild could keep quiet JFK\u2019s alleged rampant womanizing. Now, such a circle of silence eventually breaks down, and the lurid details seem all the more newsworthy. In a counterintuitive sense, the more dissolute Americans become, the more they hope that at least their presidents might resist the temptations of the modern world that they themselves cannot.<\/p>\n We all would like to think Gingrich\u2019s long-ago adulteries must warn us that he would make a less reliable, more erratic president than the apparently faithful Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, or Barack Obama. But there seems little evidence from history that such a logical conclusion is always true \u2014 and none adduced so far by our biased media why it should be.<\/p>\n Maybe that\u2019s why the voters of conservative South Carolina apparently did not think whom or how many times the mercurial Newt Gingrich has married mattered more than how he has so far debated and addressed the issues.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The news media seem obsessed with the serial affairs of a younger Newt Gingrich back in the last century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11],"tags":[57,448,465,370,467,265,1044,464,468,446,447,242],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-g4","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1088,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/postmodern-populism\/","url_meta":{"origin":996,"position":0},"title":"Postmodern Populism","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Newt\u00a0Gingrich\u00a0soaring in the polls 90 days ago \u2014 with an inspired strategy of critiquing Obama, reprimanding the left-wing media during the debates, playing down his ego while showing mastery of the issues, and calling for an end to internecine bickering \u2014 stumbled for a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":986,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-campaign-dictionary\/","url_meta":{"origin":996,"position":1},"title":"A Campaign Dictionary","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 4, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The bogeyman of the Washington insider is often a target of the Gingrich campaign, but we have as yet no definition. To be an \u201cinsider,\u201d should the candidate have served in the federal government for, say, ten years? Should he be currently living\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/campaign-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":973,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-2012-election-circus-the-acts-the-players-the-hype\/","url_meta":{"origin":996,"position":2},"title":"The 2012 Election Circus–the Acts, the Players, the Hype","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 12, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The Latest Scandals Taxes: What does it matter that Gingrich released one year of his tax records? Any candidate can prep them a year in advance. Were I running for office a year or two down the road, and were I cynical, this year\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/campaign-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1269,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-newt-gingrich-wrong-to-talk-about-sharia\/","url_meta":{"origin":996,"position":3},"title":"Is Newt Gingrich Wrong to Talk About Sharia?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim PJ Media In a recent article appearing in\u00a0Tablet, Lee Smith takes former House speaker Newt Gingrich to task for the latter's\u00a0focus on sharia\u00a0(i.e., Islamic law). The thrust of Smith's argument is that sharia is a \"hopelessly abstract concept\" and \"a highly idealized version of reality that has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11612,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/trumps-re-election-chances-may-be-better-than-you-think\/","url_meta":{"origin":996,"position":4},"title":"Trump\u2019s Re-Election Chances May Be Better Than You Think","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 17, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness What are Donald Trump\u2019s chances for re-election in 2020? If history is any guide, pretty good. In early 1994, Bill Clinton\u2019s approval rating after two years in office hovered around a dismal 40 percent. The first midterm elections of the Clinton presidency were an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Donald Trump\"","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/tag\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1062,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/south-carolina-debate-a-perfect-distraction\/","url_meta":{"origin":996,"position":5},"title":"South Carolina Debate: A Perfect Distraction","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 21, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner The Race Going into South Carolina The primary race that has just started and should still be wide open is already supposedly almost over \u2014 but still isn\u2019t quite. The conventional wisdom is that Mitt\u00a0Romney\u00a0\u2014 bleeding a bit by the successful, counter-conservative anti-Bain commercials,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/campaign-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=996"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":998,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996\/revisions\/998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}