More on Sanford

[pointedview]

mumpish, here's that response that was too lengthy for the comments in my previous post on the matter.

No, it is not about the sex. Not precisely, anyway. There are several factors that I feel are related.

Comments

[mumpish]

Wow. You spent a lot of time on this, and my reply isn't going to do it justice. I don't disagree with you, precisely, and I agree with you personally, morally, about importance of the wedding vows, but overall I don't think either Sanford or Clinton should step down over the sex act itself. It would be a strange strange world (although perhaps one with lower divorce rates) if every person who ever committed adultery got fired. And that was my original point; because I wanted Clinton to step down, I was tarred as a prudish moralist who only cared about the fact that Clinton got some strange. Nothing could be further from the truth

[mumpish]

(Continued from above)

You made two other points I'd like to address: the first is a suggestion that Sanford should go down for hypocrisy. That's a slippery slope. Who gets to decide? And where do you draw the line? The Obama administration is guilty of jaw-dropping hypocrisy on the subject of several of Bush's most contorversial national security positions, having adopted them quietly after running ostentatiously against them. Do we kick him out? On a more practical matter, good luck replacing him ... find me a politician that isn't a hypocrite :)

The second is the suggestion that the Clintons have an open marriage. They many have one now, but the accounts I've read of the situation at the time suggest that HRC was furious particularly about the fact that Bill lied to her personally about Lewinsky. I get the sense that HRC expects fidelity but has made a cynical, self-interested decision to stay in the marriage regardless. That's quite a different thing than an open marriage, and Bill shouldn't get a pass because of it.