Point of View
Philandering crosses all the political lines
By Carl Heintze
What do Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich and Willie Brown have in common? They're all politicians. They all are middle-aged. Three of them are Democrats, although I'm not sure that has anything to do with it. Two are black and two are white. I suppose that signifies race plays no part in this survey.
But that's not what I'm talking about.
Give up?
The answer is clear. They are all--how shall I put it--sexual adventurers. Bill Clinton, of course, is the most adventurous. He played hanky panky in the Oval Office pantry with Monica Lewinsky, a woman almost young enough to be his daughter. But he never really considered it real hanky panky. Or so he said, anyway. It was just, well, an adventure.
But it had to be an adventure, playing around in the pantry of the Oval Office with a White House intern, jeez. Otherwise, it is just plain stupid.
Willie Brown and Jesse Jackson weren't quite so adventurous, but they also weren't quite so lucky. They managed to father children while being adventurous with women not their wives.
At least they were honest enough to own up to their fatherhoods. It took a constitutional crisis to get Bill to confess his transgressions., Newt Gingrich appears just to have wanted to get married again.
Unfortunately, of course, at the time he already was married. And he had been married once before that.
So, there may have been some uncertainty as to whether Wife No. 3 was really right for him. So, to be sure, he sampled things with his new wife to be and then got a divorce, both from his second wife and from the House of Representatives.
So, as Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five says, it goes.
Of course, sex and politics are not, as one might say, strange or unfamiliar bedfellows. American politics, any politics for that matter, has a long association with misplaced sex.
A recent French president's mistress was invited to his funeral by his wife--but, then, that's France.
Warren G. Harding managed to father at least one child out of wedlock, and maybe a couple of more--the record is not clear. His wife, Florence, then got even with him by letting him die, or so some current biographies allege, anyway, when proper medical care might have kept him going. Apparently, Florence didn't want him to keep going.
Grover Cleveland had similar problems. He got re-elected, anyway.
So, the fact that sex mixes with politics in America (or anywhere else) ought not to be a surprise to anyone. But, of course, it is. We would like to believe otherwise. We would like to believe our politicians are, somehow, not ordinary men, that they, somehow, are above the common temptations of the flesh, unlike you and me--or at least you. I like to think I ... well ... . Especially when they are ministers.
So, there ought to be a lesson in our recent political history, maybe even a moral.
Alas, I am not sure if there is, what it is.
And as a man, I'd also like to call your attention to the fact that sex usually requires at least one other person, beside the politician in question, to happen. And, strictly from a male point of view, it seems to me we've devoted a lot of attention to the man and not much to his consenting partner.
Doing so may not say much for the women involved.
Monica Lewinsky appears to have been a kind of political groupie, out to impress the president with her--what shall I call it--openness.
Warren G. Harding's various girlfriends not only were eager to enjoy his companion, they also were happy to have his children.
As for the rest, Willie Brown, who currently is unmarried (for whatever difference that makes), Jesse Jackson and Newt Gingrich all selected partners who were close business associates. They were, in fact, aides--women who spent more time with their political boyfriends than the politicians spent with their wives.
The aides didn't object to mixing business with pleasure. One suspects they, too, were, in their own way, political groupies, too.
Why are aides more attractive to politicians than wives?
Perhaps it is that a bird in the hand is worth more than a bird at home, or am I mixing my metaphors?
Truthfully, I'm not sure what the political lessons taught by recent events mean, but, at least, they ought to be a warning to the wives of politicians to check out their husbands' assistants, especially if they are female.
Working late at the office may not really be work at all. And political affiliation seems to have nothing to do with sexual transgression.
But politics has a lot to do with sex.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
