Ask Not Why Some Pols Can't Keep It Zipped

In an episode of "Seinfeld" from before the public even knew of Gennifer Flowers, George Costanza is informed by his boss that he is being fired for having sex in the office with the cleaning woman.

"Was that wrong?" George asked, explaining that had he known there was a company regulation covering such antics, he would have abided by it.

Even as the list of prominent politicians caught cheating on their wives continues to grow, none of them — not Bill Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Eliot Spitzer or John Edwards — has said they didn't know they were violating an unwritten standard set by the American public and its morality police, the media.

But since all of them at one point in their careers sought to identify themselves with either John or Robert Kennedy, they probably have a right to feel a bit confused.

Got a Pass for Their Trespasses

Our late President, after all, was revealed after his death to have been a serial philanderer during his time in the White House whose conquests included Marilyn Monroe and Judith Campbell Exner, who was also, to use a quaint old phrase, keeping company with Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana. Bobby Kennedy, who at the time was U.S. Attorney General, also was said to have had an affair with Ms. Monroe.

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow THE TWO JOHN EDWARDSES: John Edwards pinned his candidacy for President on a crusade for social justice, arguing that economic inequality had created 'Two Americas,' but his message failed to captivate Democratic voters and his moral authority was obliterated by the revelation of an affair he had while his wife was battling cancer.

Our discovery of their unfaithfulness long after they were both assassinated did not generate anything approaching the furor and breast-beating that followed the revelations about the strayings of President Clinton, Mayor Giuliani, Governor Spitzer and Senator Edwards. That isn't especially surprising — even editorial writers find it difficult to put their heart into shaking their fingers at the departed for past sins of the flesh.

But it seemed for a while 30 or so years ago, when the revelations about President Kennedy's extra-curricular activities began to multiply, that it would prompt some reconsideration of the moral pedestal on which he had been placed. Judging by the fact that he is still regarded as a kind of gold standard for the kind of leader who can inspire a nation, that re-evaluation didn't get very far.

A case could be made that it's because he neither publicly embarrassed his wife while he was alive nor turned into a weasel when confronted with evidence of his infidelity, as Mr. Clinton, Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Edwards in particular have. (If Mr. Spitzer did somewhat better on this score, it's only because when you're caught with a hooker, you don't really have the options of 1) denying you had sex, 2) implying that your mistress was more nurturing than your wife, or 3) saying your wife's cancer was in remission at the time and therefore you showed some moral scruples.)

Mr. Kennedy, and predecessors who before or after taking office fooled around, including Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, benefited from the willingness of what was then a predominantly male press corps to regard their sexual flings as not fit to print. If anything, his behavior was more reckless than that of many of the public officials who weren't extended such courtesy, but the media blackout ensured that whatever Jackie Kennedy knew, she was able to deal with behind closed doors rather than under spotlights.

The rules rapidly changed after Bobby Kennedy was killed, for reasons that ranged from Teddy Kennedy's accident on a bridge in Chappaquiddick in 1969 that led to the drowning death of Mary Jo Kopechne, who had worked in Bobby's presidential campaign a year earlier, to the questions some reporters asked about whether John Kennedy had put himself in a compromising position by having sex with the girlfriend of a Mafia boss.

Time Was on His Side

Political consultant Maureen Connelly said John Kennedy escaped the moral condemnation heaped upon some modern politicos because "he was dead 10 years before anyone found out. Too much time had passed."

Another consultant, George Arzt, who was 15 when President Kennedy was assassinated and joined the New York Post the year Bobby Kennedy was killed after winning the California Democratic primary, said there were larger issues that weighed on their behalf. "[John] Kennedy was a martyr to my generation, and to many other people, Bobby was," he said during an Aug. 13 phone interview. "You wonder what politics can become, and Kennedy was godlike. The womanizing doesn't detract from it. We're all looking for someone who inspires us the way Kennedy did when we were younger."

Bill Clinton's bus tour after he captured the Democratic nomination in 1992, accompanied by his wife and Al and Tipper Gore, was a conscious attempt to burnish comparisons to the Kennedy brothers with their touch football games and youthful camaraderie, but while part of the traveling media contingent bought in, there were enough skeptical and irreverent reporters who focused on the manipulation at work that it never fully took hold.

Barack Obama has come closer to hitting the mark, exuding the same jock's confidence that John Kennedy radiated, and using charisma and a gift for public speaking to excite large crowds as our late President once did. Aside from the fact that Mr. Kennedy was a war hero, there is another marked difference between them: Mr. Obama appears to actually be a devoted husband. Then again, racial attitudes in this country being what they are, he couldn't have gotten this far if he seemed to be using James Bond novels as guideposts to the swashbuckler's life the way Mr. Kennedy did.

Better Looks, More Temptation

He was the first President to really use television to his advantage; in fact, a crucial chapter in his 1960 victory over Richard Nixon involved the Vice President sweating through his makeup during a debate while JFK looked cooler than an autumn breeze. But if the more-visual medium meant candidates' looks became increasingly important, it was inevitable that a more-attractive crop of office-holders would draw more attention from women.

Neither Mr. Giuliani nor Mr. Spitzer, while fit enough, is pleasing to look at, but their abundant self-confidence and the power they held imbued them with the sense that the bonds of marriage and family couldn't hold them.

Mr. Edwards, whose hairstyle seems modeled on Bobby Kennedy's but disdained the tousled look in favor of $400 buffings, had the charm to cultivate juries as a successful negligence lawyer before leaving the courtroom for politics.

'Slick Like a Car Salesman'

"Edwards was too slick for my taste," Mr. Arzt said. "He was like a car salesman." Unlike Mr. Clinton, whose good looks were undercut to an extent by his battles with weight, Mr. Edwards's charm seemed forced; you could feel him working it in front of an audience.

But he benefited to some extent from his family history: he was the son of a mill worker and pulled himself well beyond his humble origins. The slick image got some balance from the adversity that hit Mr. Edwards and his family: a teenage son killed in a freak road accident 12 years ago, a wife who successfully battled cancer, only to discover that it returned in a terminal form last year.

"That's why [his affair with Rielle Hunter] let so many people down," Mr. Arzt said. "They thought, 'He's gone through so much with his wife and son,' and people thought they couldn't have gone through that. Then this comes and he wasn't the guy you thought he was — and he was using his wife for political gain at the same time he was doing this."

Ms. Connelly noted, "With Edwards, his wife is highly respected — she got higher approval ratings than he did while he was running for President." She pointed out that when Mr. Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky became fully known, Mr. Edwards had moralized about the President's failure to set a good example.

Hypocrisy Rankled

It was that hypocrisy, she said, that accounted for the strong media reaction to Mr. Edwards as well as Mr. Spitzer earlier this year. Referring to the National Enquirer's first breaking the story about Mr. Edwards's affair late last year, while he was still a viable contender for the Democratic nomination, Ms. Connelly remarked, "I think the media is embarrassed that they didn't follow up on it" at the time.

If there is one thread running through all the affairs that have come to light, she said, it is that "politicians never think they're gonna get caught."

Of course, some are more indiscreet than others. Few people would have done what Congressman Vito Fossella did when he was stopped for drunken driving this spring: make a relatively small story into a big one by telling the cops that he had been on his way to visit a sick daughter who nobody knew existed until then.

Ms. Connelly was most amazed by the failure of politicians to learn from the pratfalls of their colleagues. Referring to the early Democratic frontrunner for the 1988 election, she said, "Gary Hart, when he was running for President, told reporters, 'Go ahead and follow me.' They did," and found him with a young woman named Donna Rice. Not long after, a photo surfaced of the two of them, Ms. Rice in a bathing suit on his lap, sharing a moment aboard a boat named "Monkey Business," and Mr. Hart's hopes were dead before 1987 was over.

Four Was a Crowd

Cut to Mr. Edwards's recent meeting with Ms. Hunter at the Beverly Hilton Hotel last month, a get-together that became a lot less private when a couple of Enquirer reporters who were tipped off about the rendezvous came knocking on their door.

"It's the sheer stupidity of thinking he could go and meet her in the hotel in Beverly Hills and not be seen," Ms. Connelly said. "He was going to provide moral leadership — that was one of the things he ran on."

Mr. Giuliani used to lecture some of his political foes about their failure to understand that those who didn't know how to discipline themselves paid a price for it. Those lectures diminished once it became clear that he never let that sense of discipline interfere with his having a good time with the women who were available for such stuff.

The past couple of decades have taught us not to look to the athletes whose skills we admire for role models; the best of them are as likely as not to be flawed in their personal lives. Some of us still worship the ones whose indiscretions were not reported during their years in the sun: Mickey Mantle in particular comes to mind.

From Weasel to Lion

Ms. Connelly pointed out that time often goes a long way toward softening our view of those whose conduct went off the charts. "Think of Teddy Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne," she said. "Now he's 'The Lion of the Senate.'''

His older brother apparently never thought much about how his fooling around would look from the future, perhaps because it was something he didn't have to worry about in the present.

Today's elected officials cannot plausibly plead ignorance on that score. They know the rules of the game are different; enough so that they'd better be able to separate the part of the Kennedy image that is still treasured from the one that, if they find it staring back at them from the mirror, should make them cringe in revulsion.