First, Unless it involves rape, children, or gross hypocrisy like Henry Hyde impeaching Clinton after a several year-long affair, and others, a person's sex life is never, never our business. Moreover, living with a sick spouse is very stressful. No one knows what he/she would do in such a circumstance, and no one knows the content of another's relationship. Of course it was stupid and selfish, and cruel to Elizabeth, but the press should never cover a politician's sex life except as noted above.

There is no evidence it tells us anything important about a politician, in fact the opposite. Reagan and Bush II faithful spouses but god-awful presidents. Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson (forgetting the war) and Clinton unfaithful spouses but very good to great presidents. Bush I and Eisenhower unfaithful spouses and mediocre presidents. Ted Kennedy unfaithful spouse and physical and moral coward as a young man but great senator. Larry Craig unfaithful and incompetent senator.

We have to force the press to leave a politician's sex life alone and focus on public issues. For example, Bush was AWOL and guilty of insider trading, much more important than his fidelity. Clinton's enemies from Arkansas hated him because of his persistent and forceful efforts to end prejudice in Arkansas. His leading enemy, Jim Johnson, is believed by many to have pressured Fabus to take the stance he did in opposing integration. Johnson met with national Republicans, including Floyd Brown of Willie Horton fame, to find or make-up evidence against Clinton, after Johnson was finally forced to retire from politics to his home called White Haven, after Clinton repeatedly beat or helped to beat him and his allies and led the effort to erase prejudice from the Arkansas legal and political system--but Clinton was unfaithful.

Newt is in a category all by himself, a successful insurgent politician but bad at governing who was repeatedly unfaithful throughout his career and while attacking Clinton. Newt brought divorce paper to his wife while she was hospitalized for cancer while college-student Clinton visited his stepfather who was in the hospital for cancer, even though that same stepfather had earlier abused Clinton's mother and half-brother and threatened her with a gun, requiring the then 16-year-old Clinton to take the gun away.

As long as we allow the press to use sex as a short-hand for character we will get the Reagan's and Bush's and while the press harasses the Clinton's, Kennedy's, and Edward's of the American political scene--distracting us from real issues. The press has to be stopped. Sure Kennedy, Clinton and Edwards should have kept their pants zipped, but they are human and all humans make mistakes, sometimes big ones with potentially bad consequences. That does not justify press and public obsession with sexual behavior rather than public political behavior. Sex has become the lazy and stupid reporter's substitute for thought and work and it is killing us.

I mean by force don't buy the magazines, newspapers, etc. with sex stories, turn off the program, write letters to the editor and cancel subscriptions. They cover the sex stories because they believe, correctly, that we want them to. If we convince them otherwise they will stop--money talks.

Ignorance of issues and obsession with celebrities and obsession with the sex lives of others is the modern equivalent of the Roman bread and circuses, and it will destroy us as it destroyed the Roman Empire--not that I want us to continue the Bush-Cheney path to empire. It is not sex that corrupts a society but obsession with others' sex lives and sex used to sell products and violence and sex used to titillate.

The issues and the behavior of the politician when forced to act on public policy issues is what defines a good politician. I am more concerned with a politician's vote on Cheney's energy bill or FISA or capping credit card interest rates or universal health care than their sex lives. Would soldiers have voted for Bush if they had known he went AWOL from the National Guard during the Vietnam War or that Cheney said he better things to do than fight in a war he and Bush supported as young men, while Al Gore joined the army and went to Vietnam as an army reporter and John Kerry joined the navy and signed up for one of the most dangerous jobs in Vietnam, winning multiple awards. Bill and Hillary Clinton opposed the Vietnam War and put their political lives where their mouths were. Such issues tell us whether someone will be a good public servant or not.