When Private Lives Become Public
Introduction
Last week, Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, entered the Republican race for president. His marriage to his third wife, Callista, has come under renewed scrutiny because that relationship began as a six-year-long affair when he was married to his second wife.
The spotlight cast on spouses and families during campaigns can be glaring for any couple. Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana, in considering a presidential run, is said to be weighing the toll a national campaign could take on his wife, Cheri, who eschews politics.
What have we learned about how a candidate's marital and family life affects voters' views? Is the national stage different from state and local campaigns in this respect?
Read the Discussion »Adultery Isn't Easily Ignored
May 15, 2011
Andrew Kohut is the president of the Pew Research Center. He is the co-author of four books and a frequent commentator on polls for National Public Radio.
Generally, the issues matter most in voters’ judgments about presidential candidates, but personality, character and values are not far behind. This is especially the case in the primaries where differences between candidates of the same party tend to be modest.
For example, leadership and personal qualities were more important to Republican voters in New Hampshire in 2008 than positions on issues. And a victorious John McCain bested Mitt Romney from neighboring Massachusetts by a huge margin on the personal dimension — though there is no one way that voters size up the personal dimension.
In past Pew Research Center surveys, voters said that honesty is the single most important thing they wanted to know about a candidate. However, significant numbers also think that it is important to learn about a candidate’s openness, personal background and the candidate’s spouse.
With regard to a candidate’s personal life, divorce is not much of a consideration — it has been a long time since Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s presidential aspirations were derailed by divorce. In 2007, just 9 percent of voters said that they would be less willing to vote for a divorced candidate. But adultery is another matter; as many as 39 percent said they would be less willing to vote for a candidate who had had an extra-marital affair.
Republicans are especially reluctant to vote for a candidate who has had an affair. Fully 62 percent said they are less likely to do so. Many fewer Democrats, having stood by President Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal, drew that line. Only 25 percent said such a candidate would likely lose their vote.
As for spouses, in recent years first ladies have run ahead of their husbands in public opinion polls. Laura Bush was more popular than George W. Bush throughout much of his presidency. And now we see Michelle Obama with a higher favorability rating than the president's. In fact, majorities of various Republican voting blocs, except for staunch conservatives, have a positive reaction to the first lady.
However, in some instances, public opinions of some first ladies have paralleled negative views of their husbands at difficult times. Nancy Reagan was criticized for a lavish lifestyle during the “Reagan recession,” and Hillary Clinton drew substantial criticism as an architect of a unpopular health care reform plan.
1 Reader Comment
Post a comment »I think the damage to Gingrich is of his own making. His Inspector Javier performance going after Clinton and trying to impeach him for what he himself was doing, won't sit well with the voting public. Too many voters love "Les Miserables" and what it stands for.
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Why the Ideal Endures
May 15, 2011
Laura R. Olson is professor of political science at Clemson University.
In an effort to connect with voters, presidential candidates present carefully crafted images of their ideal selves, in an effort to mask or positively frame the all-too-real human frailties we all share. Candidates introduce themselves as they think voters want to see them, which, in a world fraught with challenge, danger and pervasive anxiety, means they need to seem comfortingly “normal” and inspiringly extraordinary at the same time.
In a country where a vast majority of citizens believe in God, candidates also must appear to be people of strong faith and moral values. George W. Bush earned the admiration — and far more important, the political support — of millions of moral conservatives by sharing his Christian testimony and recounting how personal faith helped him overcome a drinking problem. Americans would never send an (admitted) atheist to the White House, and a long list of politicians can attest to the consequences of being caught in a sexual imbroglio.
It still seems that the most expedient way to cast oneself simultaneously as normal, extraordinary and morally upright is to emphasize the shiny exterior of one’s family life. (Are we any more likely to elect an unmarried president than we are to elect an atheist?) Real Americans know that having a perfect, happy family without struggle or hard work is a pipe dream. Yet we want to recognize elements of our best imagined selves in our political leaders. Thus it was no surprise that President Obama’s first appeal for 2012 campaign funds featured a picture of him not in the Oval Office, but in a loving embrace with his wife and daughters.
When Cheri Daniels, the wife of Gov. Mitch Daniels, addressed the Indiana Republican Party last week, she began to humanize the image of her husband, a potential Republican candidate, by opening the door to discussion of their break-up-and-makeup love story, complete with happy ending. Who can’t identify with love’s turbulence, and who doesn’t like a happy ending, especially when times are tough all over?
Integrity and Authenticity
May 15, 2011
Kathryn Jean Lopez is the editor at large of National Review Online and a nationally syndicated columnist.
In considering the upsides of pluralism in the life of a democracy, the French Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain wrote: “We know, indeed, that evil and foolishness are more frequent among men than intelligence and virtue. How then is it possible to call them all to a political life?”
Good question. And, as Maritain points out, “experience shows that in politics (as in all spheres where the affective dispositions and the collective interests play an essential role), persons of education and refinement are no less often mistaken than the ignorant; the errors of the latter are vulgar, those of the former are intellectualized and documented, like the persons themselves. In these matters, if the central virtue of the leaders is political prudence — which is rare and difficult to acquire — what matters most in the rest are right instincts.”
The habits that encourage and nurture the right instincts are frequently found in a healthy family life. And that may be especially true now, as there is a sense that we are on a civilizational precipice, taking up make-or-break questions that will determine our identity, our future, our legacy.
And it is hard to miss what the University of Virginia’s W. Bradford Wilcox recentlypointed out: “In the last three decades, nonmarital childbearing, divorce, low-quality marriages and family instability have all been on the rise in middle-American homes. ... Why? Over this same period, the cultural, civic and economic foundations of marriage in middle America have been eroding.”
Life is complicated. We live in a fallen world. And voters don’t expect their politicians to be saints. As James Madison wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” But George Washington left us with this: “It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government." And extensive polling by theMarist Institute on behalf of the Knights of Columbus has found that, as Carl Anderson points out in his book "Beyond a House Divided," “Americans see personal integrity and hard work as the key in their own lives, and want to see strong ethics — at home, in politics and in business.”
There is a connection between how we live our private lives and the long-term success of our foundational institutions. So we should care. It matters. It’s about integrity and authenticity. It’s who we are.
Clearly, with the news media beast constantly in need of feeding, our inquiries can get out of hand. But it’s not odd, or new, to want to know and be able to trust our leaders — not just nationally, and not just in politics. And it even makes foundational sense.
The Hypocrisy Problem
May 15, 2011
Richard Reeves is the author of a presidential trilogy: “President Kennedy: Profile of Power,” “President Nixon: Alone in the White House” and “President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination.”
Political marriages are probably like any others, but with a mass seduction problem. Seduction, after all, is what politicians do for a living.
Obviously, the public has liberalized its views on politicians' private lives. The real problem today is hypocrisy. Candidates to some extent have to practice what they preach. Gingrich's trio of marriages may prove to be a test as to how far we have come since a single divorce could derail a political career. Nelson Rockefeller probably could have been president if not for his (publicly) messy private life.
As for spousal effects on governance, I think they are generally overrated except on personnel issues and problems. Husbands and wives, in good marriages and bad, are the ones who watch the candidate's back. The most important kind of political pillow talk sounds something like, "Hon, are you sure you can trust Don to put your agenda over his own?" A good political wife or husband should be the fiercest guardian of a president's image. The champion in our time was Nancy Reagan.
Not Everyone Is Toppled
May 15, 2011
Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper Professor of American History at Harvard, a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author, most recently, of "The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle Over American History."
"The political history of the United States for the last thirty years dates from the moment when the soft hand of Mr. Van Buren touched Mrs. Eaton’s knocker,” the biographer James Parton wrote in 1860, in his "Life of Andrew Jackson." He was referring to the willingness of Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson's secretary of state, to curry favor with the socially snubbed wife of John Henry Eaton, Jackson’s secretary of war, in a scandal that came to be called the Petticoat War and led, in 1831, to the dissolution of Jackson’s entire cabinet.
There has never been a time when there were not sexual scandals in politics, and they’re not going to end anytime soon, not least because the boundary between the public and the private is, at this moment in history, so gravely disputed.
Meanwhile, to hold a national office, even to run for national office, you have to be willing to give up most of what very many people just wouldn’t give up: waking up every morning with the person you love best, walking your kids to school and getting into family arguments over dinner. A town mayor can do that; even a state senator can do that. A member of the U.S. Congress generally can’t.
Political candidates, then, must, at least implicitly, communicate to voters that they have made that kind of sacrifice in the interest of public service. Voters want to accept that story which, no doubt, is often true. Every time a politician is revealed to have been a scoundrel — a man, usually, intoxicated by power — the public’s willingness to take that story, on faith, for the rest of Washington, crumbles.
Not everyone is toppled. At the end of the Petticoat War, the Eatons were banished from Washington and Jackson was re-elected in a landslide in 1832 with Van Buren as his vice president.
Not Everyone Is Toppled
May 15, 2011
Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper Professor of American History at Harvard, a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author, most recently, of "The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle Over American History."
"The political history of the United States for the last thirty years dates from the moment when the soft hand of Mr. Van Buren touched Mrs. Eaton’s knocker,” the biographer James Parton wrote in 1860, in his "Life of Andrew Jackson." He was referring to the willingness of Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson's secretary of state, to curry favor with the socially snubbed wife of John Henry Eaton, Jackson’s secretary of war, in a scandal that came to be called the Petticoat War and led, in 1831, to the dissolution of Jackson’s entire cabinet.
There has never been a time when there were not sexual scandals in politics, and they’re not going to end anytime soon, not least because the boundary between the public and the private is, at this moment in history, so gravely disputed.
Meanwhile, to hold a national office, even to run for national office, you have to be willing to give up most of what very many people just wouldn’t give up: waking up every morning with the person you love best, walking your kids to school and getting into family arguments over dinner. A town mayor can do that; even a state senator can do that. A member of the U.S. Congress generally can’t.
Political candidates, then, must, at least implicitly, communicate to voters that they have made that kind of sacrifice in the interest of public service. Voters want to accept that story which, no doubt, is often true. Every time a politician is revealed to have been a scoundrel — a man, usually, intoxicated by power — the public’s willingness to take that story, on faith, for the rest of Washington, crumbles.
Not everyone is toppled. At the end of the Petticoat War, the Eatons were banished from Washington and Jackson was re-elected in a landslide in 1832 with Van Buren as his vice president.
Unrealistic Expectations
May 15, 2011
Steven Mintz is a professor of history and the director of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Teaching Center at Columbia University.
Presidential marriages have never been a private matter. Lacking a royal family, the public expects a presidential couple to embody society’s marital ideals. Indeed, from F.D.R. onward, presidents have sought to enhance their image by projecting a particular image of marriage: close, stable, but one where the husband is dominant and the wife supportive.
Often, Americans have embraced fantasies of presidential marriages that have little to do with reality. But presidential marriages have also provided a thinly veiled vehicle for attacking a president’s (or candidate’s) morality and manliness.
Charges of sexual immorality are nothing new. In 1828, opponents accused Andrew Jackson’s of living with his wife before she was legally divorced (which was technically true, although neither Jackson nor his wife knew her first husband was still living). Half a century later, Grover Cleveland was accused of fathering an illegitimate child, and his wife felt forced to issue a statement that her husband didn’t beat her. In 1992, Bill Clinton confronted charges of “womanizing.” Each man was elected.
Portraying a henpecked president bullied by a domineering wife has proven to be a more effective way to undercut an administration. Abigail Adams was called “Mrs. President” because of her influence over her husband. Edith Galt Wilson, Rosalynn Carter, and Hillary Clinton, likewise, were harshly criticized for exerting undue influence over their husbands, reflecting this society’s uneasiness with women occupying positions of power.
First ladies have also provided ready targets for scorn that couldn’t be heaped on their husbands. Long before Nancy Reagan was attacked for excessive spending on White House china, critics condemned Mary Todd Lincoln for squandering her redecorating allowance. Julia Grant and Florence Harding were accused of involvement in the scandals that rocked their husbands’ administrations.
Today, many Americans still fantasize about fairy tale presidential marriages. But it has become increasingly unclear what such a marriage should be like.
Should the presidential spouse be a supportive helpmeet, a glamorous hostess, a political partner, or an independent, outspoken personality? In a society without a consensus about an ideal marriage, presidential couples tend to play it safe and foster the illusion of a conventional middle-class family, whatever the reality.
A Form of Reality TV
May 15, 2011
Stephanie Coontz teaches history and family studies at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. Her most recent book is "A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s."
In 1963, Gov . Nelson Rockefeller of New York married “Happy” Murphy, after his first wife had traveled to Nevada to get a divorce that was then unavailable in his own state. Although Rockefeller had been having an affair with Happy for five years, the press never exposed this fact, just as reporters turned a blind eye to the even more flagrant and numerous liaisons of President John Kennedy. But Rockefeller’s remarriage elicited outrage among large sections of the public and doomed his presidential ambitions. As a Republican Party official explained at the time, “Our country doesn't like broken homes.”
In those days the image you presented in public was what counted, not how you behaved in private. Since then the public has become more tolerant of politicians’ departures from the standard family script, but also more insistent on the right to know about a candidate’s personal life and family dynamics.
Feminists and social conservatives have argued, from very different perspectives, that the personal is political – that how people treat their friends and family speaks to their core values. And for a time, open discussion of previously hushed-up transgressions, including public mea culpas about them, helped Americans develop new standards of gender equity and personal accountability, as well as more tolerance for the complexity of family life.
For most people today, a politician’s divorce is no longer a deal breaker. Infidelity is trickier, especially when accompanied by hypocrisy, since Americans are actually more disapproving of male infidelity than they used to be. Still, most of the public seems willing to live with that as well, if the offender asks for forgiveness and the spouse extends it.
But after so many years of exposes, apologies and rehabilitation campaigns, we have may have reached the point where scandals about a politician’s personal misbehavior have simply become a new form of reality TV, with the miscreants temporarily expelled from the tribe and sent to Redemption Island to compete for who gets to make the first comeback. Today even Newt Gingrich, now on his third marriage and having been involved in an extramarital affair while lambasting President Clinton for the same behavior, thinks he has a shot at the presidency.
Maybe it’s time to pay a little more attention to judging the political by the political – like who fudges statistics, misrepresents data, lies about opponents, and caters to special interests and lobbyists.
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