Presidents' Private and Public Lives
Star Tribune, August 26, 1998
By Katherine Kersten

The American people, we hear, are tired of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The president has lied forcefully and repeatedly about his affair, yet a majority of Americans remain pleased with his job performance.

Why? Because, folks say, what he did with Lewinsky was part of his private life -- and thus no business of ours. "Hey, it's between Hillary and him. It's got no bearing on how he's running the country. He's 'fessed up (well, sort of). It's time to move on."

Last week, intrigued by this point of view, I visited my local bookstore and surveyed the section on American political biography . Sure enough: I couldn't find a single presidential biography divided into two parts -- public and private halves. On the contrary, most biographies focused on the constant intertwining of public and private in their subject's life -- the way, for example, that his character traits and early experiences shaped his actions as president.

Common sense tells us that any president's life -- any person's life -- is not two stories, but one. As in small things, most often, so in large. Sam Adams put it well over two hundred years ago: "He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country."

Obviously, a president driven by raw self-interest may preside over economic good times, or promote workable policies. But in a democracy, the people's trust is everything. If a president loses it through dishonorable actions, his ability to lead effectively is rightly at an end.

Whether we care to admit it or not, Clinton's conduct in the Lewinsky scandal tells us a lot about the public man, and what makes him tick. Our president has revealed himself to be reckless, allergic to taking responsibility for his actions, and almost breathtakingly selfish. Worse yet, he is a cynical and accomplished liar, who relies on his media skills to hoodwink the people to whom he owes his powerful position.

To trust such a man -- especially in public matters where the stakes are high -- is simply and willfully foolish. Apparently, Hillary's known as much for years. According to the New York Times, in 1974 -- even before she married Clinton -- she reportedly sent her father and brother to help on his Congressional campaign because she was "worried about the rumors of his multiple romances on the road."

So much for what the Lewinsky matter reveals about Clinton. What does our collective shrug about it say about us? Indifference to perjury and obstruction of justice implies indifference to the rule of law itself. But what about Clinton's casual, extra-marital sex? Is it of public importance, or rightly of interest only to Clinton's family?

I remember the first time I saw a societal shrug about marital betrayal. It was a number of years ago in my small Iowa hometown, when the husband of someone close to me walked out on her -- and their four children -- for a younger woman.

Watching my friend's humiliation and her children's anguish, I waited for our acquaintances to show their disapproval of her husband's shameful conduct. I thought he would get fewer invitations to dinner; perhaps some of the clients her father had referred would take their business elsewhere. It didn't happen -- he paid no social price. While many shook their heads in private, the good citizens of the town seemed to view even a hint of public disapproval as "unsophisticated" and "judgmental."

Yet marriage is an institution in which not only the immediate parties, but the entire community has a stake. It is, in fact, the bedrock social institution of our common life. Marriage creates personal obligations that produce immense social benefits. As the Supreme Court stated long ago, "it is an institution, in the maintenance of which in its purity the public is deeply interested, for it is the foundation of the family and of society, without which there would be neither civilization or progress."

When spouses fail to take their obligations seriously, we all pick up the pieces. When children are born outside of marriage, we -- and they -- pay even more dearly. We are all-too-familiar with the toll that broken families take: children in poverty, swelling welfare costs, higher crime rates, armies of school social workers, harried single parents, and youth significantly at-risk for academic failure, substance abuse, and out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

Clinton's proponents urge us to be satisfied with the president's admission of guilt, so the country can "move on." But move on to what? What is our national project in 1998? What kind of a people do we want to be?

If our answer is, "whatever -- as long as I'm getting mine," the prosperity we seem to prize above all else is unlikely to endure for long. For it has its roots in the rule of law, in a virtuous citizenry, and in foundational institutions like marriage and the family -- the linchpins of our common life.

-- Katherine Kersten is a director of Center of the American Experiment in Minneapolis and a commentator for National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."