Sex and the Candidate: Need to Know What? : Private lives and public issues: Where’s the proportion?

Rules are not static in this free society. What voters expect of people seeking the office of President--described by one writer as half royalty and half democracy--has changed over the years. It’s legitimate to ask how some private actions might suggest how a candidate would handle the public trust. But sometimes Americans’ basic instinct that they have a right to know any information that might help them decide whether the politician should hold the office of President runs headlong into another basic instinct: That everyone, even someone seeking the presidency, is entitled to a measure of privacy, particularly when it comes to the bedroom. Where to draw the line?

TODAY’S ISSUE: Rumors of Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton’s alleged infidelities had long circulated in political circles, but major news organizations, including The Times, have found nothing so far to substantiate them. Last week a woman’s allegations of a 12-year affair with Clinton, in a story for which she was paid handsomely by a tabloid rag, reignited speculation about Clinton. Sunday, in an appearance on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Bill and Hillary Clinton confronted the allegations. Helped enormously by his supportive, articulate wife, Clinton acknowledged “wrongdoing . . . (and) causing pain” in his marriage. He did not deny accusations of past infidelity but argued he should not be measured against a standard of “perfection.”

THE ISSUE: Fair enough, but perfection’s not the issue. The real question is, because perfection is not achievable for anyone, what are the reasonable standards by which a candidate ought to be judged? Extramarital affairs by several presidents--including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson--were documented by biographers after their deaths. Should all these men have been barred from the White House because they had extramarital affairs?

For the dead presidents, with hindsight telling us how much they accomplished, a “no” answer is easier than the case of Bill Clinton. Today’s situation is not so clear-cut. The best way to proceed is to establish a rule of proportionality: To what degree, if any, is the private action relevant to the duties of the public office? Shouldn’t our right to know about a candidate’s sex life be confined, as Susan Estrich wrote in The Times’ Sunday Opinion section, to offenses such as rape, harassment or sex discrimination?

THE PRESS: Many critics have chastised major mainstream media for even reporting Gennifer Flowers’ allegations. They say there’s now little difference between major media and supermarket tabloids. That’s going a bit far: The Star, which often pays interviewees for their tales, is known to regularly report sightings of Elvis and space aliens. This is a different animal.

However, the responsible press is not about to participate in the old “code of silence” about a politician’s private life. That’s no longer acceptable. Even so, the American public may indeed decide that there are limits to what it wants or needs to know about a candidate’s private life. In the upcoming primary election let the voters of New Hampshire decide whether those limits have now been reached.