Forget the Rule of Law; It’s Sex After All

Speaker-to-be Bob Livingston’s decision Saturday to resign over disclosures of marital infidelities is tragic. Not because the country or the Republican Party is losing a great leader--it isn’t--but because it compounds the confusion that has dominated our political debate between the public and the private realms.

The floor of Congress is not the appropriate venue for Livingston to tell his wife, as he did in the middle of an impeachment debate, that he loves her “very much.” Nor is his resignation a sign of political valor. Instead, it blurs irreparably the line between the president’s serial infidelities and his serial lying under oath.

Livingston’s resignation makes nonsense of the GOP’s endlessly repeated claim that this is about “the law.” Far from setting an example for Bill Clinton or being a tool to expedite his resignation, it has allowed the White House to change the subject. Livingston’s move instantly became Exhibit B in “the politics of personal destruction.”

The president must be overjoyed that his survival now becomes a test of morality, not legality. So must politico-sexual absolutists like Jerry Falwell. Last week, Falwell declared that Livingston “should have told the people involved that he was not qualified for [the speakership], and should have withdrawn himself.” He added, “Out of 226 Republicans in the House, there ought to be a man or woman who has been faithful to his or her spouse all the way.” If the GOP wants to officially take its cues from Falwell, it should resign itself to losing its majority status.

This confusion between what we render unto Caesar and what unto God has been growing more confusing--with each passing month--especially within the ranks of the GOP. Dan Quayle called adultery “the question” for anyone running in 2000 (he volunteered that in his case the answer is no). The GOP’s voice of conscience, William Bennett, advised prospective presidential candidates to “forget it” if adultery is part of their baggage. And Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) told the nation last week, “[Livingston] lied under a different oath and that is the oath to his wife . . . I am going to struggle through this.”

According to a Republican insider, there were enough members who were “struggling” that it became clear Livingston could lose the speakership in the January floor vote. So he resigned. Too bad he didn’t have the backbone to do it in October after presiding over a half-trillion dollar pig-in-a-poke budget that broke his vow to voters not to exceed the spending caps and not to raid the Social Security fund. No, he had to resign over breaking his vow to his wife.

Livingston described himself as someone “who understands that politics is the art of the possible.” Unfortunately, what this country needs is politicians who, in the words of Vaclav Havel, practice politics as “the art of the impossible.”

By spotlighting our political leaders’ private weaknesses, we are in danger of being led by men and women who have no private weaknesses or, indeed, private vision, thoughts or ideas--by smiling, handshaking robots programmed with the requisite poll-tested policies and focus-group tested sound bites.

“It is an unhappy country that needs heroes,” says Brecht’s Galileo. America today is an unhappy country that needs heroes, leaders, teachers and great men and women who confront the truly major moral issues of our time: the millions living in poverty, violence and despair amid unprecedented prosperity. Some of these leaders will have spotless private lives; some will not. Let’s hope we grow up enough as a nation in the months to come to reach a consensus that, politically, this is very much beside the point.