Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

Does the sex life/personal life of your politician really matter to you? Should it?

Last summer, the province of Nova Scotia obsessed over the marriage difficulties of Premier Rodney Macdonald. Some voters complained that he ran on “family values” and therefore should have been above reproach when it comes to the conduct of his own nuclear family. But is that really true? Afterwards, the Premier challenged me to “define a family” in this day and age. He was correct.

Sadly, people that elect people to have power over them often expect behavior which is uncommon. Just like their “uncommon” power. But how high should these personal standards be, even if you subscribe to that notion?

Within hours of the disclosure of U.S. Senator Larry E. Craig’s arrest and conviction after an undercover sex sting in an airport washroom, Republican Senate leaders wanted him out. Although Craig had only pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor infraction of disorderly conduct, this was too much of a scandal for U.S. Republicans. There were allegations of homosexuality – and this from a politician that had railed against gays as he played to his base in Idaho. Senator Craig had even gloated over the Clinton/Lewisnky scandal that Bill “was a naughty boy, a very naughty boy.”

But where is the morality in undercover operations that involve consenting adults and end up destroying lives – including Craig’s and, even more tragically, his long-suffering wife and daughter?

How can America, or Canada, for that matter, countenance all the sex and violence in movies, music, TV, and advertising, and then censure those most visible and vulnerable for playing the angles?

The personal lives of Peter Mackay and Belinda Stronach were such that CTV national news ran the breakup as a lead story with Lloyd Robertson, culminating in Mackay’s fabulous self-pitying-potato-patch-digging camera opportunity. The fact that Belinda had crossed the floor to the Liberals was secondary to the breakup with the Deputy Leader of the Conservatives. Peter was sincere in his plight and pain. He played for the cameras because, heck, that’s what we wanted/expected. Why fight it?

I think we should fight it. How someone administrates, and leads, not if they are gay or straight or married or philandering, should matter.

Leadership does not mean a total command of personal virtue anymore than a doctor can operate on his own foot. Strangely, we seem to feel that leaders who are alcoholics are still morally better than those that lack sexual restraint.

The truth is we only need those skill-sets that affect leadership, management, and policy development and administration. But we seem to value notions of virtue more than educational background or intellectual capacity – the very things we really do need in a politican. Bush was ultimately more competitive from an electoral perspective because he represented a party that prioritized “moral standards” (read sex) over the Democrats scandal-ridden Bill Clinton.

Voters often make a decision that is populist — whom would I “have a beer with.”

Democracy, like a family, is as imperfect as the human beings that comprise it; and while we get the politicians that we deserve, they often get a hypocritical electorate that they don’t.