Friday, November 30, 2007

Things I Don't Get

It seems like it wasn't so long ago that the idea of the President having sex with someone who was not his wife was seen as a profound threat to the nation, and so heinous that dissembling about it required impeachment proceedings, and a 40 million dollar, 50 month investigation by an independent counsel.

So, what I don't get is why the GOP is considering a candidate who is a serial adulterer, and who was seeing another woman (and then another another woman) while his wife was living in the executive mansion. He was also spending taxpayer dollars on enabling his affairs, and using some questionable accounting to boot. I mean, at least Bill Clinton had the financial responsibility to misbehave in a place where the Secret Service were going to be anyway, and nobody had to drive to the Hamptons. Monica wasn't on the government payroll (she was an unpaid intern) and she didn't have her own car and driver.

If, as has often been said, it wasn't the adulterous sex, it was the lying about it that was the problem, then why is the GOP considering a serial adulterer who is also very loose with the truth?
Last weekend, questions about Mr. Giuliani’s use of facts moved front and center in the campaign. Mr. Giuliani charged that “violent crime and murder went up” in Massachusetts while Mr. Romney was governor. The number of reported killings did go up in those years, but the state’s overall rate of violent crime went down, according to statistics compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mr. Romney accused Mr. Giuliani of having “a real problem with facts,” and aides circulated a statement calling Mr. Giuliani’s crime statistics “about as accurate as his prostate cancer survival numbers for England.”

“He has now done this time and again, making up facts that just happen to be wrong, and facts are stubborn things,” Mr. Romney said.

Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist who once worked for Mr. Giuliani, said he doubted that the issue would hurt him politically.

“When he talks about New York, people see it,” Mr. Luntz said of Mr. Giuliani, “and they feel it, and if a number isn’t quite right, or is off by a small amount, nobody will care, because it rings true to them.”
So, I guess if you think like Frank Luntz, it's OK to lie to people, if the lies are pretty and jive with people's prejudices. Hmm. I guess that's one approach.

In which case, I guess the answer to my quandary may be simple, and boil down to the double-standard that goes by the blogger acronym IOKIYAR. Despite the fact that in the 90s a lying adulterer in the White House was a national crisis, cause for impeachment, depositions and a massive independent investigation, the idea of electing a far more flagrant lying adulterer and office abuser to the Presidency is just fine. Despite Monica-gate dominating the news and being the central focus of our political debate for months, discussion of Rudy and his women remains primarily a New York City story. Why? It's simple, I guess.

It's OK If You're A Republican.

(You know, maybe, just maybe, all that hoopla and folderol during the Clinton era wasn't really about sex or lying about sex at all, it was just the GOP practicing the converse of IOKIYAR, NOKIYAD. Nothing's OK If You're A Democrat. Any guesses what it will be like after we elect another Democrat in 2008?)