TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/012792/0127640.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.0 KB | 125 lines

                                                                                ESSAY, Page 68

Private Lives: How Relevant?


By Michael Kinsley


    Here we go again. Last week two New York City tabloids,
the Post and the Daily News, suddenly front-paged some old
allegations about past extramarital activities by Arkansas
Governor Bill Clinton, the media-crowned Democratic front
runner. And thus, with a heartfelt squeamishness that outsiders
will find hard to credit, the American press takes up some
unfinished business from four years ago: deciding what to
publish about presidential candidates' private lives.

    The Gary Hart follies of the 1987-88 campaign left the
issue unresolved. But the particulars of that episode
established a standard few future candidate sex scandals could
hope to match: the misbehavior was current. The perpetrator was
virtually caught with his pants down. He had specifically
invited scrutiny of his private life: "Follow me around, I don't
care." And the behavior was deemed to be specifically relevant
to pre-existing questions about the candidate's "character."
Since Hart was widely suspected of philandering, evidence that
he actually did philander was admissible to the public debate.
Evidence of philandering by a candidate not previously suspected
of it presumably would fail this odd test.

    Many journalists hoped the Gary Hart standard would stick
and thereby excuse them from further contemplation of this
distressing subject. They hoped especially for an unwritten rule
that only ongoing goings-on count. But it's probably not going
to be that easy. Nor should it be.

    Musings on this ripe topic often muddle three distinct
questions: First, what level of proof is required of stories
about marital infidelity? Second, should such stories be
suppressed, even if provably true, out of respect for the
candidate's privacy? And third, are past extramarital affairs
(to take the meat-and-potatoes issue here) relevant to a
candidate's qualifications for office?

    Question One is simple, in theory. Sexual allegations
should meet the same standard of proof as allegations on any
other subject. By their nature, sexual allegations are often
furtive and hard to prove. That is a perfectly good reason not
to publish them.

    But there is a genuine dilemma. Rumors can become so thick
and widespread that not to report their existence -- even if
they cannot be proved -- becomes a kind of dishonesty. The
Washington Post once got in trouble for publishing a rumor
without proof it was true, and defended itself editorially on
grounds that, well, it's true there was a rumor. Much chortling
and indignation at that. But it's not a worthless point. Past
profiles of Clinton, in TIME and elsewhere, have reported vague
rumors about marital infidelity as exactly that, and rightly so.

    The specific accusations published last week have been
peddled for more than a year by a disgruntled former state
employee Clinton had fired. The purveyor has zero evidence, and
Clinton and the women allegedly involved all deny it. But the
stories were published in the Star, a supermarket tabloid,
picked up by the two New York papers, and thus became fair game
for everyone else.

    It is easy to sneer at this process whereby the daintier
elements of the press can enjoy sex while still claiming to have
preserved their virginity: they simply wait for their less
fastidious brethren to report something, then report -- with
distaste -- that it has been reported. But it's harder to know
how to avoid the problem. The fact that a story claiming that
Bill Clinton has had six mistresses appeared on the front page
of the New York Post is of legitimate news value to the readers
of the New York Times. At some point the Times must have faith
that its readers, if offered the same evidence, are as capable
as its editors of dismissing such stories as unreliable.

    But why should such stories be published even if they are
true? The question here is not whether past sexual adventures
are relevant to a candidate's fitness for office. That's
Question Three. Question Two is who gets to decide Question
Three. And the answer is: the voters, not journalists, should
decide. I may think that a candidate's past or even present
sexual activities are completely irrelevant compared with his
views on the federal deficit (which the Star has chosen to
ignore). In fact, that's pretty close to what I do think. But
what right do I have, as a journalist in a democracy, to decide
that for others?

    Obviously, if there was general agreement among the voters
that a candidate's sexual history is politically irrelevant, it
would not matter much to candidates what the New York Post chose
to publish about their sexual histories, or even whether or not
what the Post published was true. What makes this subject so
thorny for politicians and journalists alike is precisely that
they fear it is political dynamite and will indeed affect how
people vote. And if people wish to vote against a candidate
because he has cheated on his wife (even if his wife doesn't
care and is, in fact, part of the conspiracy of silence), the
press should not be in the business of playing censor and
denying them information for fear they'll misuse it.

    So the proper test for the journalist is not whether he
thinks the information is politically relevant, but whether he
thinks it would be politically relevant to a significant number
of voters. Obviously this isn't an exact science. My own sense
is that the current line is somewhere between a dalliance or two
many years ago and more energetic misbehavior recently. More
forthright testing of that line might produce some pleasant
surprises for those journalists who fear that their fellow
citizens are too prudish for the country's good. At the least,
it would force the citizenry to decide how much they really care
about a candidate's sexual history, and might thereby hasten the
day when journalists could, with a clean conscience, stop
reporting such matters.