Sign up now!
Click here to receive free updates on headline news from John T. Reed

View Cart

 Bookmark and Share

Featured Products

Succeeding
1 year Subscription to Real Estate Investor's Monthly
Distressed Real Estate Times
How to Get Started in Real Estate
How to Buy Real Estate for at Least 20% Below Market Value

Checkout
How to Order

Copyright by John T. Reed

Former presidential candidate John Edwards recently was forced to admit he has been cheating on his wife. Bill Clinton famously did the same in the 1990s. As has John McCain.

The philandering Democrats (PhDs) have lately been using their infidelities as teaching moments. For example, when Bill Clinton cheated on Hillary—again and again and again—we learned that lying under oath does not matter if the subject is sex. Who knew?

Now John Edwards has pointed out that cheating on your wife who is dying of inoperable cancer does not matter—or matters less—if she is in remission. Who knew? We are still waiting to hear the logic behind that ethical standard.

I was previously appalled by the Edwards family’s decision to keep campaigning for president after Elizabeth was diagnosed with inoperable terminal cancer. They have small children. Why are they not spending all of her remaining time with each other and with their small children? Her explanation at the time her cancer was announced was, “This is what we do.” That was an idiotic “explanation.” Terminal cancer is not the flu. And what spouses and parents “do” is spend time with their families—especially when one of them is going to die in the near future.

Others have said doctors recommend that people with terminal cancer continue to go about their normal lives. Campaigning for president ain’t normal by any standard. To apply that advice to such a political campaign is mindless. A family with young children and a terminally-ill parent should be spending as much time as possible time together, not separately making speeches at rubber chicken political lunches and putting the kids in day care.

The philandering maverick syndrome (PMS) folks have also advanced our understanding of marital sexual ethics. We have now learned that John McCain frantically cheated on his wife who waited for him while he was in the Hanoi Hilton in spite of her having been injured in a car accident after he returned home and that he is excused from moral approbation for this behavior because they beat him up in North Vietnam. He was having sex with the woman now known as Cindy McCain when he was still married to his POW wife. That is why I refer to her as the potential “First Other Woman” in contrast to Hillary who was the “First Woman” and Laura Bush who is a “First Lady.” McCain’s membership in the notorious Tailhook Association had far more to do with his infidelity than his stay in the Hanoi Hilton.

To his credit, adulterer McCain takes responsibility for his infidelity which he calls “irresponsible.” It is only partisan apologists like Sean Hannity who argue that his Hanoi Hilton experience excuses his adultery. It does not. If it does, what other non-Straight-Talk-Express behavior undesirable in presidents can we expect?

Then there were Gary Hart and Teddy Kennedy. Hart ran for president in 1984 and 1988 and was the front runner in ’88, until he pulled out. Why? Because he got caught with Donna Rice, who was not his wife, sitting on his lap and leaving his apartment very early in the morning. Hart never admitted infidelity or apologized to his supporters. Ted Kennedy was trying to have an extramarital tryst with one of his campaign workers—Mary Jo Kopechne—but en route to a secluded parking spot, Kennedy accidentally drove his car into a channel. He escaped. Kopechne did not. She drowned. Kennedy did not report the accident. Instead, he went to his motel and called his lawyer. He subsequently ran for president, has been a senator since 1964, and generally is considered a hero of the Democrat party’s left wing.

Would someone explain to me why one extramarital affair ends the careers of guys like Edwards and Hart, but other guys like Clinton, McCain, and the Kennedys, who have multiple affairs including one episode that killed a woman, another that was alleged rape, yet they get a pass.

What about Obama? Should you vote for him because he is not an adulterer? Who knows whether he is or isn’t? Before August, 2008, everyone would have said that John Edwards was clean on that score. Plus, Obama has admitted cocaine use and alcohol abuse. He claims to have quit cocaine, but he admits to having trouble quitting smoking. I never used cocaine or tobacco but it is my understanding that cocaine is far harder to quit. And he says he used cocaine and alcohol because of anguish over his multi-racial identity. I would think the problems he would face as president of the U.S. would far exceed identity anguish. What are the chances that a guy who relied on alcohol and cocaine in the past for such trivial problems will feel entitled to do the same when he has the weight of the world on his shoulders?

Reportedly, about 40% of American men have cheated on their wives. It seems to me that we therefore can, and should, select our presidents from the other 60%. The same is true of cocaine users. Most have never done that so why not select our presidents from the drug-free group?

Adulterers predictably do not care for a no-adulterers policy. They point to FDR, JFK, and other presidential cheaters as evidence of the irrelevance of that behavior pattern. Actually, to draw sound conclusions, we would need a study of how adulterers and non-adulterers have performed in a wide variety of executive positions in larger numbers than the tiny database of presidents. Logically, it is a matter of trust. One would think trustworthiness was an important quality in someone who would have the 300 million citizens of the U.S. entrust their country to him.

Presidential candidates are, it appears to me, a bunch of sociopaths. A sociopath is someone who is all about himself and who sees others as simply sometimes useful animals or objects.

My state of California will vote Democrat no matter who that party nominates. My vote does not count here. If you live in a state where your vote might decide the election, and you believe that one of these scum bags is a lesser scum bag, vote for him. Otherwise, vote libertarian or some such to send a message to the major political parties that they need to do a lot better than the likes of John McCain and Barack Obama if they want normal Americans to participate.

The “fact” that you feel you “have to” vote for either McCain or Obama does not mean you need to be happy about it or that you have to say that your guy is a great guy. Do not cheapen yourself by pretending that the virtueless are virtuous or that the experienceless have experience. American has a couple million men and women better qualified to be president than McCain and Obama. Voting for either of these clowns is like having root canal done. Get it over with and spare us the explanations about why it was great.

John T. Reed