Conservatives Have Decided Adultery No Longer Matters

Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report at 2:10 PM on February 22, 2008.

The Washington Post's Michael Gerson, Bush's former chief speechwriter and someone who seems to take the issue of politics and morality seriously, devoted his latest column to John McCain's Vicki Iseman controversy. Not surprisingly, the conservative columnists defends the conservative senator against the charges first raised by the NYT.

Most of the argument is about what one would expect, but I was a little surprised to see Gerson give McCain a pass on the adultery charge, even assuming the allegations are accurate.

Even if the accusation of infidelity were true, this kind of past relationship is hardly disqualifying for high office anymore, given a series of more prurient precedents. An affair between adults is a far cry from President Bill Clinton's exploitation of an intern, which involved not merely a failure of character but also an abuse of power.

This strikes me as wrong on a few levels, and I'm actually a little surprised Gerson would put it in print. It's not the conservative line on sexual morality at all.

First, even on the surface, it's not at all clear that the Lewinsky affair would be qualitatively worse than an Iseman affair (assuming, just for discussion, that the latter actually occurred). The age differences between the participants is similar -- though I think McCain's age gap with Iseman is slightly bigger than Clinton's with Lewinsky -- and everyone was a consenting adult.

What's more, as Jonathan Chait noted, Lewinsky didn't report directly to Clinton during her internship, while McCain "had enormous leverage over Iseman. He was the Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, she was a telecommunications lobbyist. Winning his favor had great potential value for her, and alienating him would have been extremely damaging to her career."

In the minds of Republican, one is serious enough to undo a presidential election while the other, if accurate, is irrelevant?

Second, I'd argue that the Lewinsky comparison itself is flawed. Clinton was a sitting president, while McCain is a presidential candidate. In this sense, the more apt comparison is Iseman to Gennifer Flowers, not Iseman to Lewinsky -- candidate accused of adultery to candidate accused of adultery.

And, remind me, what was the response from conservatives and reporters in general in 1992 when a tabloid paid Flowers handsomely to tell her story? As I recall, the phrase "character questions" was used in relation to Clinton approximately 17 million times over the course of the campaign.

To hear Gerson tell it, McCain shouldn't endure similar questions, at all, precisely because Clinton did. Conservatives argued 18 years ago that a man who would cheat on his wife couldn't be trusted to be faithful to his country. Conservatives are now prepared to argue that McCain shouldn't even be asked about adultery?

And third, Gerson's argument turns conservative standards on morality on their ear. His pitch, in effect, is that McCain's alleged adultery is irrelevant because others have committed adultery. Except, "everybody does it" is antithetical to the right's worldview at a fundamental level. Right is right, wrong is wrong, there are clear lines on sexual morality that are not flexible or adaptable depending on who's breaking them and how.

Just to be clear, I haven't the foggiest idea if the NYT report, thin as it was, is accurate, or whether McCain's relationship with Iseman was inappropriate. Maybe we'll find out one of these days, maybe not. The point, however, is that some conservatives, who led the mob when it was Clinton failing to meet their moral standards, have suddenly decided to define deviancy down.

To borrow a '90s-era phrase, where's the outrage?

Tagged as: clinton, conservatives, mccain, republican hypocrisy, adultery, iseman, lewisnky

Steve Benen is a freelance writer/researcher and creator of The Carpetbagger Report. In addition, he is the lead editor of Salon.com's Blog Report, and has been a contributor to Talking Points Memo, Washington Monthly, Crooks & Liars, The American Prospect, and the Guardian.