If Mitt Romney's ancestors' marital practices are fair game, why are those of the Democratic front-runner herself "taboo"?
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BY JAMES TARANTO
Monday, February 26, 2007
Poly Wanna Cracker
The Associated Press discovers a scandal . . . well, not exactly a scandal, but more of a . . . uh, we can't quite figure out what it is, so you tell us:
<<< While Mitt Romney condemns polygamy and its prior practice by his Mormon church, the Republican presidential candidate's great-grandfather had five wives and at least one of his great-great grandfathers had 12.
Polygamy was not just a historical footnote, but a prominent element in the family tree of the former Massachusetts governor now seeking to become the first Mormon president.
Romney's great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, married his fifth wife in 1897. That was more than six years after Mormon leaders banned polygamy and more than three decades after a federal law barred the practice.
Romney's great-grandmother, Hannah Hood Hill, was the daughter of polygamists. She wrote vividly in her autobiography about how she "used to walk the floor and shed tears of sorrow" over her own husband's multiple marriages. >>>
Now, this column yields to no one in our repugnance to polygamy. The Supreme Court held in 1890, "The organization of a community for the spread and practice of polygamy is, in a measure, a return to barbarism," and who are we to disagree?
But Romney's church long ago renounced polygamy. He himself not only isn't a polygamist; he doesn't even practice "serial monogamy." He married his high school sweetheart, Ann, and they've been together, just the two of them and their kids, for 37 years.
If the marital lives of a presidential candidate's great- and great-great-grandparents are a legitimate topic of journalistic inquiry, what about the marital lives of presidential candidates themselves? We have in mind a particular candidate, who, without naming any names, is now the junior senator from New York and the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Nine years ago we learned that the future senator's husband, who then held a high position in the federal government, was carrying on an extramarital sexual affair with an employee who was only a few years older than the age of consent. This came to light when the husband lied under oath about it in a lawsuit in which another woman alleged that he had made unwanted sexual advances toward her. Several other women also claimed that the husband either had affairs with or forced his affections upon them. The husband was not indicted for perjury, but he was impeached, though not convicted.
The senator-to-be did not divorce her husband; indeed, in her public statements at least, she not only stood by her man but made him out to be the victim of what she called "the vast right-wing conspiracy." Now, according to the Washington Post, she wants the whole topic to be off-limits:
<<< [New York's junior senator] has a new commandment for the 2008 presidential field: Thou shalt not mention anything related to the impeachment of her husband.
With a swift response to attacks from a former supporter last week, advisers to the New York Democrat offered a glimpse of their strategy for handling one of the most awkward chapters of her biography. They declared her husband's impeachment in 1998--or, more accurately, the embarrassing personal behavior that led to it--taboo, putting her rivals on notice and all but daring other Democrats to mention the ordeal again.
"In the end, voters will decide what's off-limits, but I can't imagine that the public will reward the politics of personal destruction," senior . . . adviser Howard Wolfson said Friday, when asked whether the impeachment is fair game for [the senator's] opponents. Earlier in the week, Wolfson dismissed references to [the senator's husband's] conduct as "under the belt." >>>
The press, as usual, is respectful of taboos when they issue from the political left. Here's an example from this week's Newsweek:
<<< Last December, a Newsweek reporter tentatively broached a delicate subject with a longstanding adviser to [New York's junior senator]: was there a concern in the . . . camp that her husband might somehow embarrass her in the campaign ahead? The reaction was swift and fierce. "If that's what you want to talk about, I'm hanging up right now," said the adviser, who did not wish to be identified even entertaining such a question.
But it is the elephant in the room. [The senator's] presidential campaign can ill afford another scandal swirling around her husband, whose second term in [high federal office] was badly disrupted by the Monica Lewinsky affair. Perhaps the [senator's supporters] are understandably worried that the Republican right will try to create a scandal where there is none or dredge up old history. >>>
An example of dredging up "old history," it seems to us, would be going back three and four generations to examine the marital practices of a candidate's ancestors. In the case of the senator from New York, the questions very much involve living history.
Based on her public actions--remaining married to her husband and publicly defending him despite his infidelity--one may wonder if this is a "polyamorous" marriage (polyamory essentially consisting of polygamy without commitment). It may also be that this has devolved into essentially a marriage of convenience--that the senator believes she is better positioned to realize her political ambitions if she remains legally bound to her husband, who is very popular at least within his own party.
No doubt liberal journalists will continue to shy away from these questions, as with the Newsweek reporter who "tentatively broached a delicate subject," instead of confronting a source with a tough question, the way reporters do with Republicans. The senator's Democratic opponents may respect her "taboo" too.
But if she gets the nomination, you can expect to hear a lot more about this, just as you did about John Kerry's dodgy activities vis-à-vis Vietnam. Like Kerry, the senator from New York may find herself unprepared because she is so used to deferential treatment from the press.
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