However, if the "character" you are referring to is sexual probity, then yes, I would say it doesn't matter very much.
Consider some of the President's and leading public figures with significantly taited sexual probity, who we clearly know had several affairs while in high places:
Kennedy, Johnson, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Martin Leuther King, Jefferson.
Now consider some national figures about whose lives much is known, and who are widely considered to have been squeeky clean, sexually:
Carter, Ford, Nixon, Hoover, Coolidge.
I would say the correlation between sexual probity, fully living by all the Church's rules, and effective or even great, leadership is very low. I'm tempted to say it might be negative. <g>
Sure, its nice to have someone who is energetic, inspiring, creative, forceful and a great leader, and who also has a squeeky clean personal sexual life.
Personally, I don't place the later very high in my list of priorities for a national leader. For a minister, that's a different matter.
We are in this mess because of a great collision of the I think largely hypocritical moralism and piety of the nation, and its pragmatic recognition of the much greater importance of vision and balance in our leaders. I'm for the European view, unambiguously and without reservation. I'm pleased that the public, if not the media, are much more there than previously.
I think the moral decay argument is absolute bunk.
I think the media and Washington elite are swept up in a sort of legal absolutism. "The hightest law enforcement officer in the land." etc. Some proportion is necessary. And the sin of the lie relates not only to the subject he lied about, but also the fact that he had been cornered, unjustly by his zealous political enemies in the Paula Jones suit.
If the President could be proven to have committed perjury concerning what he did or didn't do with Paula Jones, that would be more serious. Because those questions were rightfully asked, and a perjurious response would clearly have affected the outcome of the case. But that suit was used by right wing enemies of the President as an inquisition vehicle into his unrelated sex life. The judge subsequently ruled the Lewinsky line of questions not material in the Jones suit. But too late. And why? Because in civil suits ususally such matters aren't determined by the Judge until trial. And the judge nievely thought her gag order sealing the testimony would protect the President from any prejudical unfairness of following that usual rule.
Doug |
