When Is Presidential Behavior Public and When Is It Private

On February 27, 1998, the Philadelphia Inquirer quoted a hospital administrator who runs a Republican professional women's group in Louisiana as saying, Well, let me tell you about my dearest friend. Her son has a rare heart disease, and at one time she had a $160,000 medical bill because she couldn't get health insurance. So we're talking about the sex scandal, and she tells me, Because in the White House, I can get the insurance now. That's all she call come up with! This is a person with a big IQ. I wanted to say to her, about the fact that because of Clinton, our moral foundation is built on sand? There is a similar sense of bewilderment in press accounts. U.S. News and World Report, for example, asked on its February 2 cover, Is He Finished? and showed a stern Clinton dwarfed by a grainy, smiling Lewinsky. that issue, columnist Gloria Borger's disbelief is evident in her hypothetical explanation for the voters' continued approval of presidency: Look at it this way: Hillary ability to separate her own personal anguish from the political anger she feels is not unlike Bill ability to persuade voters to separate private life from public character. Most voters now even accept this notion that somehow one side of the brain doesn't affect the other.(1) Where pundits predicted that the allegations would undercut public confidence in presidency, the opposite seemed to be the case. approval ratings stayed above 60 percent through May. When a reporter questioned whether it was healthy for the public to feel that presidents' personal lives are not relevant, Clinton declined to answer the question. What explains this disconnection between the assumptions of reporters and the polled responses of citizens? answer is simple: the public makes a distinction between private and public character and between the personal and the presidential. So, for example, 80 percent of a national sample reported in late February(2) that In judging Clinton, we focus on how the country is doing and policies, and not on private life. Sixty-five percent agreed with the statement, The public has become more realistic and accepts that political leaders be judged on their job performance not their personal life.(3) Sixty-seven percent told the same pollsters that the president should be able to withhold certain private matters, and a majority (59 percent) found it understandable [that] he would not tell the truth about sex life.(4) Even if one supposes that Clinton did have an affair, 66 percent believe that that is his business and has nothing to do with this job.(5) Even when pollsters explicitly ask about ethics, the public-private distinction holds up, with 59 percent saying that it is for Clinton to be unethical in personal life while maintaining integrity as president.(6) Why the distinction between the personal and the presidential? part it is because revelations about the sex lives of presidents from Franklin Roosevelt through John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson have lowered public expectations about marital fidelity in the White House. Eighty-eight percent report that presidents have had equally bad private lives.(7) Similarly, three out of four say, Clinton's faults are no worse than other presidents.(8) Based in part on the conclusion that some of the nation's great presidents have led less than exemplary private lives, 84 percent now tell surveyors that Someone can be a good president even if you disapprove of personal life.(9) Also, it is possible that at least the 24 percent who say they can imagine circumstances where you'd commit adultery(10) have concluded that those who live in glass houses not throw stones. This conclusion is borne out by the finding that 51 percent think that moral standards are the same as the average married man's, while 6 percent consider them higher. …