I think that if they started going after all the presidential candidates on the subject of their sex lives, they could really talk about very little else. I think it's a very dangerous subject for the Democrats to open, or for anyone to open, and it's a complete irrelevancy as well.
The moral here is that the continuous carping from conservatives about media unfairness to their candidates has long been more of a tactic (to intimidate reporters toward softer coverage) than a statement of coherent principle or fact.
Today, one hears the absurd claim that Bill Clinton -- with the most scrutinized personal life in presidential history -- has gotten off easy compared to George W. Bush. Cyberpundit Matt Drudge, for example, recently complained about a Los Angeles Times story on Bush's Vietnam era draft-avoidance: "I don't ever remember the Los Angeles Times doing full exposes on Clinton dodging the draft," said Drudge. In fact, the L.A. Times repeatedly probed Clinton's draft evasion and its page-one expose on Sept. 2, 1992 re-ignited the story.
For folks who are more journalist than partisan, it should be possible to apply a single standard to the issue of reporting on the private lives of politicians. Call me old-fashioned, even "conservative," but I like the traditional rules: Except where private conduct strongly connects to public office, a politician's personal life is not news. Nor is gossip about such.
In the last dozen years, these rules have been shattered, as tabloid values and a ratings-above-all-else mentality have taken over much of the corporate-owned mainstream media, especially television. In 1991, NBC devoted a five-month investigation to "The Senator's Secrets," a segment focusing on whether a Democratic Senator had, years earlier, attended parties where drugs were used and whether he'd received sex -- or just a massage -- from a beauty queen. With a political press corps that seems to have grown bored covering politicians who aren't celebrities, personal gossip wins out over public issues and probes of "the character issue" are reduced to sex, drugs and draft dodging.
Pundits more readily find a character flaw when politicians partake of consensual sex than when they partake of policies that comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. During the journalistic jihad of 1998, it was telling to see national news outlets become ferocious watchdogs chasing President Clinton's evasions about his private life when these same outlets acted more like toothless lapdogs as Clinton dissembled about major public issues from welfare to NAFTA to overseas bombings.
On the slippery slope into politicians' private lives, mainstream journalists have offered various excuses for abandoning old rules.
THE "NEW MEDIA" MADE ME DO IT: Once, only tabloid newspapers trafficked in gossip about public figures. Now there's the World Wide Web, which feeds talk radio, which feeds "all-news" cable. If we don't publish what millions of people have already heard or read, we're acting as censors, or people will think we missed the story. And, in the 24-hour news cycle, if we hold back to check the facts ourselves, we'll be beaten by the competition.
Yes, there are new pressures, perhaps none more significant than conglomerate ownership prodding news outlets toward quick ratings and short-term profits. But mainstream journalistic values themselves have eroded. Take the Gary Hart case. For the historically challenged, in 1987 there was no Web, no Drudge -- and CNN, with little clout, was all that existed in all news cable. It was "old media" journalists who stalked Hart: The Miami Herald set up a stakeout at his D.C. home and a Washington Post reporter asked, "Have you ever committed adultery?"
IT'S NOT ABOUT SEX: What we're covering isn't sex, it's his judgment (Hart).