If you hold the spoils system above all, then he has a point.
Who the hell says the president even needs to be married? And there are other kinds of marriages besides the strict monogamous kind. But like I said, it’s a pipe dream.
Seems to me that Edwards would more likely fall into the latter category.
You know, here in Canada it wasn’t that long ago we had an enduring Prime Minister who was a bachelor and seen frequently with a different gorgeous woman each time. He ended up marrying a high society woman who subsequently strayed from him to be a groupie for the Rolling Stones rock band. But I digress.
Look, it has nothing to do with sexual morality and everything to do with character. Edwards put his supporters efforts and political financial investments in jeapardy with respect to their hopes and dreams for his own immediate gratification. The resentment of his supporters is quite evident Only Edwards never generated the immense enthusiam that Obama has. That is why I’ve asked .
Would the powerful hopes and dreams that Obama has garnered overcome the resentment? Would his supporters plow on and forgive him to make him the nominee and keep the hope alive ?
Heh, I knew you’d think that Argent. 
But what I believe is that their number of sexual conquests is mostly irrelevant to their capacity to act as leaders. (I guess you could make the argument that being able to convince many women to sleep with you = being good at persuading and leading people, but I won’t since there are many kinds of leadership and sleeping with as many people as you can isn’t everyone’s goal either.)
Of course, the problem is when there’s dishonesty about the whole thing. Cheating on your spouse (that is, sleeping with someone else without the knowledge or consent of your spouse) is a mark against a candidate’s morality. It doesn’t necessarily disqualify them, but it’s something to consider.
It would make him equal to McCain. So what? It’s not like the Republicans would have any ability to raise it as an issue since they’ve got an admitted serial adulterer on their own ticket.
McCain’s adultery is old news. If Bill Clinton was able to run again for the presidency, he’d win hands down against anyone the Republicans put up.
I don’t see you criticizing McCain or any other adulterer on the same level as Edwards.
Right, but if they get forced out of a campaign, what does the reason matter in terms of result?
Then the charge isn’t really adultery, a private matter, but hypocrisy, something that becomes suspected in other matters, including public ones.
When was Edwards a “family values” candidate in matters of personal conduct, not economic opportunity, anyway?
Maybe on TV, but not politics. The more he’s run, the more support he’s lost. What would he base a comeback on?
Martin Luther King cheated on his wife repeatedly. Was he a great leader? Should he be celebrated?
As long as we’re dealing in pure hypotheticals, what if it was revealed that John McCain was the Zodiac Killer? Would he be finished?
Upon what do you base your certainty that the OP question is hypothetical?
I’m actually surprised **Edwards ** ran at all knowing this would come out sometime. I can understand his wife not wanting to rehash everything and the media - as usual - doesn’t care.
As for the OP - if it were Obama I would certainly take it into consideration. However, it’s not Obama, and no one has come forth to say they have had anything to do with Obama sexually. Leads me to think he has not had an affair. I wouldn’t have an affair on his wife either if I were him. Then again, I wouldn’t have an affair on Hillary either and Billy did just that. Sorry for being crude but getting his dick sucked in the white house doesn’t appear to have hurt his money making post-presidential career at all . So I think the US and others are luke warm to affairs.
I don’t see why any politician’s love life should be of any importance. I want someone who can run the country. Whether or not they can keep a marriage together is really not important in my opinion. Half of all marriages in this country end in divorce.
I don’t care if McCain had an affair, nor do I care about Obama, or Edwards. I’m pretty pissed off about the media attention about it. Russia invades Ossetia and I flip on cable news and it’s wall-to-wall talk about where Edwards put his penis. Grow up CNN, there’s hundreds of people dying in Georgia. Russia invaded a effing country, I think that’s big news.
Upon the fact that no such revelation has been made about Obama. Confidence has nothing to do with it. As it stands, the question is hypothetical by definition. If you’re asking what confidence I have that no such revelation might be possible in the future, I have no idea. You could ask the same question about anybody. I do think that if Obama had any skeletons, that either Hillary or McCain would have found them by now.
Not true. Some idiot in Chicago said he had sex with Obama.
And the other half end in death. A gloomy prospect either way.
But that’s not what sells. The major news organizations are required to turn profits, something that wasn’t the case before the corporatization wave of the Eighties. A lot fewer people want to understand foreign wars and other such “big news”, but everyone is susceptible to titillation. Affairs everyone can understand, and even fantasize about.
It isn’t CNN’s fault, really, they’re doing what they have to as business managers. it’s the people’s fault for providing the market CNN is supplying.
As of today.
But you equate it with McCain being the Zodiac Killer in terms of probability.
Right but that got no tread at all…not even a sound bite. McCain’s adulterous happenings back in January (?) got a NYTimes article and play for a week on CNN. I think it has to do with credibility. They guy saying he blew Obama or the other way around was a crack head wasn’t he? The woman who McCain supposedly has liasons with actually carried some credibility. Didn’t McCain’s staff tell McCain to chill on seeing her?
Should we celebrate his adultery? Should we say, it really doesn’t matter because he did important good things? Frankly when I first read about it I was surprised his opposition didn’t use it more to discredit him.
I think we need to put our human qualities in their proper perspective. An affair shouldn’t disqualify someone from office or mean they can’t be an effective leader or public servant, but I don’t think we should celebrate it either.
People succumb to temptation and can recover and even learn and be better people for it, but someone who repeatedly breaks their promise to their spouse seems like a person who won’t hold their oath of office in high regard either.
Marriages of convenience, open marriages between two consenting adults, is another matter. For the most part I think a persons personal life should be separate from their job but one does affect the other.
I don’t think we’ll ever hear of any Obama exploits unless or until he’s been in the White House, if ever. Obama is far too clever and ambitious a man to have that kind of skeleton in his closet. He knows that as a young black man running for President in the US, he has to be absolutely above reproach. He’s not about to make that kind of mistake.
Obama, unlike McCain, is a very cerebral man. He’s not going to let his passions or his horniness run away with him. He has a beautiful wife and kids, whom he obviously loves. They and his ambitions are enough to allow him to keep it in his pants until such time as ambition is irrelevant, if such time ever comes. Heck, for all I know, he may never cheat on his wife. It would be nice to think he woudn’t. But as others have said, I don’t really give a darn. It’s not relevant to the issue of whether or not someone makes a good president.
One of my favorite responses Obama gave to some commentator while being interviewed was when the interviewer asked him how he feels the media is treating his wife…and he looked into the camera and said…"… they need to … lay of my wife" It was such an endearing moment. The interviewer [maybe Chuck Gibson] laughed a little and let it go.
Awesome.