Senator's Personal Life a Campaign Issue?

[goofyfish]

http://www.hillnews.com/041002/marital.shtm

Senator Tim Hutchinson of Arkansas, Bob Jones University graduate and ordained Baptist minister, first ran for the Senate in 1996 and won, in part, due to his "family values" platform. However, he ended up divorcing his wife of 29 years and marrying a woman more than a decade his junior.

Because he campaigned as a family values candidate, should this be made part of his reelection bid? In this case, I would say yes - because he effectively made an issue of it himself.

While I'm a big believer in the don't-ask-don't-tell philosophy regarding a person's private life, if someone goes around saying things like "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" and then we find out they did, well, they've gone and screwed, err, themselves. Effectively they've turned their personal life into a measure of their public integrity. If on the other hand, a politician says "my private life is my business and not for the likes of you to giggle over" and then we find out he's been getting "personal service" from the office staff, my response is "Doooood. You da man!"

Even though it is his personal life, he originally won because he promised he'd uphold the family, which he didn't do in his own case. IMHO, it is a legitimate issue to attack his credibility.

Peace.

 

[Tiassa]

Depends

Are family values part of the current campaign? Remember Newt Gingrich? A family values politician who served his wife with divorce papers at the hospital while she was being treated for cancer?

It's one of the reasons I never gave Clinton a whole lot of crap about his sexual conduct. Until criminal conduct was proven, it was irrelevant. I knew exactly what I was voting for in a pot-smoking, sax-playing, "bimbo-factor" candidate. But if I vote for family values and get the Gingrich kind of crap, yeah, I'd say I didn't get what I was voting for, wouldn't you?

If the current candidate wants to publicly renounce his family-values platform or at least explain how events do not challenge the legitimacy of that platform, I'm happy to give him the chance.

thanx,
Tiassa

 

[Asguard]

two things

if you no-longer loved your husband\wife is it better to just stay with them?

second

In Australia we base our votes on public performance, so was he a good SENTER?

 

[goofyfish]

Originally posted by Asguard
In Australia we base our votes on public performance, so was he a good SENTER?

And that is as it should be. This is a performance issue from a slightly different angle. If an elected official runs on a gun-control platform calling for the elimination of hand guns, and it is later discovered that he owns a properly registered hand gun, there is a credibility issue. Such is the case with Senator Hutchinson's credibility when considering his stand on family values.

Peace.

 

[Asguard]

Im not holding our politicans up as high and mighty, but

I cant rember any time something like that happend here

the closest that happend was a friend of our premier got a job that the goverment was tendering out for. Our scandles are about polies lieing about election promisers. Actually the worst was the way the issues were minipulated by Little Johny last time (tamper crisis, and boat people overboard)

Generaly the Australian media dosen't look into pollies privert lives because its none of our bussiness. From what i understand Clinton HAD to disclose on Monica (am i right, thats just the impression i got here, please correct me), that couldn't happen here.