To be sure, I was disappointed when I learned about Herman Cain’s behaviour and his extramarital affair(s). But I do tend to agree with Dennis Prager’s assessment of what adultery tells us about a political candidate, which is to say, not much. This is as true for Herman Cain as it is for Bill Clinton.
Nothing here is in any way meant to be a defense of adultery. As a religious Jew, I believe it violates one of the Ten Commandments. As a married person, I know how much it would hurt my wife and how much it would hurt me if the other had an affair. But marriage is too complex an arena to draw any immediate conclusions about a person. Are we to label a man who takes loving care of his chronically ill wife and who has a discreet affair no more than an adulterer who merits disdain and mistrust? Is a woman who stays in an emotionally abusive marriage for the sake of her children someone with little integrity because she sought to be held in another man’s loving arms? The questions and nuances are innumerable.
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Yet, Andrea, I would say that you and Mr. Praeger dispute your own thesis in your argument. To wit, one must analyse the “special circumstances” for the adulterous behaviour before drawing conclusions about the political candidate. I believe one can choose to question the veracity and trustworthiness of the promises and choices made by: a man who engages in both casual and long-term marital affairs (often simultaneously), a man who uses his position of power to serially proposition women he meets, a man who engages in increasingly reckless sexual behaviour, and one who betrays and lies to his terminally ill wife.
What I would have preferred from Mr. Praeger, and you, I guess, is any evidence that one should and can discount such behaviour when examining the character and judgement of people who present themselves for executive positions in public life.
Perhaps my point was more that serious moral flaws do not discount the contribution a person makes. The examples of David in the Bible or Martin Luther King Jr., who apparently cheated on his wife, jump to mind.
I take your point, though.