I long ago lost track of how many times Europeans and Europhiles have patronizingly quizzed me down about it.
Why do Americans care so much about politicians having affairs? What does that have to do with anything? That’s their personal life, not their professional life. Why can’t Americans simply judge a politician as a politician, not as a husband or wife?
The argument is always the same. Americans are puritanical and even immature for caring about such prurient matters. Why are we shocked by such things? Why can’t we just be more like Europeans, who are supposedly far more sophisticated for simply accepting the fact that sometimes married people have affairs. Most of all, just don’t make a big deal out of it.
Not make a big deal out it? Excuse me while I chuckle.
The entire world now knows that French President Françoise Hollande was tooling around Paris on a scooter so he could have an affair with actress Julie Gayet. All 7 billion of us are very much aware of this because France has been, well, making a very big deal about it.
So much for discretion.
But these things just happen, right? Well apparently someone forgot to tell that to Hollande’s wife, Valerie Trierweiler. She spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, being treated for “shock.”
I have no doubt that Hillary slapped Bill around at some point over . . . I dunno, choose your favorite Bill Clinton affair. But check herself into a hospital? For “shock?” And stay there for a couple of weeks? Holy shit. I think t
And the best part? Valerie Trieweiler wasn’t even Françoise Hollande’s wife. She was just his “official partner” of the past few years. Nor is she the “First Lady” since they don’t really have that concept in France. Though she actually was a “wife” to her second husband, a guy named Denis Trierweiler. They have three children and were still married in 2005 when she started having her own affair with Hollande; her divorce proceedings didn’t begin until 2007.
And of course, couldn’t you guess, it wasn’t just Val who was sneaking around when she got with Franky; he was conducting his own affair as well. Hollande was still with Ségolène Royal, his partner of three decades with whom he has four children. Unsurprisingly, it seems those four kids are still kinda bitter that their dad left their mom for Trierweiler.
Makes you wonder, exactly, why Val is “shocked” by Franky’s indiscretion.
Perhaps she’s not. The media speculated that the “shock” diagnosis is a polite way of saying Trierweiler freaked out and downed a bunch of pills. So maybe she’s not actually an Old World drama queen. Maybe being embarrassed in front of the entire world by the revelation of her partner’s tawdry affair with a movie star (talk about dull clichés) actually drove her to attempt suicide.
Sigh.
Why can’t we keep the personal and the political apart? Maybe because it’s not possible. Maybe doing so is an illusion.
Perhaps the lesson here is that we shouldn’t be so quick and proud to compartmentalizing everything. This is This, That is That, and you know we really must keep it all separate: maybe that’s not an accurate reflection of the real world.
Organizing things into categories can be very helpful when trying to make sense of all the confusion and chaos around us. But at best, categories are a problematic tool for understanding reality, 
not a realistic representation of it. The real world is unpredictable and messy; most things in a person’s life overlap, connect, and combine. Rigid categories hamper our ability to tease truth from life’s muddy murkiness, with all its complexities and fuzzy borders.
When we try divide everything and fit all the pieces into neat little containers, simplistically insisting that never the twain shall meet, we actually cloud our understanding of complex issues instead of clarifying them.
Apologies to Rudyard Kipling, but the twain have a way of meeting, whether we want them to or not. Spouses find out about lovers. The personal is political.
Does a politician’s love life have any direct bearing on foreign affairs or fiscal policy? Of course not. I’ve never heard anyone make the case that it does. For example, no one thinks Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was driven by that affair he had with his secretary.
But it’s näive to think you can draw a sharp line between lying about This and lying about That. Why isn’t a politician doing what they said they’d do when you voted for them? Could the fact that a person blatantly and chronically lies to and deceives their loved ones help explain, at least to some degree, why they chronically lie to and deceive their constituents?
Is it too much to ask that a politician not only have economic philosophies and foreign policy goals I agree with, but that they also be at least somewhat trustworthy?
And yes, we can get cynical and say they’re all power hungry, careerist liars. But if that’s the case, instead of fatalistically throwing up our arms, we should have a serious conversation about serious political reform. For example, we once came to the conclusion that heredity isn’t the best way to choose political rulers, and the American and French revolutions banished hereditary aristocracies. But 200+ years later, if we can’t expect our elected political leaders to be anything more than power hungry, careerist liars, then maybe we need to consider the possibility that popular elections preceded by mass media campaigns are no longer the best way to choose them either.
Franky and Val had to have a difficult conversation about the state of their relationship, and the result was Slitsville. Maybe citizens and politicians also need to have a difficult conversation with each other about the state of their states.
Expect more. Demand more. If our modern republics really are to be governments of the people, by the people, and for the people, then shouldn’t we want smart, trustworthy people to run them for us? Is that really too much to ask?
Or must we simply accept the crass cynicism that says boys will be boys, politicians will be politicians, and we deserve no better than liars and deceivers?