Dr. Cleveland's Rule for Evaluating Rumors of Affairs

So, the latest Republican self-immolation in the House apparently has now also spun off nasty little rumors of an affair between two Members of the House. Let me say, straight off, that I don't give a damn whether or not that's true. My issue with today's Republicans is not the conduct of their private lives, but the scandalous and shocking conduct of their public lives. They face important moral questions in the House every day and give immoral answers. When someone is for torture and against feeding the starving, adultery is really not the big moral issue.

But that said, I'm inclined to believe that the rumors are more likely to be untrue than true. I could be proved wrong: it's maybe a 60-40 or 70-30 proposition. But the stories could just be a smear, especially considering the very shaky sources of the accusation so far. In fact, news outlets promoting this story should be ashamed for circulating these rumors without even one good source that can testify to their truth. And I am also skeptical because of my Rumored Affair Rule of Thumb: always be more skeptical of a rumored affair when the people involved are attractive.

Rumors like this get started for many reasons (including, occasionally, because the rumor is true). But people repeat them for reasons of their own. Sometimes, a rumor like this has legs because circumstantial evidence keeps it going. Sometimes, the rumor sticks because people have an ulterior motive that the rumor furthers, as in many political situations. But also, in general, people tend to repeat a sexual rumor if they think it's hot. The sexier the people in the story are, the more people like that story. It's basic human nature. So a flimsy story featuring two attractive people (or just a conspicuously attractive woman) tends to flourish despite the lack if any good reason to believe it. The reason people believe those rumors is because believing them is titillating.

People love love love talking about the rumored JFK-Marilyn Monroe affair, for example, although the evidence seems to suggest that it was basically just a one-night stand. But people love love love talking about it because nearly everyone finds at least one of those two people sexually attractive. Telling that story, or thinking about it, is a way of titillating yourself. On the other hand, you've probably never heard that Bob Hope had a confirmed and quite torrid affair with Ethel Merman, and you will probably blot that information from your mind by the middle of my next paragraph, because you really may not want to picture that.

So my rule of thumb, especially but not exclusively with show business rumors, is to take a story where the protagonists are sexy (by the standards of their profession) as suspect until proven otherwise. When the sexiness of the couple is in doubt, I go with the question of how sexy the woman in the rumor is. Rumors about sexy people fly further on flimsier wings, so when someone tells you a hot rumor about Celebrity A and Celebrity B, what they are really saying is "I enjoy thinking about Celebrity A-and/or-B having sex." They're not necessarily telling you anything else.

The current scurrilous rumor about two Republicans in the House involves two perfectly nice-looking people for their age and profession. They could not star in a teen romance movie, and neither happens to be my personal cup of tea, but for forty- and fifty-something politicians they look pretty good. And, more importantly, the female politician in the story is conventionally very attractive. When that woman's fellow Republicans gossip about her committing adultery, what they are really saying is that they enjoy thinking about that Congresswoman having some illicit sex. And a lot of them are admitting that they would like to be committing adultery with her. Maybe she actually has a lover. But that's not really the point. The rumor flourishes because the men she works with enjoy thinking about her with a lover. It goes with the territory, still, in 2015.

cross-posted from, and comments welcome at Dagblog

Nikki Haley Is Being Railroaded

cross-posted at Dagblog

Let me start with this: I don't want Nikki Haley to be Governor of South Carolina. No way. No how. I don't especially want her to win her primary, and I would actively root for her defeat in the general election. But the way Haley is being treated is dead wrong.

I don't want Haley to become Governor because I think her ideas are mistaken and misguided. I don't think modern conservatism leads to good policies. So I hope she loses. But the question of whether or not she's perfectly faithful to her husband has nothing to do with what kind of leader she would be.

Haley has now had two Republican political operatives come forward to boast that they've slept with her: first the conservative blogger Will Folks, who claimed that he was forced to blog about this because a local newspaper was going to expose it (like that makes sense), and now a lobbyist named Larry Merchant, who came forward just because. The circumstances of the accusation are absolutely bizarre. I can't recall another case where the alleged sex partners volunteer this kind of information, unless they're being paid by a scandal rag. Folks's and Merchant's motives remain an interesting question. But the bigger question is: who the hell cares?

If Haley has had relationships outside her marriage, that's a problem for her to work out with her husband. It has absolutely nothing to do with how she would serve the people of South Carolina. That's true whether she's a liberal or a conservative, a Republican or a Democrat. People can be good governors and problematic spouses, or wonderful spouses but catastrophic governors. If I thought Haley could lead South Carolina into a new golden age of prosperity but would be cuckolding her husband while she did it, I'd urge South Carolinians to elect her. If she were a model of married chastity but ruined the state during her term, that seems like a pretty bad deal for the voters. They are separate issues. And if I think this when it's my candidate getting dragged through the mud, I'm obligated to speak up when it's someone from the other side being dragged. The way Nikki Haley is being treated is wrong. Both she and the voters of South Carolina deserve better.

There are some cases in which sex scandals incidentally cast light on fitness to lead, but for a scandal to be fair game it has to have lead to some real misuse of office. If politicians use public money to enrich their lovers, that's a scandal. If they're sleeping with the lobbyists who lobby them, that's a scandal. Mark Sanford's trips to Argentina are a problem because he neglects his public duties to take them; the Governor of South Carolina can't just disappear for a week because he's in love. Eliot Spitzer's sex life is a problem partly because prostitution is illegal but mostly because the prices were so high that he had to launder money to pay, which means supporting the dirty banking that enables other, uglier crimes. But sleeping with Will Folks doesn't harm the people of South Carolina; it only harms his partner's self-esteem. (Sleeping with Will Folks is probably its own punishment.)

I'm also disturbed by the way even the usual vicious rules of the scandal game have changed because the target is a woman. I don't recall any male politician, ever, having someone inside his own party's political establishment stepping forward to smear him. Either investigative journalists dig up their own proof, or tabloid journalists pay an aggrieved ex-girlfriend who has no prospects of her own left. (Gennifer Flowers wasn't going anywhere in politics. Neither was what's-her-name Hunter.) What's shocking here is that two men who expect to have futures in the Republican Party feel free to smear a Republican front-runner. They don't even need to offer proof; they just say they've slept with her, like they're bragging in the locker room. The double-standard here is pretty hard to miss: extramarital sex is imagined as much more shameful for the woman than for the man. These men figure they can end a female politician's career just by publicly saying, "Yup, I did her," but only suffer a mild setback for themselves. [UPDATE: My main man Wolfie sees through the double-standard in record time.] Seriously, can you imagine a female Congressional staffer coming forward all on her own to bring down a gubernatorial candidate from her own party, and ever getting work inside the party again? But evidently Folks and Merchant believe (and expect others to believe) that Nikki Haley should be a hundred times more ashamed of sleeping with them than they're ashamed of sleeping with her. And you know what? In a certain way, they're right.

Timing Edwards's Repentance

Okay, since apparently not discussing Edwards isn't in the cards ...

I'm interested in Edwards's choice to come clean (or as clean as he thought he had to) on the Friday that the Olympics began. That looks like the classic strategy to minimize coverage, and maybe that's what it is. But it's not quite the classic execution: rather than a 4 pm Friday press release, he actually did the TV interview himself, allowing the networks and the net to run clips all weekend, giving the MSM time to gear up for coverage, and giving the Sunday talking heads time to sharpen their knives. Edwards is in some ways maximizing his coverage right now, rather than minimizing it. So why confess now?

Because Barack Obama is going on vacation.

I'm sure Obama didn't personally direct Edwards to do anything. But it's fairly clear from the press coverage that some combination of the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party told Edwards that he couldn't speak at the convention unless he took steps to deal with the scandal. It's unthinkable that Senator Obama didn't sign off, somehow, on that decision, and even more unthinkable that he couldn't overturn it if he chose. Edwards confessed not because the American mainstream media forced him; they were clearly refusing to cover the story. Edwards confessed because that's how Senator Obama wanted it, and Senator Obama is the boss.

(Parenthetically: Is this confession bad for Obama? Of course it is. That's why he ordered it.)

Now, Obama's vacation has fairly obviously been timed to coincide with the Olympics as well, because the coming week will make it harder for Obama to attract coverage on the trail and harder for McCain to take advantage of the break. (McCain, playing catch-up, has to campaign through the headwind of Olympics coverage.) But the management of the Edwards scandal fits into Obama's schedule, perfectly.

If Edwards was inevitably going to generate a week of scandal coverage, it's best for that week to happen while Obama is off the trail. Obama doesn't have to answer reporter's questions about some other Deomcrat's marriage at every campaign event, and more importantly, Obama doesn't have to put in a full week of barnstorming effort without being able to get the media's attention. Meanwhile, McCain has to plug away in an environment where he can't get any oxygen at all, and can't land effective attacks on Obama because everyone is busy hating on that other Democrat (who isn't running).

Edwards is also, helpfully, attracting the full gossipy attention of media clowns such as Maureen Dowd, who has already filed her first ad hominem thumbsucker about the former senator. Since pundits gravitate toward groundless takedowns of the "Is Obama Too Thin?" variety when they can't see anything substantive to write about, a week off the campaign trail is an invitation for idle mischief by the pundit set. (I'm sure that Dowd was more than ready to free-associate on Hawaiian beaches and fitness to serve.) But now those idlers have a "big" story to keep them occupied. I can't say I'm entirely unhappy about that.

The boss has gone to Hawaii for the week. He wants this whole mess sorted out before he gets back. You don't want him having to deal with this nonsense when he gets back to Chicago.