Yesterday we asked a daring question. Is it possible that the sexual dalliances of a political figure — even a nation’s leader — have nothing to do with his or her ability to lead?
Wow, what a question.
Dare we even ask it?
In the days of John F.Kennedy or Franklin Delano Roosevelt before him, such matters would never have made the pages of any newspaper. They were considered part of a individual’s personal life. Today, for many people, there is no such thing as a “personal life.” Everything is fodder for a hungry media, and we are judged on everything we think, say, do, wear, eat, or think.
Believe me, I know.
I have lived in a bubble for 13 years now, since the publication of my first book, Conversations with God. And I want to make something clear here. I think that transparency in life is just fine. In fact, I think that it is a way of living from which we would most benefit .
The question is not, should everything we do be seen? The question is, why should we have to hide anything to begin with?
What would it take for humanity to become non-judgmental? Well, it would require us to be a little more like God.
God is non-judgmental. Now I know that many billions of people do not believe that, and, in fact, they use their understanding that God IS judgmental as their moral authority for being judgmental themselves.
Our ideas about God form our ideals about ourselves. And that can be very sad if our ideas about God are inaccurate.
And they are.
In my view, they are.
When I appeared on the Today Show, host Matt Lauer asked me if I could put in a brief statement, God’s message to the world. I told him I could do better than that. I said that I could put it in five words:
Y O U ‘ V E G O T M E A L L W R O N G
Now yesterday the U.S. political scene was all abuzz with word that The New York Times had published a story thinly veiling a suggestion that GOP presidential candidate John McCain could possibly have been involved in a romantic relationship with a Washington lobbyist named Vicki Iseman some years ago.
I’m not going to get into any more of that here (except to say that I believe the senator when he says that Ms. Iseman is simply a friend of his and that they have never shared a romantic relationship or experience), but I do invite us to explore a larger question. What if he did? So what???
I hope you will read yesterday’s blog in this space, where I talked of injecting some basic fairness into this examination of John McCain’s moral fitness to hold the office he seeks. Today I want to ask: Does the fact that a president has had a sexual dalliance in the past mean that he or she is “unfit for office”?
Allow me to carry the question one step further. Does the fact that ANY man or woman has had a sexual dalliance in their past mean that they are today unfit to do whatever it is that they are doing? Or, to put this another way, if everyone who has ever had an illicit or inappropriate (whatever that is) sexual escapade or experience in their life were forced to step away from their present Work World responsibilities, who would carry on the business of the world?
Are YOU prepared to step down from the responsibilities that you hold today because of something you did ten or twelve years ago? How about if you didn’t even do it, but it LOOKS as if you MIGHT have…? Would that be a good enough reason?
When do we stop here, folks…when do we stop…?