An unsavoury affair

I have a bit of an icky response to news of affairs amongst politicians. As someone just the other side of the Beltway, I often hear about these things a few days before they become common knowledge.

Several moons ago (at least) I wrote about politically legitimate reasons to leave your partner - in response to the Graham Capill conviction, but also covering affairs. Even longer ago I wrote about Richard Prebble's affair and whether it mattered.

I feel uncomfortable about the cheating, Don Brash's in particular, for two reasons:

1. I'd like politicians, and really anyone in the public eye, to be entitled to a private life. If I were in their shoes (as the target or the partner) I would not want media camped out on the lawn, in amongst the rose bushes, taking pics of my hand pulling the curtains closed against their prying. It wouldn't help resolve your private matters, to be forced to do so in the hot squinting gaze of the public eye, as represented by the relentless cameras and microphones of a frenzied media.

2. But I wonder about the gender politics of this. The stories you hear about cheating politicians (cheating on their spouses, I clarify) are almost always the husbands having affairs, not the wives or same-sex partners. What does it say about a man that he has, possibly repeatedly, shown little regard for the commitment he has made to a woman, for the hurt he will cause her when she finds out? What's the feminist response to news of any serial adulterer whose attitude to women is thus suspect? I don't really know. But it makes me feel uncomfortable, to put it mildly.

It seems an apposite coincidence that all this Brash stuff is going on at the same time that Frankie has found out about Danny's affair on Coro St in NZ. One can imagine the conversations between Brash and his wife being similar to those between the junior Baldwin and the woman he cheated on with his first wife and later married. For those not watching, Danny claims he has a weakness and that it meant nothing, all of the normal mouthings we're all used to seeing on the screen in relation to discovered affairs.

Idiot/Savant is firmly of the opinion that the affair doesn't matter, and the identity of the woman doesn't matter either. I've already detailed above why I'm conflicted over whether the affair matters, but in regard to the Other Woman, I think who she is does matter because, if true, this was a political relationship too.

Red has also pointed out some of the money quotes from Brash about marriage that have resulted in many labelling him a hypocrite in recent days. I would also add that if this allegation is true then we know of two times that Brash has disrespected not only his own marriage but also the commitments of the two other women he has cheated with, as both were also hitched to other men during the affairs. Personally I don't think we need to overly respect the institution of Marriage, but we should respect the individual commitments people make to each other. Brash, and many of his backers and supporters, have gone on and on about the importance of Marriage, not least during the Civil Union flip-flop, and so the yard stick can be applied to them now in turn.

One final point. For all those bloggers who have ever made nasty comments about the fact that Helen Clark preferred not to marry, or has not had children, or have judged any of those MPs who identify as lesbian, gay or transgender (in or out of the closet), you risk the H label too. You cannot criticise some MPs for what happens in their personal lives and yet insist that those on your team are immune to scrutiny. As you sow so shall you reap.