It supplies, as Barney Frank noted, the mordant thought that the three men who were trying to take charge of the Republican-controlled House as it gravely decided to alter American constitutional history were, in sequence: Newt Gingrich, who’d had a long affair while his first wife lay ill, and then, as Speaker of the House, cheated on his second wife with a Congressional aide (who became his third wife) during the impeachment; Bob Livingston, who was nominated to succeed Gingrich but passed on the job when it became known that he’d had affairs with several different women; and Hastert, the ultimate recipient of the Speakership, a man with some pretty dark sexual secrets of his own. Family values, all over.
.. The sexual exploitation of an intern, even an entirely willing and eager one, would surely be judged more harshly now than it was then—as a worse thing than Clinton’s defenders still want to admit.
Vladimir Putin, Conservative Icon
But for Putin, the year that witnessed him announcing his divorce to the world on television is now ending with him trying to grab the mantle of global defender of family values.
Democracy and hypocrisy
But by so conspicuously holding back criticism first of the coup and now of the shooting of unarmed civilians, the West has confirmed the view of enemies of democracy everywhere: that its preaching is riddled with hypocrisy. The next time Mr Obama urges some authoritarian to embrace civil rights, he will find his case that bit harder to make.