Segolene Royal is a remarkable Frenchwoman: smart, attractive, young for a politician (she’s 53); she is the favourite to lead her country’s Socialist Party bid for the Presidency of France. It’s not going to be a walkover, by any means, but she could win – in France. In America, she could not.
Why not? Not because she is a woman. The USA has not had a female President yet, but many Americans would be comfortable with Hillary Clinton, for example, in the top job. The reason Royal could never hope to be President – or even a Senator or a Congresswoman – is that she is living with a man with whom she has had four children. She is not married to him.
Americans, by and large, are a tolerant people when it comes to sexual partnerships. Even gays and lesbians, though not exactly embraced, are regarded with equanimity and left alone. But when it comes to their politicians – particularly those in high office – they expect them to be paragons of virtue.
What is ironical is that this semi-puritanical attitude bucks the general trends in American society. New census figures recently released by the New York Times revealed that only 49.7% of America’s 111 million households were made up of married couples. In other words, for the first time ever, the number of divorced and cohabiting couples in the US has overtaken the married ones.
So, then, does America’s insistence on “upright family values” – or, at least a show of them – for its leaders, smack a tiny bit of moral hypocrisy? Dukakis was hounded out of the presidential race because of a misdemeanour that was never really proved. Are we too quick to pass moral judgments? The Dukakis example is perhaps a bit extreme. Adultery - even if it is alleged – is not something to be encouraged, even if it does not preclude the accused from being a very good leader. Why has a show of marital bliss and fresh faced offspring become an almost de-rigueur criterion for electability in American politics? If more Americans are getting divorced than those getting married, why is divorce for a potential leader, for example, considered to be taboo?
A classic case in point is the Bill and Hillary show. I’m quite sure Hillary Clinton was well aware of her husband’s sexual proclivities, long before Bill ran for President. But she put on this amazingly convincing Tammy Wynette stand-by-your-man act, because she desperately wanted to be First Lady – as a run up to being President. If Clinton had confessed to Gennifer Flowers, or any of the others, in 1992, his Presidential hopes would have sunk like a stone. But would it really have made him a less effective President? Monica Lewinsky notwithstanding, there is a general consensus – except, perhaps, among the bible thumpers – that Bill Clinton was a highly intelligent individual and his Presidency was an overall success.
If “morality” is indeed the paramount quality required in a great leader, one has to look no further than George W Bush. Even his detractors will admit that he is – morally -a good man; a man-of-god. Indeed, to some bible-belters he is close to God himself. Laura Bush may not have been entirely joking when she complained of being a “desperate housewife.” This man is so “good”; he almost puts you to sleep. What he does not possess is a razor-sharp intellect and a grasp of world affairs – reasonable expectations in the leader of the free world, I think. Most of this became almost embarrassingly apparent during his first term itself, but he still managed to get re-elected. Partly because he has some ruthlessly efficient and cunning “handlers” (I’m naming no names), but mainly because he is a “good” man. The disillusionment is starting to set in – inevitably, I suppose – but millions of conservatives in middle-America still love him.
Segolene Royal – if she wins – has the abilities to make a very good President. Whether she would make a better President if she was married to the man she is living with is a matter for speculation – but highly unlikely. The French – and many Europeans – are more mature in such matters. They focus on the essentials required for the job at hand – the peripherals can be discreetly overlooked. Maybe America needs to grow up too.
