Tuesday, September 15, 1998

Somewhere we need a line of privacy

By Ellen Goodman

BOSTON - Not that Helen Chenoweth was ever high on my dance card. The right-wing "poster girl for the militia movement" isn't my kind of gal, let alone my kind of congresswoman.

I should be glad the 60-year-old Idaho Republican was hoisted on her family-values petard, shattered in her own glass house. Four years ago, Chenoweth was elected over the warm body of a Democratic incumbent after he acknowledged he'd lied about an affair. This year, she has loudly criticized Clinton for the "sordid spectacle" and run television ads asking her opponent, Dan Williams: "Where do you stand, Dan?"

But do we actually need to know that 14 years ago, Chenoweth had a six-year affair with a married man. Another Republican politician, now 78 years old and in the 57th year of his marriage?

What is going on here?

Just last week, we had Indiana's Dan Burton doing a pre-emptive confession about the child he had out of wedlock. Last spring, Burton called Clinton a "scumbag." Now he's joined the parade to the forced confessional. He acknowledged an affair just one news cycle ahead of being revealed.

Meanwhile in Maryland, the state's attorney, a married father of six running for re-election, admitted to a"personal relationship" (improper of course) with a prosecutor who released two romantic poems he'd written during the affair.

And all across Washington, where members of Congress may be asked to judge the scandal, there are folks worrying about the next sexual domino.

What a time this is. We have 36 boxes of material about sexual misbehavior and lies - at roughly a million bucks a box - sitting in the Capitol. We have sordid tales of stained dresses and cigar tricks spilling out all over the Internet. Across the country, Americans are telling pollsters that the No. 1 problem facing the country is "morals" - by which they do not mean the gap between the rich and the poor.

This isn't a sexual witch hunt; it's a sexual meltdown. Anyone running for office these days will have to release his or her work resume, curriculum vitae and intimate history. Unless they can claim a "youthful indiscretion" - that they tried it once and didn't like it - sex will be permanently encoded on their record and infidelity may be the only political career-ending injury.

This sexually transmitted disease is rampant. It's only a matter of time before someone decides to probe the sex lives of the folks probing the sex lives of the politicians - analysts, sermonizers, commentators. When James Carville said there ought to be an exemption for the sex lives of political consultants, he was half-joking and half-praying.

At the Friday prayer breakfast, a chastened president asking forgiveness seemed to endorse his own exposure. He expressed gratitude to those who say "the bounds of privacy have been excessively and unwisely invaded. That may be. Nevertheless, in this case, it may be a blessing, because I still sinned." Revelation was the path to redemption.

Maybe so. There is a popular belief that confession is the first step on the 12-step road to recovery. Under that rubric, Ken Starr and every tabloid writer are doing the Lord's work. But forced confessions may be less like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting than like the public trials and humiliations demanded by the Red Guard.

Are we into healing? Or purging?

When Gary Hart was revealed doing Monkey Business, it wasn't character assassination but character suicide. Journalists agonized over asking about the "A" word. I thought then and now that sex is one complex clue to character.

Today the "A" word dominates the whole alphabet soup of character. When sex comes into the picture, it blocks everything else out of view. We want politicians held to high standards. But do we want to hunt them down?

I bow to no one in my dismay at the president's behavior. Can't stand it, don't get it, never will. But a public investigation into the sexual details of what this man did with "that woman" is being downloaded into millions of American homes. And in the next weeks, I'll bet on an intimate look at first-stone-throwers in Congress. How do you stop this contagion?

Public exposure has been followed by public confession followed by public contrition. Even Hillary is urged to publicly offer forgiveness. Somewhere, somewhere, we have to draw a line of privacy. But all we have at the moment is a great big bottle of disappearing ink.

The Boston Globe Newspaper Company