DOES IT REALLY MATTER? Michael Totten says no:
"Kerry isn’t my favorite person. He certainly isn’t my first choice for president.
But, you know? I just don’t care about his sex life. I really don’t. We aren’t electing the pope or the chief marriage counselor."
But let's suppose there's something to the thesis that a candidate's character matters (I'd certainly support that proposition in some form or another). Does this part of a candidate's life matter? I'm not convinced that it does--it doesn't tell me anything particularly meaningful about how the person will act in making spontaneous political decisions (in the way that other aspects of character, like sincerity of religiosity, might). Then again, it does clue me in to the fact that whoever it is doesn't make the smartest of decisions in their personal life. So I suppose I'm strictly indifferent (in a game-theoretic sense) on this issue.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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