Politicians need privacy too

Before the 1970s, the American public almost never heard about politicians behaving badly. Were we really so much worse off not knowing about the bedroom activities of FDR, Eisenhower, and JFK? And it’s not just affairs—in the 1930s and ‘40s, the media agreed not to photograph FDR in his wheelchair. It wasn’t until Jimmy Carter’s “lust in his heart” interview with Playboy in 1976 that the public felt entitled to know such intimate details. And after Gary Hart taunted the press to follow him around in 1987, we believed all political monkey business was our business.

During the past few weeks, several tell-all books about politicians have been published. And even I, an admitted oversharer, think we’ve gone too far. Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin chronicles the 2008 election, including intimate reporting on the Clintons, The Edwardses, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, and my parents. I have only read the excerpt in New York magazine, a cover story about John and Elizabeth Edwards, but some of the revelations in that article were so deeply personal and unnecessary that they made me cringe. The stresses that a presidential campaign places on families are already enormous, but I cannot even imagine how impossible it would be to run for that office it while battling cancer, dealing with my husband’s affair, and possible love child. So, really, who can really blame Elizabeth Edwards for having a meltdown or three along the way? It would say more about you, I think, if you didn’t scream now and then.