Americans should focus on politics rather than personal lives, relationships

Mark Sanford and John Ensign have become the latest politicians to come undone.

Sanford admitted at a press conference that his absence over Father’s Day weekend was not explained by a book-writing hike on Appalachian trail, but rather by a visit to a mistress in Argentina.

A downside of a job like governor of South Carolina is that it forces those who hold the position to cover up visits to paramours in South America.

Last Tuesday, Ensign, another rising star in the Republican Party and a senator from the state of Nevada, admitted that he had an affair with a campaign staff member.

The woman’s husband was also a member of Ensign’s staff.

If I were a Republican spouse, I’d be making more unannounced visits to his office.

Exposure of infidelities among political figures is a relatively new phenomenon, spurred on by 24-hour news cycles, constant connectivity, and a sense that the personal lives of elected leaders are public property.

Part of this change is for the better.

Increased accountability is a good thing ... that is, if the alternative is unthinking deference and respect given to the decisions politicians make in and out of the limelight.

Seeing that elected leaders make mistakes helps to dispel the cult of personality that would otherwise enshroud them—though media coverage so far would lead us to believe that President Obama has never incurred so much as a parking ticket.

But accountability for what purpose? We elect politicians to represent our interests and make decisions that preserve economic prosperity, promote the general welfare—and other things, too, but I’m pretty sure the preamble to the Constitution has no prohibitions on seedy hotel rooms.

Knowing what goes on between the sheets of our elected leaders is not nearly as useful as knowing what goes on behind the closed doors of meeting rooms and congressional offices.

The media could have unearthed the fraud foisted by the executive branch that lead to a wrongly based war in Iraq, or given fuller exposition to how oil and coal industry lobbyists co-opted the recent climate bill.

Instead of debating whether or not Jenny Sanford should forgive her husband, members of Congress could be facing public outrage over their deference to special interests.

Instead, the press has fueled enthusiastic inquiries into e-mail exchanges between a governor and his Argentinian mistress.

Every time marital infidelities or other personal problems become the target of public attention, the elected leaders whose mistakes really deserve it get a free pass.

Sanford and Ensign will suffer in the coming weeks, but honest government is what will lose in the long run.

Investigative reporting is a powerful tool that can be used to expose how the world of politics and business really works.

It should not be used to further intensify a family’s private misery.