An Anniversary to Forget

John F. Kennedy's success in keeping unreported his record-setting flow of young women into Senate bedchambers and then the White House probably led him to think he could get away with other quasi-secret activities, such as the Bay of Pigs and numerous Castro assassination plots. On the other hand, his James Bond-style emotional detachment allowed him to be a cool Cold War poker player. He went to the brink of nuclear war without being moved by a normal man's sensitivities—and God was merciful in keeping us from disaster.

Amid charges and countercharges, we should keep in mind the need for journalists to scrutinize candidates' sexual flings. Faithfulness to a wife is no guarantee of faithfulness to the country; look at Richard Nixon. Nor does faithfulness guarantee a strong presidency: Jimmy Carter's anti-adultery bent accurately forecast an administration that was also open and aboveboard—but sometimes incompetent.

We need all the information we can get about candidates. The Founders established the Electoral College, instead of creating a direct democracy, because they wanted individual voters to choose electors whose character they knew—and those electors would then select a president whose character they knew. Today, we depend on media representatives to tell us the truth, even when it means exposing a candidate playing footsie with falsehood.

I had hoped that President Bush would bat .300, which means failure seven out of 10 times in Washington's tough league: His average has probably been less than that. Misjudgments, missed opportunities, and acceptance of faulty intelligence reports in a world of deception are understandable but hazardous to a nation's health. Even so, that's not the same as soiling the Oval Office with lies and worse.