[KappaKittyCat]

George Stephanopolous wrote that the British have the perfect balance figured out. They have the Royal Family, on which the media feeds, and this allows Parliament to actually get governing done with minimal interference. That way, governance is not so much related to the personal lives of those who govern. In Britain, the Royal Family is all over the tabloids every day, and nobody really notices what the wives and children of the Ministers of Parliament do, or what the MPs themselves do, for that matter. Nor does anyone care. The MPs' job is to govern. That is it. The United States tries to squish it all together. We make the occupants of 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue its Royal Family, but we also expect them, and Congress, for that matter, to govern well while being paragons of excellence and moral uprightness.

Historically, the most successful Presidents (meaning those who have achieved the largest portion of their stated goals and/or led the country through turmoil, war, depression, etc.), the smartest Presidents, and the most morally upstanding Presidents have been entirely different men. There are very few who occupy spaces on two of those lists, and none who occupy all three.

Yes, Thomas Jefferson screwed around. So did JFK. But in Jefferson's time, nobody but the slaves he screwed, his wife (maybe), and the man himself knew what was going on after hours at Monticello. It wasn't polite to talk about those things, so even if a journalist got wind of this information, he'd most likely ignore it. In JFK's time, people still allowed their Presidents the freedom to be people on the side, as long as they got the job done. Only now is it coming out that Jefferson sired countless mulatto children and that Marilyn Monroe did a lot more with JFK than just sing "Happy Birthday."

But now our media thirst goes beyond how a man does his job and delves into how he lives his life. In this age of sensationalized "reality" TV, I fear that we as a society won't stop until we know how often the First Couple have sex and which positions they prefer. We as a nation need to decide what we want out of our leaders, because no one can be all things to all people. A President is a role model. If the so-called leader of the free world can get away with cheating on his wife, using cocaine, trading arms for hostages, or lying under oath about any of the above, then what are we supposed to tell our children?