If you read The New York Times article questioning John McCain's relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, or any of the hundreds of articles subsequently commenting on the story, you can’t help concluding that society is still not ready to accept non-marital male-female relationships without jumping to the conclusion that a romantic and/or sexual element lies somewhere within.
What disappoints me is not that The New York Times ran the piece; after all, McCain is running for President on an ethical and moral character platform, it’s that the discussion quickly dissolved into whether The New York Times showed bad taste for running the article or John McCain cheated on his wife. Few stopped to examine the nature of relationships in general. It appear as if everybody just assumed that a man and a woman can't have a non-romantic relationship, an assumption that is patently false.
In my book, The New York Times article and the firestorm it has triggered is more telling about the focus of this Country than McCain's character. I saw the piece as questioning McCain’s willingness to be influenced by special interest lobbying – whereas the rest of the country focused on the question of McCain’s marital fidelity. Perhaps our society gravitates towards the scent of sexual scandal out of habit, but this proclivity gravely undermines a discussion that is sorely needed - the nature of relationships between the sexes and how those relationships should be viewed in the public arena.
Until such a discussion occurs on a broad scale in this country, every question of improper political influence between a man and a woman will automatically become clouded by the aura of sexual impropriety, and the evils of improper political influence will take a backseat thereto. For that, we all suffer.
