Where are we headed?

America is standing at a crossroad, and we have some important decisions to make. As technology becomes more advanced and affairs harder to hide, will politicians stop cheating or will we stop caring? Does there need to be a federal law that prohibits excommunicating politicians based on personal life choices, and more importantly, is it even ethical to do so? As President Obama said:

“Public service is exactly that: public service. When you get to the point where, because of various personal distractions, you can’t serve as effectively as you need to at the time, when people are worrying about jobs and their mortgages and paying the bills, then you should probably step back.”

Nevertheless, one has to wonder what the long-term effects of the infidelity witch hunt will be. If we had held men like Thomas Jefferson, JFK, and FDR to the same standards we have today, they might have never been president. Where would America be today without their leadership? It’s impossible to say.

Perhaps no one has summed it up as well as Gary Hart, whose words the night he withdrew his bid for presidency are as true today as they were in 1987. He said:

“We’re all going to have to seriously question the system for selecting our national leaders that reduces the press of this nation to hunters and presidential candidates to being hunted, that has reporters in bushes, false and inaccurate stories printed, photographers peeking in our windows, swarms of helicopters hovering over our roofs, and my very strong wife close to tears because she can’t even get into her own house without being harassed. And then after all that, ponderous pundits wonder in mock seriousness why some of the best people in our country chose not to run for higher office.”

So what will we do? The decision, reader, is really up to you.