Non-Partisan Reflections on the President's Affair Liah Greenfeld A n historian who would study the public reaction to what, without prejudging, may be called "the misconduct" of our president would have no difficulty diagnosing it as a spectacle of a people who has lost its bearings. We no longer know what we are about, what holds us together as a society; we have no abil- ity--or desire--to distinguish right from wrong and public from private; and we have no clue what consti- tutes an impeachable offense and what are the duties and responsibilities that come with the chief elected office in our country. In fact, given the polls or what one hears in the media, it seems that we, as a people, have no civic consciousness altogether and that most of us care about little else besides one's particular in- terest, be it getting a paycheck or getting reelected. This confusion, and the particularistic preoccupation which accompanies it, is characteristic of the president's defenders and critics alike. Neither side appears to be able to make sense of the latest and most dramatic presidential scandal, and, therefore, to de- cide on a proper public response. When Sex is a Public Offense To begin with, both sides share the misconception about the essentially private--non-political--nature of the offense. The defenders claim: "It is just about sex," and argue that a private action cannot have public im- plications of any importance, by definition, and that the critics blow these implications out of proportion in or- der to discredit the privately flawed (and who is not?), but otherwise excellent president. The critics agree that, though in itself distasteful and even immoral, the president's indiscretion was initially of a private na- ture, but then, they say, it was covered up, and in cover- ing it up, the president trespassed on the law of the land, which he solemnly swore to uphold. The case, they say, is not about sex at all, it is about lying, possibly about perjury, and these actions are public and clearly repre- hensible because they are illegal. The critics are wrong. The crux of the affair is not perjury, it is indeed sex, but, contrary to the defend- ers' claims, this, in and of itself, does not at all define the president's wrongdoing as a private matter. Even if the public knew nothing of his dallying with an in- tern in the Oval Office, it was, as a matter of fact, a public matter from the very beginning--in the same sense in which an unattributed murder is a public mat- ter--and as such, it is politically significant and di- rectly pertinent to our assessment of the president's (other than sexual) performance in office. Sex as such is neither private nor public. It is what a society agrees to consider it to be. In some societies, and in some periods in the life of any particular soci- ety, it may be defined as a decidedly private affair. In such a case whatever outlets a person allows his or her libido is between himself or herself, his or her conscience, and those with whom he or she chooses to satisfy it. In such societies, whether one is a public figure or a private individual, one's sexual life lacks all public significance (though it may still have public consequences, such as, for instance, committing per- jury) and is not a fit subject for public discussion. However, such is not the case in our society today. The boundaries between public and private shift.