Political Scandals | There Is No Direct Connection Between Public Leadership and Private Morality

With every day, Congress seems closer to censuring the president—and further from removing him altogether— on the grounds that his misdeeds don’t rise to the level of a constitutional crime. But even a decision to slap Bill Clinton with an official reprimand would implicitly endorse one of the most dangerous arguments behind the impeachment drive: that there is a seamless moral web between a politician’s private acts and his performance as a public official. So, before Congress considers such a measure, it would do well to consider yet another powerful historical example—one...

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