Private Life, Public Office

What must voters know about a candidate for President? Abandoning his race for the White House, Gary Hart complained that he had in effect been put under a microscope and then dissected, like "some extraordinary creature." Just so. In selecting a President, voters must judge not only a man's resume and policies but also his character. Yet what constitutes character? When is an inquiry into a politician's private behavior valid, and when is it an intrusion that says nothing about his abilities?

George Reedy, press secretary to President Lyndon Johnson

"What counts with a candidate for President is his character, and nothing shows it like his relationship with women. Here you have a man who is asking you to trust him with your bank account, your children, your life and your country for four years. If his own wife can't trust him, what does that say? The press doesn't invent stories about the sexual peccadilloes of candidates. Hart asked to be followed around because it was already an issue."

Betty Friedan, feminist and author of The Feminine Mystique

"Sexual behavior should be a private matter. But somehow flaunting it shows an arrogance toward women and all voters. There's a kind of implied denigration of women, a lack of respect of the values of women. It suggests an instability that I would not want in the President. This is the last time a candidate will be able to treat women as bimbos."

James David Barber, Duke University historian and author of The Presidential Character

"I don't think the issue with Hart is his mating habits. It's risk taking, it's throwing down the gauntlet to the press. There is a temptation on the part of the public to translate politics into morals. The public cannot handle intricate political issues. It can handle relatively clear questions: Is this guy honest? Is this guy moral?"

David Garrow, author of Bearing the Cross, the Pulitzer-prizewinning biography of Martin Luther King Jr.

"I don't think the question is monogamy or sex per se, but vulnerability. These things that are quasi-secret but known to some could make the man vulnerable in the exercise of power. It could give power and influence to those who know. King was aware that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI were trying to record his affairs, but he was fundamentally defiant. He determined that he was not going to change his life. Hart's attitude is that same defiance. But Hart is being judged by standards that at least half our Presidents would fail. If this standard is going to be applied to Hart, do you apply it to everybody?"

Geraldine Ferraro, former New York Congresswoman and 1984 Democratic vice- presidential candidate

"The issue is not whether the press has the right to investigate. It's what they are investigating. The public is entitled to know if he is a person who has good judgment, the right to know if he is smart, the right to know if he understands what's going on. If the Miami Herald had reported that Gary Hart had invited to his house a contra leader, then I'd be very angry, because he has taken a strong stand against the contras. I don't find the Donna Rice story relevant to the campaign."

James MacGregor Burns, Williams College political scientist and biographer of Franklin Roosevelt

"This is a tragedy, a real loss for all of us, that a really impressive man has been brought down this way. The character of candidates and Presidents is crucial. But the media aren't able to deal adequately with real and total character; their judgments are based on such old-fashioned, puritanical pieces of evidence. The character question should deal with the totality of a person. How does he treat people? Does he keep his word? Is he wise and fair? How does he handle subordinates? The real humaneness of the man."

Sissela Bok, Brandeis University professor of philosophy and author of Lying and other books on ethics

"The most loving of fathers and husbands have failed at governing. By the standards of the ideal husband, men like Thomas Jefferson and Franklin Roosevelt might have been disqualified. What's really at issue with Hart? Not whether he's the perfect husband. It's whether or not the man is telling the ; truth. Voters need to be able to trust candidates and Presidents, not take comfort in their successful marriages. In the past, candidates didn't feel so obliged to drag wives and husbands and kids onto the platform. Now it's become obligatory. And sometimes it leads to great anguish."

Doris Kearns Goodwin, biographer of Lyndon Johnson and author of The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys

"In the past allegations of extramarital affairs had no impact on an Administration because the reporting didn't occur until the presidency was over. This may be the first time that this issue affects the course of the future. If the Hart episode reveals a sense of insulation, that he could take these kinds of risks and not worry about appearance, then that's worrisome. Because when Presidents get into the structure of the White House, they begin to feel above ordinary rules and believe they can take risks and not get caught.

"In some ways affairs show a human quality to these people. So I guess you have to ask yourself whether you'd prefer Franklin Roosevelt with Lucy Mercer and John Kennedy with his various women to Richard Nixon in his striped pajamas talking to Bebe Rebozo."

David Reisman, Harvard sociologist

"I'm against the cult of candor, of letting it all hang out. To moralize on this issue in the campaign without talking about truly important things like the arms race trivializes our society. No one can afford to be President who has no imagination, but I fear that is what we are beginning to get."

Robert Caro, biographer of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson

"It's legitimate to try to know all we can about a candidate. The moral and personal tone a President sets is as vital for the nation as his foreign policy. If we had known more about the character of some Presidents, we might not have elected them. Nonetheless, there is an element of prurience -- and not just with the press. What's wrong is that we give the sexual revelations such disproportionate weight."