It is my opinion -- and I’ll concede that I am probably not inner-tube floating in the American mainstream here -- that persons of questionable moral scruples can make perfectly good presidents. I will refer to this way of thinking about national leaders as The French Model in honor of François Mitterrand. When the president of France died in 1996 his long-time mistress was in attendance at his funeral. Anne Pingeot’s appearance at his grave (with her child by Mitterrand) surprised absolutely no one in the Hexagon. That none of his other mistresses (and their little ones) had the common decency to pay their final respects, now that was surprising. Of course, Mitterrand’s hyper-ambiguous Vichy past cautions us against fetishizing a public servant’s categorical right to privacy. For our purposes, we must understand that the French Model denies the existence of any correlation between personal ethics and political competence. And in this way the French Model is radically different from the approach we have had stateside for the past few decades.
Our homegrown Conservative Christian Model collapses the distinction between the private and public dimensions of a politician’s life. It maintains that what one does in the privacy of the home, in the privacy of the Bill Clinton White House, or in the privacy of a narrow Minnesota airport bathroom stall reveals much about one’s qualifications to serve effectively. Certain throwback academic feminists aren’t the only neo-Puritans in this country who believe that the personal is political.
Faith and Values campaigning in America, I have been arguing, is played by rules that favor traditional Protestants. The Conservative Christian Model thus comes with a Born-Again Provision. It stipulates that past moral lapses (e.g., cocaine-binging, excessive alcoholic consumption, anything done in New York’s East Village after 4 a.m. in the 1980s) can be excused as long as one has sincerely come to Christ.
It was perhaps for this reason that George W. Bush's well-known youthful indiscretions never defined popular depictions of his character in 2000 and 2004. A Jewish or Muslim candidate with similar baggage may not have fared so well. Neither tradition retains a comparable theological doctrine that so thoroughly buries past ethical sinfulness. Such a politician would have to stand not only in front of his or her God, but in front of a perfervid press core unrestrained by the “just-let-it-go” etiquette demanded by the Born-Again Provision.
In any case, for the first time in recent memory we have a credible presidential aspirant who evokes Gallic comparisons. Rudy Giuliani's character issues are a matter of public record . What is peculiar is that Pat Robertson -- whose appreciation for French cultural mores and the virtues of laïcité was previously unknown -- has endorsed America’s mayor.
Mitt Romney, by contrast, should benefit from the Conservative Christian Model. Who knows: maybe one day the Web will be set aflame with wild rumors that he once sipped an espresso très serré while doing missionary work in France (caffeine consumption is prohibited by the LDS Church). Until that happens, I can think of few presidential aspirants in recent memory as preternaturally squeaky clean as the former governor of Massachusetts.
Romney should do well among voters beholden to the Conservative Christian Model. Unless, of course, the Conservative Christian Model only applies to White Evangelicals.
Jacques Berlinerblau is the Rabbi Harold White Chair in Jewish Civilization in Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service and senior advisor to the Center for Jewish Civilization, where he was director from 2006 to June 2020. Berlinerblau has published on a wide variety of issues ranging from the sociology of heresy and modern Jewish intellectuals to African-American and Jewish-American relations.
