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Larry Sabato on sex and politics
 
1:47
Fred Barbash-Moderator -  Good afternoon. Larry Sabato, University of Virginia political scientist and author of a famous book called "Feeding Frenzy," about the coverage of scandals, will be with us at 2 to take questions on the Sanford and related scandals and their implications. You are invited to submit questions in advance now. Please use a name rather than a handle or "guest." Thanks.
1:49
Fred Barbash-Moderator -  Larry posted this comment in Arena yesterday: "

"Same old lesson: Politicians, especially “family values” pols, should leave the preaching to the preachers. No one wants moral lectures from elected officials anyway. Most are in no position to offer them. There are plenty of guilty Democrats, such as John Edwards, who cynically used his ‘perfect family’ for political gain, but Republicans are especially vulnerable here because they simply won’t stop telling people how to live their private lives. This kind of disaster will befall the GOP over and over until they move away from social issues, and back to issues like taxing, spending, debt, and national security—where they can have more credibility, once they recover from the record of the Bush years.

1:59
Fred Barbash-Moderator -  Larry: Welcome again to POLITICO's Arena. And thanks for doing this on short notice. Let the discussion begin.
1:59
[Comment From Jen]
Professor Sabato: Why are American voters so concerned with the private behavior of politicians? This isn't true in Europe. What's different here?
2:05
Fred Barbash-Moderator -  Larry is typing
2:05
Larry Sabato -  America is a more religious country than any in Europe. In addition, we have a long and maybe regrettable tradition of mixing public and private lives. There are examples throughout American history, but since Chappaquiddick in 1969, there has been an acceleration of this trend. The key episode in the 1980's was Gary Hart and Donna Rice. Bill Clinton filled the whole of the 1990's. And since the Lewinsky scandal in 1998, it is easy to list a couple of dozen major examples of sex scandals that have turned into feeding frenzies of one sort or another. Will Americans eventually tire of this? To some degree, it is already happening. We are getting jaded because there have been so many. On the other hand, last night the Mark Sanford sex story trumped Iran, healthcare, and every other substantive issue you can name.
2:05
[Comment From Joseph M]
If Republicans back away from the "family values," don't they lose the thing that really differentiates them? All they are left with is "no new taxes" which is sometimes useful and sometimes not.
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