The Kennedy charm/curse

I don't know whether John Kerry cheated on his wife, but it wouldn't surprise me if he did. Why? On Coyne's First Law of politics: never trust any politician who styles himself, however indirectly, on John F. Kennedy. It doesn't matter how -- if they stick their hand in their jacket pocket the way he did, if their rhetoric affects a classical metre after his fashion, if they had their picture taken with him as a boy, or speak of him as the reason they got into politics -- whatever it is, it is the surest sign of a phony. Gary Hart, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, or John "F." Kerry: in every case it is the same. They quote Kennedy, literally or stylistically, because they have been seduced by his glamour, and mean to use it to paper over the hollowness within them that, indeed, makes them prey to such seduction. Worse, the glamour starts to fill the void, until the candidate persuades himself he is exempt from the normal rules of conduct that bind lesser mortals -- as Kennedy did, by virtue of his glamour, and as his imitators do, by virtue of their identification with him. I am a world-historic individual, they fantasize, a man of destiny. I cannot afford to be tied down, like Gulliver, by such Lilliputian constraints. No, the world cannot afford it. It is necessary that I be unconstrained, by honesty, by faithfulness, even by reality. Does it matter whether a politician cheats on his wife? Yes. Sooner or later, a man who will lie to his wife will lie to me. Is it the only thing that matters? No. Taking all in all, I might still decide to vote for him, as a wife might stay with a husband who strays. But I want to know if he did. I want to know what I'm getting into.