This Media Life

Sex and the Candidate

Quite possibly, no one has ever even tried to make Arnold feel terribly guilty. He seems beyond hypocrisy (even as he tries on Oprah to be a traditional American hypocrite)—a truly novel category in American politics.

Actors, of course, are allowed to have sex. As, perhaps, are foreigners (more than Americans, anyway).

Not that Arnold’s incapable of observing the blander conventions of public life (there’s the cleanup of his father’s Nazi past, for instance). His avoidance of most any sort of random-question situations may be not so much to stonewall on the hard political issues but to sidestep the ever-present possibility that someone will ask him when he last had sex with someone not his wife. And yet it’s not just his hiding out that has helped him avoid this question. Rather, why should anybody ask a question to which the answer (if not in its exact particulars) is widely presumed (although the exact particulars would be a treat to know)?

Arnold is a dog.

This in itself, this understanding and recognition, represents a turn in the treatment of sex in American politics. No mainstream candidate has ever defended sex itself. Nobody has ever stood for sex.

But here, with Arnold, a key issue is, would you vote for a man of rapacious desires? Would you vote for an unapologetically sexually aggressive hunk, however past his prime?

In fact, what the Times story was saying is that there are many women who would not.

This marks an interesting divide because women—especially California women—have certainly been willing and eager to vote for that other rapacious hound.

It may be a key political and cultural question: What’s the difference between the ways in which we perceive Arnold’s and Bill’s sexuality? Is there a substantive difference here or just a difference in presentation?

Republican sexuality versus Democratic sexuality—is that the political divide?

“I have always wondered what would have been different if Bill Clinton had honestly discussed his drives and appetites with the American people.”

The Times story put the emphasis on the words boorish and predatory. This seems to mean both a certain lack of social finesse in the pursuit of sex and a certain “fuck me” efficiency and clarity in the transaction. It’s an old story: The more entreaties you make, the more likely you are to find someone more or less willing to have sex. And, of course, there is, too, an amount of groping that goes with this. We’re in a quantity-over-quality world.

But this is—unless I’ve read everything wrong—exactly the Clinton approach. And yet Clinton is the once and future candidate of California moms everywhere.

Where’s the divergence?

Clinton’s public sex life is, of course, closely tied to confession and contrition (if also recidivism). Arnold’s sex life, on the other hand, seems cavalier and unrepentant and quite full of public joie de vivre.

There is, too, hugely and tellingly, the issue of the wives: Hillary and Maria. The couple business. Bill and Hillary are that complex knot of checks and balances—great primal drives inartfully obscured by all sorts of awkward and dowdy clothes.

Arnold and Maria don’t appear to have that pretense or awkwardness.

Indeed, Maria, it has not been much observed, is certainly as freaky as he is. How does she come to look like that? What are those angles about? The jaw planes, the cheekbone ridges. The porno-star hairdo. Hello? She’s out there.

I once had lunch with Maria. I was writing about Teddy Kennedy’s all-but-forgotten insurgent run for president in 1980 for Life magazine. Maria was the family spokesperson. We went to Duke Zeibert’s, the old Washington hangout. I remember both nothing and everything about the interview. That is, nothing that was said but everything about her. She was over-vivid. On. Crystal-clear. Fabulous. Carpe diem–ish. She frightened me.

It is worth remembering that virtually all of the other next-gen Kennedy cousins have been crushed by ambivalence while Maria has been marching forward full of overblown determination and ambition. Possibly, as a Shriver, she felt she had to earn the right to be a Kennedy.

And then there’s the marriage. If you marry Arnold Schwarzenegger, it is hard to obscure your primary interest.

Which brings us to that touchstone of contemporary political history: the sex lives of the Kennedys.

That convergence of sex and ambition and entitlement.

I want. I take. I get away with it.

Getting away with it is, of course, the true character note.

Now, getting away with it, and the sense that Arnold has gotten away with an enormous amount, is, in this prosecutorial time, one of the big drags on Arnold’s campaign. The audacity and humor (part of the Schwarzenegger as well as the Kennedy charm) that often go hand-in-hand with getting away with it don’t seem to be attributes that easily cross the gender divide (forcing him to become, via Oprah, more cuddly and domesticated—which is not a pretty sight).

Nor does an extended, aggrieved, pick-at-the-scab campaign augur well for the forces of getting away with it.

The sudden emergence of the disapproving-woman Zeitgeist seems to have surprised everyone. This, it appears, may not be Arnold’s moment.

Still, I can’t get away from it: I have a soft spot for the guy.

There is time, however, to bring me back into line.