>> we have introduced marijuana and today, sex scandals, i think that we had the salaciousness covered for this week. and speaking of that, we have pastor joel, one of our favorites, and he tweets in, our leaders are a reflection of us. when we see their morality, we're looking in the mirror. and on facebook: and a lot of people thought that. >> yeah, a lot of people say that what you do behind the scenes may have a proclivity of what you do in public. clinton's impeachment trial was definitely, for the first time, a president's sex life was out in the open for everyone to judge, and since then, knowledge of sex scandals has increased dramatically, making it easier to spread the dirty details. americans never seem to fire of the stories, but does the public hold politicians to a higher moral standard or simply the standard that they expected of themselves and significant others? and what's the media's role in all of this? are journalists giving information that's valuable in the interest of the candidate or just robbing time of real news? to help us tonight, allison, a political scientist. she teaches courses on american behavior in pennsylvania, and she's the editor of sex, scandals and american politics. megan, a columnist for bloomberg view, has a book coming out, the upside of down, and on skype from berlin, eva, a journalist and founder of a publishing company. and john, a law student with policy, and thanks for everyone for being here. and so allison, why do we pay attention to these sex scandals? >> because it's a fun topic to talk about, and it's easy to understand. and in a political world where things are complicated and difficult, and sometimes really really sad, this is a good distraction, and it's something that is easily comprehen compree and fun to talk about more than anything. >> megan, is it just fun or a distraction or something that serves a greater purpose and we should be paying attention to? >> it doesn't matter. there are basically three kinds of failure that people can commit. you can commit a technical error where you don't know what you're doing, or a judgment error, but the third category is enormtive error, and it's a moral failing, and to rectify that, you need to prove that you know this is wrong and do what you need to do to correct it. 80% of americans say that immorality is wrong, and i think that makes sense. family is very important. and marriage is very important to society. so the public, it does reflect on people's character, but it also reflects on public values that we need to have to have a society. >> there are scandals from everything from adultery to hiring prostitutes, and john, does this reflect on the type of scandal, when we talk about sex scandals? >> i think a lot of it does reflect on the type of scandal. for instance, if a politician was discovered to have used tax dollars during his affair to take his mistress out or pay for meals or whatever, that makes it part of his job. but at the same time, there are a lot of people who believe that it's in their private life, and as long as it doesn't affect their performance in office, it really doesn't matter. but the thing is, that if you talk to any campaign staffer, or anyone who has worked for these guys, they will tell you that 95% of these guys are dorks. they have been dorks their whole life. and they're not used to attention or respect from women. and they don't get is that until they get into a position of power, and once they get that attention, they don't know how top handle it, and they can't say no, and they end up making a lot of stupid decisions and it becomes front-page news for all of the tv networks and news magazines. >> speaking about alleged docks. anthony weiner and eliot spitzer, and i didn't call him a dork,: a allison, is there a magic recipe for image rehabilitation for a politician after suffering from a sex scandal? >> i don't know if there's a magic recipe, but there are certain things that you should not do, and anthony weiner did it, and you should not do it, and not get caught. >> it's just too weird. it's the idea of having a mayor who is just too far out of a normal person. he didn't do anything illegal, but it's too undignified for somebody who wants to be mayor. >> but allison, why are some candidates forgiven for their indiscretion, and others aren't, like john edwards, there was no coming back for him. >> there was not, and there are a couple of things at play. when a mistake involves an abuse of power. it's much harder for the voting public to try to forgive. it involves not only betrayal of the spouse, but the betrayal of the voters who got him into office in the first place. when there's no abuse of power, and a politician can say, this is a personal matter and between he and my spouse and our pastor, you have to let me fail and come back from it, you have a better chance of coming back and getting reelected. >> it all depends on who you are. eliot spitzer, he rounded prostitutes, and people knew who he was. but if you are a super correct person, then you really stumble very hard. >> so megan, it sounds like how you politically brand yourself. if you brand yourself as mr. family values, and you have indiscretions opposite of that, you have a harder row to hoe coming back? >> that may be true, but it was clear that he was going on hiking trips, but they were trips to visit his mistress. and i think that the thing is don't get caught doing it a second time. and in the case of anthony weiner, don't do something reckless and embarrassing. besides the betrayal of his wife, it was very hard to get that image out of your head, and therefore, very hard to want him to be a politician. >> councilor, are some states in districts more tolerant than others? i think of bitter louisiana, who had a fairly easy go coming back, and i think of sauder, in indiana, who had a hard time coming back after an affair with one of his aids. >> a cowriter, we looked into this, to see if there was a difference in co regions. he was able to let three years go by from the time he was caught in the prostitution scandal and when he ran for re-election. and when his opponent was bringing it up again, he was like, we got this already, and he was a perfect example of this is a personal matter. his wife stayed with him and he was able to be very contrite about it. and he laid low and did his work in the senate and the voters said that's okay, and he won by a handed amount john, i'm going to go with you, this is the only time in history i can quote scarface. >> do scarface. >> first, you get the money, then you get the power, and then you get the women. john, you're a law student. and you're going to be a fine attorney. and what is it about power specifically that paralyzes the common sense of otherwise competent and intelligent people like wiener and spitzer and makes them do the same mistakes again? >> it comes down to the fact that they're not used to being in this type of position and getting this kind of attention from people and this kind of respect that comes with the office. i'm glad that you guys brought up spitzer and wiener. i mean, a guy like anthony weiner, there are a lot of friends of mine saying look, he didn't do anything that bad. he didn't physically cheat with his wife with another girl, but just tweeted lewd pictures of himself. but at the same time, how can someone with common sense and rationality do something so stupid? especially when you're in a position that you're in? and you know, you're a recognizable face. i also think of chris lee from new york too, who was soliciting personal ads on some website. i don't know if it was craig's list or what. and he was trying to use a fake name, but if you're a public official, people recognize your face, and they know your name, and you can't pretend to be somebody else. so it is kind of alarming that someone in that kind of power would have that power over public services or tax dollars, because there's an absence of common sense. and if i could just add one quick point about why it's acceptable for some politicians and not others. it doesn't surprise me that geography doesn't matter. it comes down to the politician himself. if he has a strong support network and if he has enough friends, he can rebound. we have seen that with bitter and sanford. and other guys are not that lucky. really, when it comes down to campaigns and elections, it's all about your support network. >> when we come back, what role the media plays in perpetuating these scandals. a. >> please allow me to begin my remarks this evening by letting me reiterate how much i regret and apologize for the circumstances that led to my resignation. >> i say sorry one more time. >> i apologize first. >> i am here to apologize. >> i am profoundly sorry. >> welcome back, and we're talking about how politicians are involved in sex scandals and how things have changed in the last 15 years, and how they translate into voter concerns. allison, what was different about the clinton affair, and how did it change the way that sex scandals would be in the media? >> there were things going on at the time. and it became a story of national interest and something that people needed to focus on. it was more than just fellatios, but a policy story. and it became a story about congress and the executive branch and power. and so that made it possible to make a public story out of what had been something traditionally private. but at the same time, cable news was exploding and so too the internet. and the beast needs to be fed. and both of those things really made for a different type of addressing of these types of stories. >> megan, if the internet existed during the time of jfk, do you think that his presidency would have been different? that the public would have viewed his extramarital affairs differently? or was that a time when people looked at these sorts of things through a different lens and differently? >> the clinton scandal made a big change in the media with cable news and the internet. but it also marked a shift in our morality. if you look at what happened to governor nelson rockefeller when he wanted to run for president in the 60s, his campaign was derailed by the fact that he divorced his wife to marry another woman. these days, it made it harder for him to get elected as the governor of new york much less the presidency. the government may have forgiven him. and the reporters would never have reported it. they knew about jfk, it was something that they talked about, blue what they wouldn't forgive is breaking up a family. when it became easier to break up your family, we became more forgiving of infidelity. when we say your sex life and your marriage had died away, it became something that you actively had chosen to betray the person you were with. on twitter: then we asked, how would you do image rehabilitation? and here's brian with a video comment. give him a listen. >> maybe not quite as quickly in red state america, but i think, as the next decade rolls on, and maybe a little bit in the future, i think that the american public is going to be a lot less concerned about what politicians do on their own time n. their own marriages, in their own rips, and more concerned about what they're doing to govern and improve people's lives. >> john, let's talk about media responsibility. allison mentioned hunger, is there really a public demand for hung for these stories, or is the media feeding it? >> i think there's a sensational element to it. in the wake of the 24-hour news cycle where you have to fill in 24 hours a news every single day, the media is certainly going to beat down anything that comes their way, and there's a strong argument that it's having a detrimental affect on the country. when i think of the clinton-lewinski sex scandal in the 90s, there's a great book where he illustrated both how close clinton and speaker gingrich were in major reforms like social security and medicare, that are about to go bankrupt in 20 years. they were so close to passing reforms in their longevity. but it all got derailed in the wake of the lewinski sex scandal. and that's a shame. entitlement , nobody wants to touch them, and there are only certain times when you can pass major reforms. when both sides are willing to work together to do that. it's having a detrimental effect in washington. >> you make a case, john, for opportunity costs, but allison, isn't honest important? if we're putting people in office that are skilled liars, isn't that more important than what they may be doing sexually behind closed doors >> . >> shul. but another thing that we need to consider, we make a lot of demands on people who run for office. we demand that they're attractive and funny and smart, but not too smart. we want our elected officials to be perfect. and that's not likely to happen. i think that megan had an interesting point. that over 90% of americans in a poll said that infidelity is the worst thing that you can do, but between 30 and 40% of marriages, there's a spouse that has cheated. so i think we look to our politicians to be, if not better than us, to at least appear better than us, whereas we're not holding ourselves to the same standards. >> megan, you wanted to jump in? >> i actually think it's an interesting story about the media. because if you look at the media in the 19th century, the media is doing exactly what we're doing now. it's all salacious details and crime, and sex scandals. and the people in jfk were in this time in the media, where people had a monopoly or near monopoly and they said we're not going to talk about that. and the elites didn't like it. but what the people the -- you know, news for a lot of us, i want to know if i'm in danger, and i want to gossip about people that i know. that's why celebrity magazines sell so much and we do take that on our polygs, but these are also legitimate questions of character. if a politician abandoned his wife, we wouldn't say that's something private between the two of them. >> well, not everyone is captivated by sex scandals. in europe, there are people who think cheating politicians are no big deal. why is that? but may be surprised by the answer, next. >> welcome back. we have been talking about the public's endless fascination with political sex scandals. and before the break, i mentioned how europe is more accepting of infamous politicians, and nothing shows that more than the wife of dominic strauss-kahn. when asked about her husband's reputation as a producer, she said, if anything i'm proud. as a political man, i'm proud. it's important to seduce, and as long as he seduces me, that's enough. >> it's interesting, when you go overseas people in europe don't seem to care as much about sex scandals in politics. >> i don't think that's quite right. it's big news here, and when clinton was in the news, it was big news in germany. i have to say about clinton, it was a political power play. they used in minor sex scandal to get rid of a president that was considered quite good in europe, and that was the angle. >> when europeans have scandals with european politicians, they're not publicly grilled like the ones in the united states are. >> no. our chancellor was married five times and got divorced four times, and i think if you get a divorce, you marry another wife, that's fine, you can do that. what you cannot do is like doing something with a minor or somebody who works for you and misuses public funds. you would be in trouble for that. we don't have the colorful stuff like anthony weiner. that would be trouble here too. but we don't have these hollywoodesque, very wonderful gossipy things in germany going on, you just have normal scandals. >> do you think that europe is a little more accepting of infid eld or that europeans put so much more value on privacy and modesty they wouldn't think to put these things out in public view like americans do? >> in germany, privacy is very important. and the press wouldn't report it right away as the american press does, and as long as you do something which is considered normal nowadays, you meet somebody else, they need to make up their mind. i should we be holding ourselves to the european center here? >> if you are a predator in some way, that's never okay. and so i think we should hold our politicians to that standard. >> american politicians, the same people who -- >> megan, in the benefits of society, which approach is better? do you think that the indiscretions should be part of the public discourse like in the united states, or is it better to leave them off to the side and not really acknowledged? >> one thing, societies have public values, and they enforce those public values. and to some extent, that's okay. a society has decided what it's values are. and it enforces it's values. and i don't think that it's healthy to spend a great deal of time pursuing political sex scandals, but what's interesting about a lot of these scandals, they're not things that the media was just pounding and going after. eliot spitzer got snagged up in an investigation. >> we have to stop there because we're out of time. but thanks to all of our guests for a wonderful discussion tonight. and until next time, we'll see you online. >> hello, and welcome to aljazeera america. i'm richelle in new york, and john has the night off. a rising cold snap has a rising toll on the crops. and plus: >> a lot of our friends and a lot of our neighbors have lost their jobs and they're working their tails off every day trying to find a new job. >> restoring benefits. president obama calls on congress to restore assistance to the long-term unemployed. >> . >> on defense, dennis rodman goes to north korea to play basketball and create a new controversy over captive amers

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