It isn't very important in the scheme of things to focus on a leader's moral lapses, or to commiserate with the betrayed wife and family.
Back in the beginning of the Edward's campaign I was moved to write a letter to his campaign headquarters stating that I didn't believe it was right or fair for him to be announcing his candidacy for office when his wife had been diagnosed with cancer.
My concerns then, and now, were for the election of a Democrat for the Presidency, and not with his personal family issues. I stated that I felt that the focus of his attention during the campaign might be distracted from his efforts and ( rightly so) concentrated on his wife. Furthermore, I was concerned that if he won, and his wife was battling cancer, or passed away, he would be unable to devote his full undivided attention to the duties of the Presidency.
I wrote that letter then believing that he was an honorable man and a devoted husband.
The issue now is not his fall from "moral" grace, but the collusion of everyone in his campaign, ( and yes, even his devoted wife) to hide his flagrant affair and to continue even after it was supposedly ended to support his (ex?) mistress with CAMPAIGN FUNDS.
What would the primary results have been if he and his wife, who according to her diary knew about the affair, had properly and reasonably withdrawn from the primary?? Surely no one of them could have expected this secret to remain buried forever.
I was a Clinton supporter up to about 2 Months before she withdrew from the campaign. I stopped my support of her, not because of any great and sudden conversion to Obama, but because my previous "2nd choice" Edwards appeared to be supporting Obama and I believed that Bill had sabotaged his wife's campaign, either purposefully or by force of habit and his nature.
I do not think that adultery is grounds for disqualification of a candidate for high office, however I DO think that a wife who has been
so betrayed has an obligation in today's World to NOT "forgive and forget" if SHE wishes to be respected as someone who has the courage of her convictions and is running for office, or helping her errant husband run for office.
We are not in the FDR or JFK era anymore, women in public life who are betrayed by their spouses and give them a "pass" on it are, in my opinion, just as guilty of betraying the PUBLIC trust as their philandering husbands.