Over the years I keep learning of women who say they would never vote for Hillary Clinton, because she didn’t leave her husband when he cheated on her. Let me be clear: They are not, as far as I can tell, speaking to her qualifications, nor to her policy positions. Apparently it’s something more primal than that.
So I ask myself: If a man discovers that his wife has cheated on him, and he wants to keep working on the marriage, should that disqualify him as President of the United States?
What do we think of this man if he decides to take is wife back despite her imperfections? Is that the sort of man we would want to be our Commander in Chief?
I wonder what these women would say in answer to that question.
I think that you’re taking too cognitivist a view of politics. As much as I hate to sound like Scott Adams, people don’t really vote based on actual policy or meaningful qualifications. It is “something more primal than that.”
It’s also not clear that the public perception of taking back one’s husband after cheating vs. taking back one’s wife after cheating is at all symmetric.
Relevant: https://www.edge.org/conversation/molly_crockett-daniel_kahneman-deontology-or-trustworthiness
Yes, that very asymmetry was my point. I am making a case that this “primal” attitude toward Clinton is a manifestation of sexism.
Thanks for the link to the interview!