The sexual politics that hound Hill and Bill

"Sexual politics" once described the power relationship between a man and a woman, but that has changed, like everything else, with the changing times. In the age of the Internet, with its blessings and curses delivered at warp speed, presidential politics expands (some say narrows) to include what goes on between a man and a woman.

The Garden of Eden, where Satan once enticed Eve to nibble the forbidden apple (which was not an apple at all, except in the secular telling), has become overgrown with weeds and roses thick with thorns. That first couple's political descendants worry very little about what they do in God's eye, only how it plays out in the public eye. Moliere's notorious hypocrite, Tartuffe, understood in the 17th century that the greatest crime is exposure: "It is public scandal that constitutes offense, and to sin in secret is not to sin at all."