Sorry do you make an oath to your partner or not? Cheating on someone after explicitly promising to be a faithful partner is as low as it gets and burns trust forever.

I have no idea what oath or commitments he made with his wife

And I don’t look to CEOs for moral guidance and leadership. Ever.

I might evaluate someone’s good sense before investing, and this was bad decision-making, but it’s hardly the whole of his career.

Don't confuse your own religious views with those of everyone else. Probably your first mistake.

Good point. Most people do make oaths to our partners. "Till death do we part."

But then we culturally decided divorce doesn't count. "Till death do we part" became "Till death or major or minor inconvenience do we part."

Or we just culturally decided that a centuries-old tradition didn’t mean we had to forever put up with something we only later found out we’re unhappy with. Marriage should not be a life sentence nor an unbreakable commitment.

Funny things, the rules we make up to justify nonsensical behaviour.

Only some religious traditions actually involve that oath. Jews have practiced a religious version of no-fault divorce for thousands of years.

People also promise to love and honor each other (until death...), and see how well that's working out for many. Cheating is often only the consequence of that failure, and as someone "outside" - who are we to judge the people who are inside of the relationship?

Have you considered the possibility that sometimes people give their spouse permission to have an affair?

Have you also considered the fact that you can get married without taking such an oath? A wedding ceremony is not how you get married. You get married by signing a document that says you are marrying the other person who signs the document, and then filing the document with the government. Marriage is a legal arrangement that primarily covers property rights and certain legal decisions (e.g. the presumption that your spouse can make decisions on your behalf if you are incapacitated). Even in the few remaining places where cheating has any meaningful legal significance divorce lawyers often advise clients not to bother -- it is rarely worth pursuing and most people just want to finish the divorce as quickly as possible and all filing for fault will do is raise your legal fees (for little tangible benefit).

No…

I don't remember any oath about not sleeping with another woman, in my language and culture. Maybe there is one in his language in culture, but I am not sure about that. There is one about being together in good and bad times, but "cheating" does not imply separation or divorce, just having some time with someone else. It is even something agreed in a marriage in certain circumstances of health or age.

He cheated on his wife with a Chinese spy and sold her millions of chips which were routed directly to his Chinese competitors via her shell company.

The second part of that is a problem, for sure. The first part IMO is irrelevant

The first part explains why the second part happened, it's wholly relevent.

OP only mentioned him cheating on his wife, so my comment was related to that: his infidelity to his wife

The entire scandal is a scandal to be sure. That he cheated on his wife with an intelligence operative and whatever happened beyond that is a problem and needs to be investigated and dealt with

But this thread was about him cheating on his wife full stop. He could have cheated with anyone else and it would not have been a problem. The cheating wasn't the problem, it was who he cheated with and what happened downstream

The cheating is a problem because it opens him up to blackmail and coercion. Even if he didn’t cheat with a spy, a spy could have used that as leverage if discovered.

Madam Butterfly is irrelevant? Who she is is the most important part.

Heh, good example, because that was the primary justification for trying to remove him from office over that, and turns out not to be such a good reason.

The argument around the Clinton impeachment was that he had lied under oath. Yes, the circumstances of his relationship with Lewinsky were shocking and got all the press but the charges brought against him in the House was that he had lied in previous sworn testimony in a deposition where he said he hadn't cheated on his wife by having sex with anyone else

More like that was the reason they managed to find after spending years pursuing a completely unrelated, and unsuccessful, investigation into a real estate deal.

> Bill Clinton didn't auction off the nuclear launch codes to prevent the Lewinsky scandal from becoming public.

I mean... he did lie through his teeth to make it seem better, so not exactly trustworthy no. That he didn't sell the nuclear codes doesn't mean people trusted him after that.

The people who didn't trust him after that didn't trust him before and would never have trusted or liked him. On the whole people didn't care about what he did with his dick and he ended his presidency just fine

Speak for yourself? I can think of at least myself who liked him before that and didn't trust him after. It also followed his wife around in her political life, and she was asked about it constantly, or is she in the category of "didn't trust him before and would never have trusted or liked him"? To this day his affair and the lies thereafter are the top of what's talked about for his whole 8 years in office.

Uhh, Bill Clinton got impeached for it. "Lying under oath"