For GOP presidential candidates, rules to love by

What do American voters really think about sex and politics?

Newt Gingrich has surged to the top of most polls in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, despite being married three times — once more than President Obama and Mitt Romney combined. Herman Cain’s campaign, meanwhile, stumbled after allegations of sexual misconduct and crashed and burned after allegations of infidelity.

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Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich upholds the sanctity of marriage

So what are voters saying about how much a candidate’s private life affects his public service? If the message is mixed, it’s because this campaign is playing out as our ideas about marriage are fundamentally changing. Still, the Republican race so far has confirmed three unwritten rules of love and marriage — some old, some new — that candidates must follow.

Rule 1. Be married.

This may seem like a no-brainer, but marriage matters much more here than it does in other Western countries.

In France, Ségolène Royal, the unsuccessful socialist candidate for president in 2007, had four children with a long-term partner, politician François Hollande, whom she never married. They announced a separation soon after the election, but the fact that they were unwed was not a political liability for her.

In Britain, Ed Miliband married the mother of his two children in May, less than a year after becoming the leader of the Labor Party. Miliband, who is likely to run for prime minister in the next election, previously responded to criticism about cohabiting by saying he was “too busy” to get married. The wedding, he said, had nothing to do with politics. Rather, he said, “it feels like the right time for us.”

In the United States, however, candidates must be married. It’s difficult to imagine a modern presidential hopeful cohabiting with his or her partner and their children. According to a 2010 Pew Research Center survey, 20 percent of Americans do not even think that a cohabiting couple with children constitutes a family. A new analysis of census data by the Pew Center showed that marriage rates have fallen dramatically in this country, while people’s attitudes about what counts as a family — and what they expect from their political leaders — are still evolving.

Americans seem to feel better about a candidate when they see the de rigueur image of a husband and wife smiling and waving together. The only never-married presidential candidate of any significance in recent memory is independent Ralph Nader, who has never come close to winning.

Rule 2. It doesn’t have
to be your first marriage.

A divorce, perhaps even two, is not a problem. But as recently as the 1960s, the electorate would not accept a divorced and remarried candidate. In 1963, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s bid for the 1964 Republican nomination effectively ended when he divorced his wife and married Margaretta “Happy” Murphy, herself divorced.

America’s divorce rate nearly doubled in the 1960s and 1970s, to a level where nearly half of all marriages ended in divorce, and Americans’ attitudes began to change. In 1980, Ronald Reagan became the first person to be elected president who had divorced and remarried. If Gingrich were to win the Republican nomination, he would be the fifth major-party nominee to have been divorced and remarried, following Reagan, Bob Dole, John Kerry and John McCain.