The Party of the Messy Family

Judging by the leading candidates for president, it's the GOP:

Newt Gingrich married his first wife Jackie when he was 19. She was loyal, faithful and helped put him through graduate school. He still dumped her later on and had the class to file for divorce while she was in hospital recovering from cancer surgery. LH Carter, his former campaign treasurer, recalls Gingrich saying of Jackie: "She's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the president. And besides, she has cancer." He refused to pay alimony or child support.

His second marriage lasted almost two decades, but it broke up while he was having an affair with a staffer 23 years younger than him, to whom he is now married. He was having the affair while coordinating impeachment proceedings against President Clinton. He recently confessed to James Dobson, a leader of the religious right, that: "There were times when I was praying and when I felt I was doing things that were wrong. But I was still doing them ... I look back on those as periods of weakness and periods that I’m ... not proud of."

I'm not judging any of these men. We are all human and we all fall short of our own standards. But the sharp discrepancy between the party of 'family values' and the actual messy, complicated lives that many leading Republicans have led makes for some unmissable ironies.

(Photo of Newt Gingrich by Brendan Smialowski/Getty.)