Karen Heller: Should fidelity matter?

Get over it. Ambitious men have affairs. Not all, unless they're French, but many.

Maybe Herman Cain had an affair. Maybe he simply likes texting women before dawn. But he spent more time addressing the subject than clarifying his political agenda before suspending his campaign Saturday.

As the Los Angeles Times observed last week, recent developments have put "some of the Republican Party's most active voters in a distinctly uncomfortable position: deciding whether to abandon an accused adulterer to side with an admitted adulterer."

That would be Newt Gingrich, a serial admitted adulterer with a taste for Tiffany.

But adultery isn't reason enough to cast a candidate aside. Consider the remarkable ego required to make a man believe he's qualified to be leader of the free world.

That same ego, massive yet in constant need of feeding, much like the carnivorous plant in Little Shop of Horrors, makes such men prone to risk, welcoming the fawning of younger women.

Politicians often maintain a casual relationship with the truth, which is a prerequisite for affairs. They make more promises than they can keep while rewriting history to win debates. And a campaign is the perfect petri dish for adultery, with the long hours, months on the road, adoring women, and spouse-free hotel rooms.

Many lauded politicians, of both parties representing varied ideologies, have had zipper problems (Thomas Jefferson, in breeches, had a button problem): Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Bill Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Nelson Rockefeller, John McCain, and the Kennedys, the poster boys for infidelity.

Not that the mediocre, like Warren G. Harding and a gazillion members of Congress, are immune, either.

Adoring your spouse is an admirable quality, particularly in one's own partner. But fidelity shouldn't be the determining factor on which candidate gets your vote. Richard Nixon was faithful to Pat, just not to the Constitution.

Rick Santorum adores his wife. I'm fairly certain that if you look up uxorious in the dictionary, there's a picture of Rick gazing at his wife, Karen. That devotion wasn't enough for Pennsylvanians to reelect him to a third term in the U.S. Senate.

Most likely, we've all voted for candidates who have been unfaithful. Mitt Romney adores his wife, Ann. Yet serial admitted adulterer Gingrich bests him in most every poll.