This whole saga is hilarious for me - I live in South Africa. Our president was involved in a rape case just before he was elected. He got the charges dropped because of a mysterious set of audio recordings that were classified yet somehow proved him entirely innocent. Trouble is, nobody has yet been able to get hold of these recordings even under subpoena from the constitutional courts. The guy also has a number of wives, was involved in a number of arms deals, and is currently building a $30 million house in the middle of nowhere and having a billion dollar freeway project begun to make sure he can get to his house in style. We also have a 'textbook fiasco' where a large portion of public schools in a province did not receive textbooks at all. Nobody in the education accepts blame or will step down over this. The monopoly government controlled electricity provider is increasing electricity charges by over 15% per year and is still losing money by paying out massive bonuses to employees. We have had illegal strikes resulting in multiple deaths caused by police shooting fleeing strikers in the back as they ran away. Nobody in government has stepped down over any of this.
This is common in many democracies across the world.
The fact that someone in your government is forced to step down over something as basic as having an affair (our president has had a number of them over the last 4 years) shows that USA is still pretty high up as far as government morals go. Bravo!
Politicians in the USA have higher standards for civil servants than they do for themselves. There are numerous elected officials that have had multiple affairs, multiple convictions for some serious crimes, and/or very questionable ethic violations, but they'll happily keep their job.
CIA director is an easy target, and it's more than possible that Petraeus was targeted for some other reason and the affair was a useful pretext for taking him down. It wouldn't affect a president though. Bill Clinton only became more popular once the Republicans tried to remove him from office over an affair he had with a White House intern.
This is common in many democracies across the world.
The fact that someone in your government is forced to step down over something as basic as having an affair (our president has had a number of them over the last 4 years) shows that USA is still pretty high up as far as government morals go. Bravo!