Power straying

At one point in the movie Heartburn, Nora Ephron’s barely fictionalised account of her marriage to reporter Carl Bernstein, the heroine tearfully tells her father about her husband’s infidelities, only to be advised, “You want monogamy? Marry a swan.” Yet thanks to DNA evidence, we know now that even those famously loyal swans aren’t sexually monogamous.

A story is told in New Zealand about the early 19th-century visit of an Episcopal bishop to an isolated Maori village. As everyone was about to retire after an evening of high-spirited feasting and dancing, the village headman — wanting to show sincere hospitality to his honoured guest — called out, “A woman for the bishop.” Seeing a scowl of disapproval on the prelate’s face, the host roared even louder, “Two women for the bishop!”

On balance, the Maori headman had an acute understanding of men. He also reflected a powerful cross-cultural universal. Around the world, high-ranking men have long enjoyed sexual access to comparatively large numbers of women, typically young and attractive. Moreover, women have by and large found such men appealing beyond what may be predicted from their immediate physical traits. “Power,” wrote Henry Kissin-ger, “is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

All of which contributes to the apparent sex appeal of such less-than-stunning physical specimens as Kissinger, Woody Allen and Bill Clinton, not to mention the persistence of sex scandals among the popular and powerful across the political and ideological spectrum, including Thomas Jefferson, JFK, Hugh Grant, Newt Gingrich, and Larry Craig.

Some readers may bridle at this characterisation of Homo sapiens as EPC-inclined, but the evidence is overwhelming. That doesn’t justify adultery, by either sex, especially because human beings — even those burdened by a Y chromosome and suffering from testosterone poisoning — are presumed capable of exercising control over their impulses. Especially if, via wedding vows, they have promised to do so.

But even a smidgen of evolutionary insight suggests that maleness plus money plus political power isn’t likely to add up to the kind of sexual restraint that the public expects. A concluding word, therefore, to the outraged voters of New York state: You want monogamy? Elect a swan.

The writer is an evolutionary biologist