I care how the leaders of my government handle my money, how they treat the schools, how they care for the poor, how they plan to deal with the health-care situation, how they uphold the Constitution and how they handle themselves on the international stage.

To be honest, I don't care one bit what they do in the bedroom or who they do it with. Unfortunately, I am apparently the only one.

Our country is absolutely fascinated and obsessed with the love lives of politicians. Lie, cheat, embezzle, double-deal, take drugs, torture a puppy -- that's, you know, a politician being a politician. We shrug those offenses off and vote for the same guy all over again. Sneak around with Paris Hilton, however, and we get all morally superior and call for the gas chamber "¦ but only after spending trillions of hours on the airwaves and zillions of pages in the press talking about it.

Infidelity and kinkiness may make a politician a bad husband, but not necessarily a bad leader. Chastity, likewise, doesn't make a leader any wiser, stronger or more inspirational. As long as the politician is canoodling with a consenting adult, I don't much care. That's for his family to deal with.

This is not meant as a defense of our disgraced ex-governor, Eliot Spitzer, who was as stupid as a very smart man can be. While everyone is aghast at his sexcapades, Spitzer lost me by breaking the hypocrisy rule: If you prosecute prostitutes, you can't hire prostitutes. If you campaign against gay marriage, you can't have a same-sex affair. If you rail against pornography, you can't date February's Penthouse Pet. These are deal breakers.

I long for the old days, when the press would joke about presidential marital affairs but wouldn't write about them. In the time of JFK, the Bay of Pigs was fair game; Marilyn Monroe in the Lincoln bedroom was off limits.

Thomas Jefferson had Sally Hemings. Franklin Roosevelt had Lucy Mercer. Ronald Reagan had Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile. If the current wave of indignant moral superiority had been in vogue in their times, none of them would have ever become president, and history might look considerably different.

Our new governor, David Paterson, under cover of the Spitzer scandal, has been able to air all his considerable dirty laundry at once and, shockingly, get a free pass on it. There is something important to be learned here.

I propose, right here and right now, a one-day amnesty for political sex scandals. On April 15, every politician in our land can step to the microphone and confess every tawdry, immoral, disgusting thing he's ever done with his clothes off, and we will forgive him. We'll get all the dirty laundry out in the open over the course of 24 hours, offer counseling if necessary.

It might take 48 or 72 hours for a couple of governors and one senator I can think of.

We've offered amnesty to tax cheats in the past; now we'll do it for marital cheats. There will be no more rumors and innuendo. No one searching through the garbage or bugging bedrooms or snapping long-distance photos. Come clean about your dirt, and you will be forgiven.

It will make for one great and incredibly popular news cycle. Sales of newspapers and ratings on CNN will reach all-time highs (though we might want to keep the children locked indoors with a VeggieTales video that day).

Then it will be over. Once we stop vilifying politicians for what they do in the boudoir, we can instead castigate them for bad trade agreements, bowing to special interest groups and endangering national security.

Would you rather your representative lies to his wife about an affair or lies to you about a nuclear threat? Would you rather he has a fling with his secretary or he cozies up to the oil companies? I know what I'd choose. Then again, if it's Paris Hilton, that does show a spectacular lack of judgment ."

ouellette1918@gmail.com