Does History Repeat Itself?

The affair that has led Senator Jon Ensign to resign his leadership post in the U.S. Senate has some uncanny similarities to a scandal that dogged Alexander Hamilton more than 200 years ago. As you will see from the accompanying article in the Washington Post, it appears that the husband of the woman with whom Ensign had the affair demanded a payoff from the Senator. Was this extortion, or was he, in effect, pimping out his wife?

The Reynolds Affair, as it was called, is described in the Wikipedia article on Alexander Hamilton:

In 1791, Hamilton became involved in an affair with Maria Reynolds that badly damaged his reputation. Reynolds' husband, James, blackmailed Hamilton for money, threatening to inform Hamilton's wife. When James Reynolds was arrested for counterfeiting, he contacted several prominent members of the Democratic-Republican Party, most notably James Monroe and Aaron Burr, touting that he could expose a top level official for corruption. When they interviewed Hamilton with their suspicions (presuming that James Reynolds could implicate Hamilton in an abuse of his position in Washington's Cabinet), Hamilton insisted he was innocent of any misconduct in public office and admitted to an affair with Maria Reynolds. Since this was not germane to Hamilton's conduct in office, Hamilton's interviewers did not publish about Reynolds. When rumors began spreading after his retirement, Hamilton published a confession of his affair, shocking his family and supporters by not merely confessing but also by narrating the affair in detail, thus injuring Hamilton's reputation for the rest of his life.
At first Hamilton accused Monroe of making his affair public, and challenged him to a duel. Aaron Burr stepped in and persuaded Hamilton that Monroe was innocent of the accusation. His well-known vitriolic temper led Hamilton to challenge several others to duels in his career.

I note, by the way, a couple of examples of bad writing in this Wikipedia article. "Touting that" is not an expression that works. "Claiming that" or "asserting that" would be better. Also, the phrase "did not publish about," is awkward. Publish usually takes an object, as in "did not publish the information they possessed about him."

In any event, Ensign has provided yet another example of the hypocrisy that seems to be rife in the Republican party. Hypocrisy, it has been said, is the tribute vice pays to virtues. The Republicans, it appears, can praise virtue; they just don't know how to practice it.