(CNN) -- How could they not have known they were asking for trouble? In the past few years, Rep. Mark Souder of Indiana had an affair with the staff member who had helped him produce a video promoting sexual abstinence. South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford flew to Argentina for an extramarital tryst, instructing his staff to tell the press he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. Sen. John Edwards tried to pass off the daughter he fathered as the love child of one of his aides. And now a stockpile of sexy e-mails has simultaneously brought down the head of the CIA and delayed the nomination of the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan to head NATO.
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Stephanie Coontz: Male politicians repeatedly step into illicit sex situations. Why?
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She says at one time they were encouraged. Now infidelity scorned, but old habits persist
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She says in an unequal history, men learned to expect adoration; women to admire men's power
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Coontz: Retro pattern persists, draws men to young adoring women, women to older men
Presidential candidate @placeholder fell for the woman who followed him around with an adoring camera as well as an adoring gaze.