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25 June 2009 7:10 AM
Adultery and Politicians
IDEA IN THE NEWS/June 25, 2009
Now that Mark Sanford has admitted adultery, the one thing everyone agrees about is that any chance he had to be elected president is gone -- a political judgment that is likely true, but that is pretty weird when you think about it, given that we're a country that elected the obviously philandering Bill Clinton, re-elected him after he got oral sex from an intern under his desk, and gave the GOP nomination to John McCain, even though he cheated on his first wife, instead of Rudy Giuliani, who also cheated on at least one of his wives. These men are all guilty of shameful behavior, all were viable presidential candidates, and at least some of them were guilty of behavior far more egregious than Gov. Sanford, though the South Carolina governor is himself guilty of egregious behavior. Nor does this account for the presidents who've engaged in extra-marital affairs throughout history. Should we have disqualified JFK? Maybe. But Thomas Jefferson? It seems that Gov. Sanford is disqualified largely due to bad timing.
Once I'd have said that an indiscretion like this would cost Mark Sanford my future vote, but no more. Though I am hardly invested in his candidacy, were it the case that he proved the best steward for the federal government in matters domestic and foreign, I'd vote for him even if he cheated again. I'd be appalled by the repeated infidelity, especially given the fact that he has young children. But if I ask myself how many GDP points or lives lost in a foreign war it is worth to have a president who is morally upstanding in his personal life--and no, I am not intending to reference any recent presidents--the answer doesn't amount to much. We need not conceive of the president as the nation's moral leader. Nor is there any guarantee that a candidate who hasn't been caught cheating isn't just better at hiding it.
Should I be lucky enough to marry, I'll stay faithful. I'll counsel friends to do the same. Should I be blessed with children, fidelity is a value I'll impart. Should my child get sick, and require a surgeon, I'll find the most skilled, talented, tested, highly evaluated professional, even if he is a thrice divorced polygamist cheating on both wives with a Chinatown mother and daughter unaware of one another's involvement. Am I wrong? Why should politicians be different? All else being equal, I'll vote for the faithful husband or wife. But all else is never equal, and usually it isn't even close. The politician's propensity for adultery is strange, but so is our collective fantasy that it is wise and natural to hold up folks in that profession as moral exemplars, and dismiss them when they fail. The exercise is bound to degrade more than it elevates. Better that every elected official be judged on his or her official duties, and that any unrelated moral leadership they offer is suspect. Even without Charles Barkley, we've got enough role models that government needn't provided another.
UPDATE: An overlapping take at Secular Right.
From what I am to understand in the past people in power were allowed to project a public persona which was at some variance with their private life. This disjunction has been melting away over the past generation. If you are going to extol bourgeois probity, it seems likely that you're going to have to walk the talk. Various sexual scandals involving politicians have indicated to some that their power allows them to satisfy their sexual appetites in a manner which would otherwise not be possible, but in an age of radical transparency this temptation and fringe benefit might be sharply diminished. Or perhaps public norms will shift in terms of what is demanded of their political leaders? The transparent society will effect public figures first, but we'll all have to deal with it sooner or later.I am guessing that public norms will shift. The trick is doing so in a way that casts immoral behavior as irrelevant to certain tasks, not okay and to be expected.
UPDATE 2: James Joyner rightly points out that "While Clinton's escapades with Lewinsky started in 1995, the affair wasn't reported until well after his reelection. Drudge broke the news January 17, 1998."
Comments (10)
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So the bottom line is that a soulless technocrat ('the best steward for the federal government in matters domestic and foreign') is technocrat is ok as long has s/he's efficient? Conor, in your opinion does the President (or Governor) need to be a leader (not to be confused with role model)? If so, is that leadership a function of his/her position or their behavior or something else? If not, what is the role of the President or elected executive?
But come on, our leaders are not surgeons. We cannot separate one specific skill out from the entire person. We do not elect our leaders solely on the basis of their resume, their success as a business executive, or legislative effectiveness (or longevity). We elect a person. They are flawed and are best served by admitting that they are so. But we can still hold our leaders to account and have standards by which we examine those flaws.
One of the foundational elements of leadership, in my opinion, is trust. I have a hard time understanding how someone like Sanford could be effective if his staff and constituents do not trust him. He lied to them and got them ensnared in his lie. We knew Bill Clinton was flawed when we elected him, we understood what some of those flaws were. I did not vote for him, but to my mind, lying under oath was not part of the package, and is not part of a package that any should accept.
Is it increasingly hard to build that trust when the spotlight of the media shines in every corner? Absolutely. Do we expect our leaders to be reflective of not only our economic and security desires but also our ethics? Yep. What suggests to you that public norms will shift?
While Clinton's escapades with Lewinsky started in 1995, the affair wasn't reported until well after his reelection. Drudge broke the news January 17, 1998.
Ah, Mr Friederdorf, you are so unlike the 'conservatives' and Repubs of the 90s. You enlist in their cause but think that their history cannot touch you.
I for one cannot get enough of the salacious details of the Clinton-impeachers private lives. I hope the SC legislature requires Gov Sanford to answer a few questions: How many times? What positions? What room of the house? Was anything spilled on her clothes?
And if Gov Sanford should be reluctant to answer? Charge him with perjury.
Then overturn an honest election in which the people of SC chose him their governor.
That would approximate the way your predecessors behaved on the national stage in the 90's, my boy.
Come on...get a grip.
For what primary PURPOSE do we elect our public leaders?
One word...JUDGMENT.
It's about making good decisions for the public good, right? What other reason is there?
So, did Mark Sanford exercise good judgment or apalling judgment?
From actually going on the trip, to deceiving his staff, family, security detail, media and constituents to lying about it all and surrounding himself with a cadre of people who would lie for him. Then for not resigning in disgrace after returning? Is there any question about all this?
Did Clinton make similar misjudgment? Of course.
Everything else is a distant second.
Indeed. Agreed. The joy of being conservative is the ability to hold completly opposite positions on a subject without knowing it. Today the enabler of the right's political schizophrenia is El Rushbo who holds that it's Obama's fault that Sanford left the country for a tryst with his Argentinia sweetheart instead of being with his 4 sons over Father's Day. Of course it is. Its always someone else's fault.
Indeed. Agreed. The joy of being conservative is the ability to hold completly opposite positions on a subject without knowing it. Today the enabler of the right's political schizophrenia is El Rushbo who holds that it's Obama's fault that Sanford left the country for a tryst with his Argentinia sweetheart instead of being with his 4 sons over Father's Day. Of course it is. Its always someone else's fault.
Surely you're joking. Seriously? Sanford doesn't keep his marriage vows to a woman he loved and the kids he loved - how are we supposed to trust him with his oath of office to a large group of people he mostly doesn't know? And furthermore, he leaves his office, makes his staff lie for him, and runs off leaving a power vacuum? I can't tell if you're just absolutely naive in your opinion, or if you're somehow trying to maneuver conservatives into believing that this guy should still be kept around for a possible 2012 run. Either way, the fact of the matter is that he's not only morally corrupt in this case, but also, in terms of his position, he put his staff and his state in a very bad position here. Maybe liberals like to let these sort of things slide (e.g., Clinton), but conservatives don't, and it's time for this guy to go.
As James Joyner pointed out, the Clinton escapades didn't become news until his second term, after which the voters ironically punished Al Gore, husband of Mrs. Explicit Lyrics Labels, for Bill's transgressions.
While it may have been moral distaste that impelled many Bush voters (I remember Bob Feller, the famous baseball pitcher and Ohio voter, quoted as disgustedly referring to "BJs in the White House"), my feeling is that Bill's actions showed an appalling lack of judgment, and I think the same of Sanford. Between the "He's immoral!" folks and the "God, what a nincompoop!" folks, you've probably included enough voters to be sure Sanford and anyone else who's publicly exposed as serially unfaithful won't have much of a shot to be (re-) elected to anything.
Of course the public norms will shift as you suggest. How? Shift in public education (put it in the text books), shift in newscast tone (which you are a part of), shift to what the Europeans are doing. But is that right?
Perhaps you would recall, Conor, the dumbfounded expressions of amazement from the former French President Jacques Chirac towards prudish America during Clinton's affair. He to this day can't see what the fuss was over a little affair in the White House.
No one will argue that this view is common in other places. But since when has America been just like 'other places?'
Humans in the long run are incapable of separating seemingly unrelated moral judgement from the judgement they use in doing a particular task.
Since you attended a Catholic school, I assume you could see the danger of having leaders in the Catholic church who may have immaculately achieved the goal of Church growth, but didn't concern themselves with unrelated morality towards young boys.
I think it not an undue burden that we ask our public servants to be not only be the most efficient and effective at their task, but also able to do it without bringing shame to the office of which they swore an oath.
Judgment, judgment, judgment. Sanford's is lacking.