Some people (for convenience, I’ll use the word “liberals” to refer to those people) argued in the wake of the Weiner scandal that politicians’ personal lives should not be our concern. They can’t really believe that, though.
Suppose a politician is found to have murdered his wife rather than simply cheated on her. The politician’s act of murder is part of his personal life rather than his political life — would liberals encourage us to ignore the act of murder when deciding whether to vote for the politician?
Maybe liberals would argue that murder, since it is a criminal act, is a sort of “public” act since it forces the politician to be engaged with by the state, and thus it is of public concern. That argument can easily be refuted by considering a case where the politician, instead of murdering his wife, took to the high seas in an unflagged sailboat with a bunch of animals and tortured the animals to death. In this case, since the animals cannot file suit (both because they are animals and because they are dead), and since the act took place outside of U.S. jurisdiction, there would (I believe) be no engagement of the politician by the state. This act of torture would truly reside firmly in the politician’s personal life. Would liberals encourage us to ignore the torture when deciding whether to vote for the politician?
No. When liberals say “ignore a politician’s personal life,” what they really mean is “ignore a politician’s marital life.”
And, lastly: some people argue that since Anthony Weiner “wasn’t a hypocrite” with regard to his marital infidelity, we shouldn’t be as harsh on him as we are on, say, Republican lawmakers who both preach family values and are found to have cheated on their wives. This argument is totally bogus for 2 reasons: 1) Most politicians preach honesty; thus, when they cheat on their wives and then lie to the press, they are being hypocritical with respect to the action of being honest. And 2) Who decided that hypocrisy is the big-ticket sin anyway (rather than, say, plain old dishonesty)?
I think hypocrisy is a worse form of dishonesty than other forms. Republicans who preach family values but don’t practice it in their private life–or who oppose pro-gay legislation and turn out to be gay–are not simply lying about their actions, but they are exerting their influence on others through their public roles. It doesn’t matter much if a congress person lies about where he/she went to college, because it won’t have any effect. But hypocrisy about policy does matter.
But don’t you think it diminishes the value of a free press to have a congressman such as Weiner unashamedly lie to them for an entire week and then shout at them when they try to pin him down on his lies? Even if the underlying issue being discussed were totally trivial, I think such behavior makes the press less valuable: there needs to be a taboo around lying to and abusing the press in order for them to be able to do there job most effectively.
I do agree that if all other factors are equal, if you have one person who preaches against behavior X, and another who doesn’t, then the hypocrite is marginally worse. I just think the non-hypocrite can also have done quite a bad thing.
Your reasoning is sound, but I still think you’re wrong.
haha thanks, I’ll take what I can get.
I examine this question through the lens of pure pragmatism rather than morality. I truly do not care who sticks what appendage in which orifice as long as it doesn’t affect me.
However, when a man has taken public marriage vows, it is safe to assume he very much desires not to have any knowledge that he has broken them made public. Therefore, he is quite susceptible to blackmail if he in fact does break them. And that is a very serious security risk. Imagine if Mossad or the Chinese clandestine services caught wind of Monica Lewinsky before it was public knowledge. Such actions do also speak to a possible lack of foresight and good judgment in matters of more public concern.
It’s safe to say that in light of his previous indiscretions, Bill Clinton would not qualify for a high enough security clearance to scrub the White House toilets if he were applying for a job there now. So I do not have a problem with scrutinizing the sexual and other personal behavior of anyone who wants to sit behind the desk.
Yes, good point. I wonder if a congressman has ever been blackmailed over this sort of thing by some kind of foreign agent. Unless the foreigners actually honey-trapped the congressman, I doubt they could find out before the U.S. press did. I agree on the total irrelevance of the substance of the sexual behavior though.