The news right now is all about politicians and their moral shortcomings (shortcomings as judged from the perspective of people who aren’t wealthy or famous enough to be significantly tempted).
There are articles on Bill Clinton partying with interns in the Oval Office. Al Franken did some stuff three years before he became a Senator (and now the Senate Ethics bureaucracy is “investigating”?). Roy Moore did some stuff 40 years ago.
Stepping back from all of this, I’m wondering why people are demanding resignations. Given that the U.S. runs a crony capitalist economy, shouldn’t we expect politicians to be among our most corrupt citizens (here’s a senator who just got done with a corruption trial and nobody seems interested or surprised)? Why the demands that these folks be somehow exemplary, especially if what gets them in the news wasn’t related to their current jobs?
[In the case of Clinton I guess you could argue that he was having sex at work with at least one co-worker (presumably there are more interns that we just never heard about?). In the case of Franken maybe you could argue that he was on government business (a USO tour).]
Is it that we think the replacements will be morally superior? Maybe they will be; a New York Times columnist says
I would mourn Franken’s departure from the Senate, but I think he should go, and the governor should appoint a woman to fill his seat. The message to men in power about sexual degradation has to be clear: We will replace you.
and women seem to be less likely to disgrace themselves sexually (I’m disappointed that the NYT would appear to be satisfied with the appointment of a cisgender white heterosexual woman; why not demand the appointment of a transgender homosexual of color who came to the U.S. as a refugee?). Or maybe it is simply not possible for a woman to be disgraced sexually because it would be considered “slut-shaming” or “judging”? But women can be just as corrupt overall? Hillary had the Clinton Foundation. Corrinne Brown (Florida congresswoman) was indicted for having a smaller-scale charity.
Ted Kennedy never had any difficulty being reelected, despite having killed a young woman on Chappaquiddick. Voters in Massachusetts presumably liked what Ted Kennedy was doing in terms of the actual job of being a senator. Is it fair to say that times have changed? Our future politicians will be people that have never been alone with another person (NYT complains about that too!) and therefore can’t be credibly accused of having done something sexual?
Related:
- Sharing the front page of the NYT with the above stories: “My Vagina Is Terrific. Your Opinion About It Is Not.” in which the author notes “You [men] can either listen and learn or you can take a seat in the back of class and shut up. The era in which men can shame women for their perfectly healthy vaginas is now coming to an end.”
- “How to Stop the Predators Who Aren’t Famous” (also on NYT right now) in which the answer turns out to be unionization, “eliminate tipping and replace it with a fair minimum wage,” etc. (But wouldn’t unionization make it tougher to get rid of men? Absent a union, a man can be fired the moment that a woman complains.)
- “Bill Clinton should have resigned” (Vox)
> Why do politicians have to be morally pure?
At one time they didn’t, at least in England. From Postgate’s biography of John Wilkes (1725 – 1797):
“The word ‘enthusiasm’ was a word of abuse. Except on the electoral platform, where rhetoric was expected, nothing was in worse taste than for a gentleman to make emotional professions of high motive. … [John Wilkes] had more savoir faire than to parade disinterestedness and idealism: he never did a good thing without giving a bad reason.”
The new York times article was almost life imitating art.
For a gender reversed version, check out South park: https://youtu.be/SQsXznYNzz8
Puritan culture?
It is funny that embezzling money seems to be ok in this culture. Having an affair? Definitely not!
Latin cultures (French, Spanish, Italian)? Seems to be exactly the opposite.
Clinton, Kennedy and Franken seem to be different issues. Clinton was receiving oral sex in the White House from a young intern over close to a two year period while being paid to do country business. In doing so he was obviously not paying full attention to what he was being paid for. Kennedy was misbehaving on his own time & anyway gets a pass because he was the youngest brother of St. Jack — killed in the line of duty snuffing out the bright promise of Camelot, which led directly to LBJ, the Vietnam war, Richard Nixon, the Bushes, Clarence Thomas and Donald Trump. Ted would be closer to Trump trying to grab some — but on his own time. Franken seems somewhere in the middle, misbehaving on a government sponsored trip but not, for example, receiving oral sex while he was supposed to be reading some piece of legislation that he would vote on the next day. That would be on the Clinton side of the spectrum.
Upholding the rule of law is a key responsibility of our political leaders. If you can’t trust your leaders to uphold the law, you’re going to end up with an impaired democracy.
How does this relate to morals? Morals, social mores, and laws are all examples of norms, rules of conduct with an associated sanction for violating them. Someone who has a casual attitude towards morals and mores (someone with no sense of shame, for example) is probably also going to have a casual attitude towards the law: “Rules are for other people.”
As the saying goes: A fish rots from the head down.
A better question is “Why do politicians have to be morally pure IF THEY ARE CONSERVATIVE OR REPUBLICAN?”. They clearly don’t have to be if they are liberal or Democratic.
The answer is simple. Because the media is FAKE NEWS. The Fake News media is about advancing the Liberal-Socialist-Globalist agenda which the people working in that industry overwhelmingly identify with. They will exhaustively report as FACT any allegations — proven or not, likely or not, plausible or not — 24/7 to damage road blocks to their world view. They will minimize or ignore champions o their belief system.
The changes haven’t all been in one direction. Many attributes and behaviors which in living memory made it difficult or impossible for an individual to gain political office are now much more widely accepted.
Dwight: You haven’t been following the news about Al Franken? Or Harvey Weinstein (not a politician, but a major donor)?
Whoever thinks that unionization will keep men from trying to have sex with coworkers clearly hasn’t listened to the This American Life episode about UAW auto plants (just search for ‘sex’ in this transcript: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/transcript).
At the time Clinton was debauching the White House, any public corporation officer or exec would have been shown the door for like behavior, as would military officers. Being both an exec and the commander-in-chief demands some behavioral accountability. Somehow we require that of everybody except the President, assuming nobody who would do such things can “rise” to the position. Time for a new assumption or a Constitutional amendment? Note I’m talking about BEHAVIOR, not thoughtcrime
or boorish language.
“boorish language.”
Using slurs in semi-public or even public contexts used to be a lot more common than it is now. It is hard for me to see that as a problem.
“Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.” You can’t be stirring up social messes when in positions of authority.