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As night follows day, sex scandals follow politicians. Being an American, I hear the most about our fine politicians and their various scandals. However, this sort of thing is hardly limited to the United States.
While the Anthony Weiner episode has been dominating the American media, this incident does raise a general question about when a politician involved in a sex scandal should step down. After dragging out the tragic drama, Anthony Weiner finally decided to resign his position. This puts him in stark contrast with fellow New Yorker Chris Lee. After his shirtless-photo-Craigslist scandal, Lee promptly resigned.
Weiner’s career-ending injury was, of course, self-inflicted. The fatal blow was not his virtual infidelity. It was, of course, his decision to launch a prolonged campaign of deceit. If he had simply admitted to his behavior, then he would have been regarded as creepy but he might have not have been pushed to resign. Without the attempted cover up, the bump in his briefs would have probably been a brief bump in his career.
It might be argued that such virtual misdeeds would be sufficient grounds for resignation. After all, Chris Lee resigned after attempting to have an affair via Craigslist. This does have a certain appeal. After all, a politician is supposed to serve the interests of his people and he cannot do his job properly if he is caught up in a scandal.
This does have considerable appeal. To use an analogy, many jobs (including my own) restrict the outside employment that an employee can undertake. The reason is, of course, that outside employment can interfere with the primary job. While being caught up in a scandal is not a job (though it might have been caused by one), it can have the same effect by consuming far too much time and focus. Of course, if the person is able to keep the scandal from impacting his duties, then this argument would fail in that case.
It can also be argued that members of a political body who cannot keep their own members under control are unfit for office. This falls under the general question of what sort of unethical behavior (or violation of social norms) would be grounds for expecting a politician to resign.
One obvious answer is to refer to the rules specified by office. As with any job, there are conditions of employment and these set the limits of allowed behavior. Provided that these limits are not violated, then there would seem to be a lack of justification to expect a resignation-even when the person behaves in ways that are regarded as inappropriate or even unethical. For example, a university professor typically cannot be fired merely for having an affair since his job does not specify marital fidelity as a condition of employment. Naturally, having an affair with a co-worker or student could be grounds for dismissal, but not because it is an affair but most likely because the university has rules against that sort of behavior.
Naturally enough, if a resignation is expected, this often means that there are not actual grounds for kicking the person out As far as I know, inappropriate (but not illegal) sexual behavior is not grounds for being given the boot from most political offices. Lying, except for the obvious case of doing so under oath, also does not seem to be against the usual rules. If it were, then the halls of most governments would be empty.
Obviously enough, people are sometimes expected to resign even when they have not actually violated the rules. In the case of politicians, this happens often enough in cases involving sex.
It can be argued that politicians who are involved in sex scandals that do not break the relevant rules should still be pushed to resign. This could be done on ethical grounds. While we tend to regard politicians as an unethical lot, we still expect them to behave in ways we consider appropriate when it comes to sex and regard such violations as unethical. A rather appealing argument is that if a married politician will betray his wife, then he cannot be trusted and hence should leave office.
An obvious reply is that as long as the politician has not actually acted in ways that are relevant to his job, then his betrayal of his wife is not relevant. After all, a man can be relentlessly unfaithful to his wife and still be very competent and capable in his job.
Another appealing argument is that if a politician is engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior and has tried to conceal it, then it would seem reasonable to suspect that he might be up to other misdeeds and concealing them. The obvious reply is that such behavior (provided that it does not cross over into the criminal realm) is not actually relevant to job performance and the person’s competence. After all, I suspect that most married men are involved in some degree of what would be considered inappropriate behavior, yet they are able to function in their jobs.
Naturally, the above would apply to women as well as men. However, it is far more common for male politicians to be involved in such scandals than female politicians.
My opinion is that it’s pathetic that this nonsense gets so much attention in a field as important as politics.
This video sums things up nicely: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoegoVVlorc&playnext=1&list=PLF94ECD0211889386
I’m divided on this matter. On one hand, I certainly agree with you. It does seem that the media and the public focus far too much on what is sordid rather than what is important. On the other hand, politics is essentially about human interactions and sex seems to be an important factor in these interactions. While I am not a Freudian, human sexuality probably is a significant factor in what we are and what we do-even in large scale politics. Then again, maybe I have it all wrong.
People compartimentalize their behaviors fairly skillfully: the fact that someone lies to his wife does not imply that he will lie on his income tax returns or about the inflation rate.
What’s more, there are certain areas of human behavior where many of us who are otherwise “virtuous” feel free to be less “virtuous”: for example, sex, drugs and drink.
How about Martin Luther King, almost considered to be a saint for his pacifist activism and yet a known womanizer?
Freud does talk about the role of sexuality in molding our behavior, but not in moralistic terms. Freud’s basic thesis, greatly simplified, is that repressed sexuality (and by “repressed”, he means sexuality that is forgotten, forced into the unconscious) returns to haunt our consciousness in symbolic and/or neurotic fashion.
Politics is about certain basic issues: who will pay for healthcare and for education, how to deal with unemployment, with climate change. Those issues have absolutely nothing to do with one’s tendency towards online flirting.
It very well might be. Not denying that it is at all. So I’m not denying that his acts are politically relevant and of interest to the electorate.
What exasperates me is the degree to which the media and commentators focus on this matter when issues that are directly, unambiguously crucial for the well-being of real human beings are marginalised.
I don’t follow American domestic politics, but yet I’ve been aware of Weiner’s little expose for weeks – having never heard of the man before – and yet I have to find out from a virtually no-budget independent Youtube channel that the man denied that there was an occupation going on in the West Bank; an occupation that directly causes spades of human suffering; the same occupation that is one of the core sources of violence and discontent in the Middle East, which culminated in planes flying into a certain pair of towers. Shouldn’t Weiner’s slightly unconventional opinion on THAT be of a bit more interest to the electorate than who he decides to show his penis to?
It makes a joke of democracy when the people are left ignorant of issues that matter in the most urgent way as the media focuses on trivial drama.
This has already become a rant so I’ll pull the reigns. But I’m sure you can sense that there’s much to be said along these lines. And as insightful as Freudian politics may or may not be I feel comfortable saying that it shouldn’t be remotely close to the top of a list of concerns for an engaged electorate.
Wiener, Vitter and the likes will be forgotten in history. We do not care about Roosvelt, Eisenhower and others indiscretions, but we do care they lead us to victory in WWII. I believe the media obsession with these matters and their clear misstreatment of issues that will be part of history, a war (Iraq) fabricated on faulty intelligence, the deterioration of American industrial prowess, our decay in education, the assault on basic decency principles by some members of the media (radio talk shows and the like), the systematic lies and misrepresentations. All these and much more will be part of history. And it is our choice to shape this history or not. We have plenty critical stuff and matters where we can judge and evaluate the integrity of our representatives. Let’s leave their personal lives aside; they are human like all of us.
Just out of interest I am wondering why no mention has been made of Bill Clinton here who must be the leading exponent where this type of infidelity is concerned. “I did not have sex with that woman” But he did, and In the Oval office too as I understand, desecrating the seat of government. I cannot vouch for the truth of it, but I remember reading He was on the phone to someone or the other in Russia whilst simultaneously being pleasured by his Mistress? Whilst I cannot approve of such activity, being a shade anti-establishment myself I cannot help however finding some amusement and dare I say just a tinge of admiration, like that we may have for a clown, in that he certainly overdid it in all ways. What is interesting is that overall, he does not seem to have entered a state of permanent disgrace. Is he, was he, an intelligent likeable rouge, does absolute power corrupt absolutely? I do not know.
Was Clinton always a danger to the opposite sex? The same may go for Dominique Strauss-Kahn if he is found guilty of what he is accused. The sins of Anthony Weiner seem accordingly to pale into insignificance by comparison, or is it that what he did is, as Mike LaBossiere says, creepy?
“I did not have sex with that woman” But he did…
Ah, but he didn’t. There was no copulation, only fellatio. “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” said Bill. And as he was later to say in court (with regard to similar denials by Ms Lewinsky) he believed that “most ordinary Americans” took the definition of ‘sexual relationship’ to be ‘two people having intercourse’:
“If you said Jane and Harry have a sexual relationship, and you’re not talking about people being drawn into a lawsuit and being given definitions, and then a great effort to trick them in some way, but you are just talking about people in ordinary conversations, I’ll bet the grand jurors, if they were talking about two people they know, and said they have a sexual relationship, they meant they were sleeping together; they meant they were having intercourse together.”
And indeed a study published in 1999 in the Journal of the American Medical Association that examined the definition of sex based on a 1991 random sample of 599 college students from 29 states, found that sixty percent said oral-genital contact did not constitute having sex. And some dictionaries equate ‘sex’ (the act) with ‘coitus’ etc etc…
I’d hardly say that Clinton ‘desecrated the seat of government’ through his consensual activities with Ms Lewinsky. And I remember finding the affair amusing at the time – I remember musing over the fact that he would have to resign if that cigar business was shown to be true and the cigar in question was proven to be Cuban. But really I think Bill Clinton was much ‘creepier’ and a much more dangerous individual than Anthony Weiner. The latter was a liar, a rather unconvincing one, who knowingly hid the truth. As for Clinton, I rather suspect, he actually forgot where he put it.
Re Curious:-
I Would have said Fellatio was a sexual act, which is a member of the class of all things called Sex. After all it is penetrative and orgasmic it is just anatomically not positioned where fertilisation can occur, so far as I know, that is. Bill’s play on words and definitions was no more than a clever get out, but of course it was sex. I imagine Mrs Clinton or any other wife, would be equally offended to learn her husband had placed his organ in any orifice of another woman. From what I have read of Clinton he does seem to have a prior record of extra-marital sexual activity and I find it difficult to believe that he and Ms Lewinsky did not at some time perform the sexual act in what is generally agreed, a manner such as is used to bring about fertilisation. The question arises now is a Kiss to be regarded as having sex. Well kisses have vague boundaries rather such as is found in the Sorites paradox. At what degree of intensity does a kiss pass over into a sexual act not easy to identify. But we know when a heap is a heap rather than a few grains of sand and by the same token I would say Clinton had sex.
I would think that the random sample of college students mentioned here was skewed in the direction of denial of sexual activity, and as a result not an accurate predictor for opinions outside of the sample. Jack Kennedy is getting off scot free in this discussion so far. Are Powerful men more highly sexed and/or have more opportunity than than the less powerful, or is it they are just more vulnerable to exposure than the ordinary man?
Hi Don,
On the assumption that Clinton and Lewinsky did not have sexual intercourse (as they both claimed) I would, intuitively, grant that both could truthfully state that they did not have sex with the other. And I don’t believe those amongst America’s who have ‘only’ engaged in that level of intimacy are abusing language if they want to claim they have not had sex (and are still virgins). That usage would be entirely in tune with how things were spoken of in my youth.
What acts qualify as ‘sexual acts’ seems open to definitional quibble, varying and changing norms. I’m not inclined to count mouth-to-mouth kissing myself, but absolutely I think fellatio has to be counted as ‘a sexual act’. And thus although I would grant that ‘Monica and Bill did not have sex’ could be true, intuitively I would say that ‘Monica and Bill did not have sexual relations” had been proven false. The question is whether Clinton could have believed it to be a ‘literal truth’ when he said it. Actually, I imagine he may well have convinced himself that it was. Deceiving by telling others what you take, or can convince yourself, to be technically true is a better strategy if you can manage the trick. I suspect he did. And the possibility that he believed the claim that he did not have sexual relations with that woman to be true at the time of utterance (and used the ‘no sex’ entails ‘no sexual relations” logic to get himself to that belief) is what I was really getting at.
As for JFK, I don’t know that it is ‘PC’ to note that Monica Lewinsky was no Marilyn Monroe. But he too was a deeply unscrupulous man and an exceptionally good liar/deciever. I suspect charismatic powerful men like Clinton and JFK may well be more highly sexed and have more opportunity than the Weiners of the world. In days gone by they could trust that their indiscretions would go unreported or could be made to ‘disappear’. But the relationship between the media and the politicians has changed somewhat.
Curious:
“More highly sexed” than who?
Maybe more highly sexed than I am, but are they more highly sexed than the local construction workers who go crazy each time a woman in a short skirt passes the building that they are working on?
I suspect that powerful males just have more opportunities to satisfy their desires (i.e., more willing groupies) than underpaid and low status construction workers.
Don remarks
“Just out of interest I am wondering why no mention has been made of Bill Clinton here who must be the leading exponent where this type of infidelity is concerned. “I did not have sex with that woman” But he did, and In the Oval office too as I understand, desecrating the seat of government.”
“Jack Kennedy is getting off scot free in this discussion so far”
This is not my favorite subject, but Don remarks brought several interesting questions. Is bill Clinton the leading exponent of this type of infidelity? Why? Is only JFK getting off? Why some people only remember republicans or democrats? Is there any moral responsibility in the people that attack the personal life of other just to get political benefit? What would consequentialist or Deontologist say about this? What would they say about the behavior of many public servants?
I like evidence. So the first thing I did was to do a google search “political sex scandals” Here is the brief summary of what I got. I do not claim to be completely accurate and I welcome more examples and corrections.
But again, as tax payers are we going to judge our public servants for their personal lifes, if not where is the moral distinction? To lie? Is it legal? Its consequence? If I am republican, was it a democrat? If I am a democrat, was it a republican? Propaganda? What is it? And when should we bother?
Presidents
Thomas Jefferson, founding father. He had an affair with his slave Sally Hemings. DNA tests confirmed the rumors and hindsight gave us righteous moral indignation. Jefferson was a Republican.
Andrew Jackson, Democrat, who eloped with a married woman and spent the rest of his career defending his wife’s honor. Jackson was a Democrat.
James Buchanan, Democrat. He and future Vice President William Rufus King were the subject of scandalous gossip alleging a homosexual affair.
Warren Harding, Republican, 1921-1923. He had affairs with 3 women while married.
Dwight Eisenhower, Republican, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Democrat, Bill Clinton, Democrat
Historical figures
Benjamin Franklin, founding father, he had an affair for many years while married. Alexander Hamilton, he had an affair with Maria Reynolds
Senators
Larry Craig, Republican, June 11, 2007. Craig was arrested by an undercover officer during a sting operation to investigate misconduct in a men’s restroom at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Apparently, not much as the investigation continued and Craig later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct.
Robert Packwood, Republican, November 22, 1992. Brock Adams, Democrat, March 1, 1992. John Edwards, Democrat, October 10, 2007. Daniel Inouye, Democrat, October 17, 1992. John Ensign, Republican, June 16, 2009. David Vitter, Republican, July 7, 2009. Chuck Robb, Democrat, U.S. Senator, April 26, 1991
Representatives
Mel Reynolds, Democrat. U.S. Representative (Illinois). August 12, 1994. He was convicted of criminal sexual assault and was sentenced to five years in prison.
Donald “Buz” Lukens, Republican, October 23, 1990. He has been repeatedly charged with sexual involvement with minors and in 1990. His other, more serious transgressions, however, fall outside the time frame of this ranking. Both times he received 30 days in jail.
Mark Foley, Republican, September 28, 2006. Eric Massa, Democrat, March 5, 2008. Jim Gibbons, Republican, October 13, 2006. Tim Mahoney, Democrat, October 13, 2008. Ken Calvert, Republican, January 22, 1992. Dan Burton, Republican, September 2, 1998. Mark Souder, Republican, May 18, 2010. Helen Chenoweth, Republican, September 10, 1998 (Only woman in the list). Henry Hyde, Republican, September 17, 1998. Vito Fossella, Republican, May 8, 2009. Gary Condit, Democrat, April 30, 2001. Don Sherwood, Republican, July 22, 2005. Robert Livingston, Republican, December 17, 1998. Bob Barr, Republican, January 12, 1999. Ed Schrock, Republican, August 30, 2004. Steven C. LaTourette, Republican, October 23, 2008. Christopher Lee, Republican, February 9, 2011. Newt Gingrich, Republican, (2007)
Governors
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican, 2011. Eliot Spitzer, Democrat, Governor (New York), March 10, 2008. Jim McGreevey, Democrat, Governor (New Jersey) , August 13, 2004. Mark Sanford, Republican, Governor (South Carolina), June 24, 2009. Paul Patton, Democrat, Governor (Kentucky), September 17, 2002. Bob Wise, Democrat, Governor (West Virginia), May 12, 2003. David Paterson, Democrat, Governor (New York) , March 19, 2008. Kirk Fordice, Republican, Governor (Mississippi), June 12, 1999. Debra Reid, Republican, Governor (Nevada), April 6, 2009
State Legislators
Roosevelt Dobbins, Democrat, State Assemblyman (Arkansas) , August 10, 2005. A 17-year-old considered Dobbins a “mentor,” according to the Arkansas-Democrat Gazette—but it went further that day. Dobbins pleaded guilty to misdemeanor harassment, and was sentenced to one year probation
Mike Duvall, Republican, State Assemblyman (Calif.), September 8, 2009. Jerry Thomas, Republican, State Senator (Louisiana), December 10, 2002. Thomas, a doctor, was busted in a sting operation at a local adult video and bookstore for lewd behavior while engaging in what police called “sexual activity” with another man, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and got six months probation and a $350 fine.
Bob Allen, Republican, State Assemblyman (Florida), July 11, 2007. Allen sponsored legislation to crack down on public sex, but in 2007 he was caught offering to pay an undercover cop $20 and perform oral sex on him in a park. He resigned one week later and was sentenced to six months probation.
Mayors
Philip Giordano, Republican. Position: Mayor (Waterbury, Conn.) Scandal Broke: July 26, 2001. He was sentenced to 37 years behind bars in June 2003 for of sexually abusing two preteen girls—just 8- and 10-years-old at the time.
Gary Becker, Democrat, Mayor (Racine, Wisc.), January 16, 2009. Becker pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual assault of a child and child enticement-sexual contact. He got three years in prison for the sexual-assault charges.
Kwame Kilpatrick, Democrat, Mayor (Detroit), January 24, 2008. Kilpatrick thought he could get away with denying an affair with his chief of staff. The revelations were even more damaging because the mayor had denied the affair on the stand several years earlier. Kilpatrick’s scandal-ridden tenure ended with a sentence of four months of jail.
Rudy Giuliani, Republican, Mayor (New York), May 2, 2000.
Interesting information
Newt Gingrich, Representative (R-GA) and leader of the Republican Revolution of 1994:[31] Resigned from the House after admitting in 1998 to having had an affair with his intern while he was married to his second wife, and at the same time he was leading the impeachment of Bill Clinton for perjury regarding an affair with his intern Monica Lewinsky. (1998)
Amos,
“are they more highly sexed than the local construction workers who go crazy each time a woman in a short skirt passes the building that they are working on”
I always suspected the construction workers who made the biggest deal about that type of thing were most likely closet homosexuals. In any case I don’t think that whole nonsense is anything to do with being ‘highly sexed’ – I think its just a case of men acting like a pack of boys from the safety of several feet up. I do associate high testerone with charasmatic male power players – - adolescent levels of desire, and adolescent attitudes towards sex but with higher ‘success’ rates than most adolsecent males enjoy becuase of their charisma (wealth and power.
Jimret,
‘Why some people only remember republicans or democrats? ‘
Over in the UK, as both Don & I are, the two famous presidential womanisers are Clinton and JFK. As it happens they are both Democrats. I can’t speak for Don but I most certainly do not align with myself anywhere near the Republicans (though I can see why so many are only reluctant Democrats). Its simply that their are no Republican presidents famous (over here) for that type of scandal. Nixon, of course, is famous for his own non-sexual scandal (though in fairness he only got caught doing what past presidents had done) and Bush junior’s tenure, to most Europeans, is one big scandal from start to finish.
I do not judge public servants for their private lives when it comes to matters of consensual sexual relations. I don’t think Clinton should ever have been questioned about Ms Lewinsky. And I don’t judge him for being deceitful about it as such, though I do think a nobler course would have been to refuse to answer questions about his private life, as I believe politicians should when there is no question of illegailty. The Senate trial was politically-motivated nonsense, Clinton may have lied but he never met the conditions for a successful perjury charge (he was far too smart and the Jones lawyers far too stupid for all the Republican money behind them). His persecutors in the Senate abused their position for political motives in a disgraceful fashion. The whole affair reflected very badly on the Republicans to my mind. All that said, I personally believe that Clinton is a truly unscrupulous character, a man far too proficient at deceit even for a politician, and I believe, in comparison to his other private misdeeds, the whole business with the intern was a complete triviality. As for JFK I certainly do not blame him for his lianson with Miss Monroe and others, his real sins were political and criminal.
Curious:
I hope, for your sake, that the Construction Workers’ Federation does not read this blog.
Anyway, you relate charisma with wealth and power and with high testarone levels.
Let’s look at them.
Charisma seems highly subjective to me. Politicians are not charismatic to me.
Wittgenstein, for example, strikes me as a charismatic figure: he was certainly not powerful, although he did inherit great wealth, which he gave away.
I have no idea about Ludwig’s testarone level, but it does seem clear that not all charismatic males are wealthy and powerful and not all wealthy and powerful males are charismatic. For example, do you consider Donald Trump, a wealthy and powerful male, to be charismatic? How about George W. Bush? How about Sarkozy?
Now, I currently have zero power, but at certain moments in my life, I’ve had power over others. In those moments, I was seen as more sexy than I am now or than I was when I was less powerful. Since we can assume that my testarone level follows the normal decline from youth to age (while my level of power did not), it seems that being powerful and considered sexual attractive is not always related to one’s testarone level.
I agree that power in males does seem to attract women.
Money also does seem to equal sexual attractiveness. Once or twice I have deposited rather large sums of money in a bank, and found that women tellers, who generally pay absolutely no attention to me,
eyed me eagerly. However, I doubt that my testarone level was higher on those days.
So, in my experience, we live in a society in which most people consider wealth and power to be charismatic, although for others there is no necessary connection between wealth-power and charisma, and we can even imagine an ultra-leftist who is only sexually attracted by the beauty of the wretched of the earth.
I have no idea of how testarone fits into the picture, but it seems to me that the whole mess is more complicated than it first seems.
My guess is that most people are so impressed by and in love with money and power that they are sexually attracted to those who possess them. That says something about our values and about our own sense of weakness (the weak are attracted by and worship power, by what they lack).
Amos
Don’t you worry about the Construction Workers, they’re a lovely bunch of boys when you get to know them.
I don’t think comments about testerone were particularly helpful. I think there is such a thing as charisma, I don’t think it can be defined but, like pornography, we know it when we see it. It doesn’t require wealth but it can sure help you get it. But I do think it comes with a certain power over people and that this can result in gaining further power (and sex). And of course wealth and power without the charisma can help you get the sex too.
I think the weak – those with low self-esteem -rush to submit themselves to the narcissist when they find themselves in a power vacumn. The relationship between narcissim, power and charisma seems like a worthy subject of enquiry. But like sex, “the whole mess is more complicated than it first seems.”
Curious:
I tend to think that people are charismatic because they are powerful, rather than they are powerful because they are charismatic.
I have known several people who have become important and powerful with the years and none of them seemed especially charismatic before they began to appear on television regularly.
The fact that someone appears on the TV news daily or with regularity seems to confer a certain charisma on the most mediocre of human beings.
I recall a fellow in my living room almost 30 years ago, boring and irritating me with his simplistic analysis of the political situation. I hardly found him charismatic.
Now he is important and powerful, and I admit that his charisma rating has gone up for me.
Why?
I believe that like many other people, I worship power, although, unlike some others, being aware of that, I am somewhat skeptical of that adoration.
Curious,
I agree with most of your assesment. i am in the US and tired of the hypocresy and the inmaturity of the media and politicians. the distraction from the real issues, the ones that affect every US cytizen’s life and because it is the US, other countries in the world, is too much to bear. Becuase I am so tired, I am trying to get back people to the real issues, those that I believe affect our lifes: unemployment, low wages, inequality, education, human rigths, economic growth, climate change, enviromment, poverty, wars etc.
Because I am tired of the hypocresy of using political scandals for political gains that is why I responded that way. I do not know a lot about english politics, I hope you are having a better time.
By the way, Clinton may be/is an unescrupulous character, but during his presidency about 22 million jobs were created; the highest number in US history. During that time, there was a sense of well being. that is no excuse for his faults and mistakes; but at least he did some good.
Amos
‘I tend to think that people are charismatic because they are powerful, rather than they are powerful because they are charismatic’.
Hmm.. people can gain a certain glamour through fame, and they can learn how to make an entrance and how to ‘work’ people but some people seem born with a certain je ne sais quoi.
jmiret,
I’m Scots btw
We have a devolved parliament in Scotland with the major decisions stillt taken in the UK parliament in London (and a fair amount quietly decided in Europe). So British and Scottish (not English) politics are my local concern.
Most of your compatriots would likely describe what we have here as ‘socialism’. The UK has a universal health service that is free at the point of delivery, and a welfare state that – for all its faults – does not permit the levels of poverty found in the states. We also have a modest but not unreasonable minimun wage, statutory paid maternity and paternity leave. And in Scotland tertiary education and prescriptions are ‘free’ as are personal care and public transport for the elderly.
It can’t last of course though. There’s no money for it. But Scotland hasn’t quite realised that yet..
I’ve only limited experience of the States. But I know its not a good place to be poor. And I daresay a lot of the middle classes will be finding it a long drop down with very little in the way of safety nets. And I just can’t see where the USA or UK goes from here – the industrial base is long gone and the fantasy bubble is burst, we are in truly vast sums of debt, sums that our grandchildren will still be repaying. And America will have to face the fall from its pinnacle of power, the decline of an empire…
We do not have the powerful Christian lobby that suffers genuine moral outrage at infidelity and the likes. And our politicians don’t tend to make an issue of the private lives of their opponents unless there is some issue of law or wrongful expenses involved. We do have a prying sensationalist tabloid press, but the tv is unbiased and tends to show some restraint. Who’s doing what to whom is of no concern to me, and I gather you feel the same. That the US news and the blogosphere is dominated by the story of some nobody who gets his kicks having dirty conversations on the phone or computer must be deeply frustrating for somebody who is concerned about the immediate and very serious issues your country faces.
Clinton’s economic record is not something I’m qualified to judge but certainly he did accomplish some worthwhile things on the world stage (as did Nixon actually). Few people are without flaws and it is easy to judge people doing very hard jobs in the spotlight from afar. Perhaps my take on Clinton is unwarranted. He knew what was going on in government and the wider world at least unlike.. some others.
I am not sufficiently familiar with the American political scene so I cannot really give any worth while comments thereto. If you however disregard the harm some presidents have done, not that they do any more than politicians of other countries, these seems to be quite a big entertainment aspect to them. Again this is not confined to America. George Bush for instance was for me as good a comedian as any. His personal appearance and his walk at times Particularly when dressed for leisure wearing some sort of leather jacket and affecting a kind of James Cagney posture with his arms as he walked was for me most amusing particularly in the presence of The somewhat soberly dressed Tony Blair. His grand finale was ducking when the shoes were thrown at him. Then of course there is Clinton and Kennedy with their indiscretions and further back Even FDR who denied his paralysis and went to extremes to cover it had chronic ill health and chronic infidelity, which the Secret Service assisted in covering up and for his convenience. Paralysed from the waist down there was often amusing speculation as to his capabilities ‘downstairs’.
I often think we expect too much of public figures so far as their lives go outside of their public image, and are disappointed when they are seen to be no more than human in their desires and needs. There was much horror, or was it affected horror, in UK over the expenses scandal where a large number of members of Parliament had manipulated the expenses system for their own benefit. Some were found guilty of actual fraud and presently, rightly serve prison sentences. Personally I was not surprised. I know what humans are capable of, and politicians are humans. The moral here may be; never trust a human, even yourself. If a badly constructed system can be milked, then there are those who will do so. Provided a politician is not falling down on the job, the political job I mean,(joke) or blatantly breaking the Law of the land, or in private life, persecuting the innocent, then so far as I am concerned his/her private life is none of my business. I am quite prepared to forgo the amusement of Clinton’s magic with cigars etc etc. but not for instance, the case of Blair and Bush’s decision to invade Iraq.