Despite the fact that I once taught a course (one credit, for freshmen) on love, sex, and politics from Aristophanes to Bill Clinton, I wasn’t going to say anything about Anthony Weiner’s peccadillos. But Laurie Essig knows how to push my buttons.
I’ll restrict myself to two observations. First, she makes the standard sophisticated point that professional and private lives can be separate, that the one need not have any impact on the other. So Anthony Weiner can be a bit of an exhibitionist in his private life (before and after marriage) and still be a good Congressman (I’m not going to follow her into the land of double entendres, as I’m sure many have already trodden that path). If I’m looking for an accountant or gardener, I might could agree with her (as we say down here). I’d be a bit more hesitant about hiring him as a colleague, because my job involves all sorts of contact with exactly the sort of people Weiner seems to like to, er, converse with.
Would he have been able to maintain his professionalism in all those circumstances? I have my doubts, and we’d only learn about his failures when he crossed the line (as all too many people in my business do). And then there’s the job Weiner actually holds: he represents people, which is to say, he speaks for them. When he behaves badly (as he has), it reflects on his constituents. So when we “hire” a Congressman, we’re not just choosing someone who holds an array of policy positions that we find congenial, we’re also hiring someone with a biography that we find admirable (most Congressmen and Congresswomen give us all sorts of personal details in the “About Anthony” sections of their websites).
Which brings me to my second point. Essig suggests that Weiner’s problem is that we bourgeois demand great discipline from ourselves. Here’s how she puts it: “That Weiner’s career as a politician is dead in the water is, sociologically speaking, understandable. His sexually undisciplined biography is stuck in a history of the rise of the bourgeoisie as the most sexually disciplined and least degenerate class.” If we weren’t bourgeois—if, for example, this were Restoration England—then Weiner wouldn’t be in a political pickle. If we were less uptight and more permissive, he wouldn’t have had to lie. Now, she doesn’t mention that he lied, perhaps because she thinks that the lying is only a byproduct of what’s really wrong—our bourgeois sexual morality, which is our fault, not Weiner’s. But I’d argue that the parts of his character aren’t so easily separated: he lied about cheating on his wife. Cheaters lie.
And someone who is willing to lie and cheat in these matters—in taking the most solemn vow that most of us ever take (O.K., I know that Bill Clinton presided over the wedding, which perhaps ought to give us a sense of irony about the whole thing)—is surely willing to lie and cheat in matters of less moment.
Perhaps Essig thinks that being concerned with lying and cheating are also merely bourgeois hangups. In that freshman seminar I taught, I required that students read Machiavelli’s Mandragola, in which “the good doctor of Italy” (as Francis Bacon called him) shows how successful hypocrisy can conceal and maintain sexual pleasure. If honor devolves into mere reputation, then we can manage our pleasures without harming our standing in the community. I offer that as an antidote to our bourgeois hangups. Is that the medicine she’s prescribing?
I’ll go this far: Anthony Weiner is a total failure as a Machiavellian, but not for want of trying.
June 9th, 2011 | 8:27 am
As a citizen/voter, I’ll reject a politician for any reason I like. I don’t need to be advised on what constitutes permissible conduct. I reserve the right not to tolerate an annoying voice or a bad tie selection.
June 9th, 2011 | 11:12 am
I agree with Dana Milbank’s column in The Washington Post titled Lawmakers’ fiscal gambles are worse than the sexual ones, which certainly did not exonerate Weiner but did conclude—correctly, in my opinion—that “we’d be better off if lawmakers gambled more with their private parts and less with the public good.” Of course, we’d be even better off if they gambled with neither.
June 9th, 2011 | 11:20 am
“And someone who is willing to lie and cheat in these matters—in taking the most solemn vow that most of us ever take … is surely willing to lie and cheat in matters of less moment.”
Defenders of those people have sometimes put the ranking in the reverse direction. The infraction was “only” about a little, personal thing like sex, and we shouldn’t presume that they would lie about big, important things like decisions made in government. But the same caveat holds that way, too. If someone will lie about a little, personal thing, he (or she) is likely also to lie about big, public things when the penalties may be much greater.
June 9th, 2011 | 1:58 pm
I guess I’m just a rube, but why all this agonizing and equivocating and problematizing (by folks such as Essig and Mo Dowd) over behavior that if it occurred in a local park would immediately bring the law followed by an arrest, trial, and possibly a place in the sex offenders registry? Not to mention a horsewhipping if it was my daughter to whom the guy sent an unsolicited picture of his umm “parts”.
Or there’s the Milbank tangent: Let’s see; I can have a Congressman who’s a liar or a sexual exhibitionist. There’s a false choice if I’ve ever heard one. How about “a grown up”?
I had a seminary professor once who said “the problem with the notion of ‘common sense’ is that common sense is not all that common”.
QED
June 9th, 2011 | 2:17 pm
I wish we had one standard that applied equally to both left and right.
I am all for the higher moral conduct standard, for the very practical reason that I do not want my represented officials leaving themselves open to blackmail.
On the more personal side: I am tired of the myth that violating the bounds of common decency is “harmless”, especially when it is coming from the same people who jam the “we are all one interconnected web and therefore you will live exactly how I tell you to live” down my throat.
I don’t want to live in a world where I am to be judged if I eat a French fry but I have no right to mind when our noble leaders cheat on and humiliate their pregnant wives.
The guys who pass the laws that we live by should be role models.
June 9th, 2011 | 3:28 pm
Or there’s the Milbank tangent: Let’s see; I can have a Congressman who’s a liar or a sexual exhibitionist. There’s a false choice if I’ve ever heard one. How about “a grown up”?
In times that some look back on with nostalgia, politician’s private lives were private matters, and the press didn’t report on them. The fact of the matter is that we’re all human, and human beings sometimes do foolish things, particularly when sex is involved. So while I think Weiner is done for here, and probably rightly so, the false choice is choosing between perfect people and imperfect people. There are no perfect people, and some of the best people in public life are going to do things in their private lives that will be problematic.
I think that Milbank’s important point (if you read the column) is that senators and congressional representatives do things in their official capacities that are bad for the country. Given a choice between a politician who is going to harm the country and lead an impeccable personal life, or a politician who is going to do good for the country and have some problems in his personal life, we’d be foolish to choose the former. Starting with the Founding Fathers, American political figures have not always been angels.
This does not mean that nothing an office holder does in private can’t be held against him or her. But ultimately it is up to the voters in a case like this to decide whether they still trust someone to serve in public office who has done something objectionable in private. I would assume that Mitt Romney is a model husband, but how can anyone actually trust a guy who changes his political positions every time the wind changes direction? Politicians lie about their own public statements a lot more than they lie about their private lives. Example: The fundamentals of the American economy are strong . . . . Clarification: When I say the fundamentals of the economy are strong, I mean America has the best workers in the world. Politicians lie when everybody knows they are lying, about matters directly related to their responsibilities. It’s so commonplace we scarcely give it a second thought. We laugh at it. But when a politician lies to hide a private matter, suddenly is is too untrustworthy for public office.
June 9th, 2011 | 4:59 pm
Why should we consider Rep. Weiner’s actions totally private, David Nickol? It’s not like he knew these women personally–they “followed” him because he was a prominent congressman. It strikes me that by “private” you mean “sexual”–that a politician’s flagrantly improper sexual activities should be off limits to our consideration even if he takes little care to limit them from our view. But why should they get that deal? Nobody’s perfect, and, yes, it might behoove us to ignore an unpleasant fact from time to time–but they have to do their part, too.
Whether or not the press is too invasive nowadays is another question, and an important one, but I don’t see how we can save a Tweeting exhibitionist from himself.
June 9th, 2011 | 6:21 pm
T.B.Root,
I wouldn’t say what Weiner did was totally private, in that it involved at least six people, and he did it in his role as a congressman. But I would say he did not misuse his office, but rather his celebrity. He did not take or offer bribes. He did not do anything involving his staff. He did not use any of his political power. It would have been just as easy for him to do the same thing as a former congressman or in any other position in which he was known to the public. I don’t believe he committed a crime, and if there is an ethics violation, I expect it to be something generic, hurting the reputation of the House.
But why should they get that deal? Nobody’s perfect, and, yes, it might behoove us to ignore an unpleasant fact from time to time–but they have to do their part, too.
I am not arguing for “anything goes.” But I do believe public figures have at least some right to privacy. I would hate for the country to have lost the contributions of Thomas Jefferson over his sex life. Or FDR. Or (as a general) Eisenhower. And I would also note that other countries are not quite so adamant as America about their politicians leading private lives above all reproach.
I am speaking in general terms, not defending Weiner. Others may not agree, but I do find what he did less reprehensible than having an adulterous affair with a staffer, or being a married man who visits prostitutes. I think he’s a piker compared to Arnold Schwarzenegger or John Edwards, both of whom betrayed their wives so seriously that I would consider them totally untrustworthy in any capacity. I think Weiner has no political future and probably ought to resign. But I think if I had a blunt conversation with him, my first question would be, “How could you be so stupid?” Whereas if I spoke to Edwards or Schwarzenegger, I would just ask, “How could you?”
June 9th, 2011 | 11:20 pm
I’m not against the recognition of a decent zone of privacy for public servants. But it would fall on them to help maintain it. (Tweets sent to strangers would not be in that zone.)
I am against the notion of a deal—a deal in advance that as citizens we won’t worry about a whole category of moral failing in our leaders in return for…what? Good governance? Do we get a guarantee with that? No, I’ll consider all the evidence, thank you. No deals.
In the past there were great leaders who also happened to be on the take. Perhaps they were worth it, too, but let’s take it case by case.
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