dave.s/ — May 8, 2008 at 5:57 pm

One big problem for Nussbaum is that Client 6 was the Duke of Westminster, and he lost his position over his use of the same prostitution service.

Stefano Pian — May 8, 2008 at 6:30 pm

I find your attempt at establishing a connection between marital fidelity and honest political conduct quite weak. I’m pretty sure that even if Spitzer had been unmarried, and even if he had never promoted anti-prostitution laws, he would still have been grilled by American public opinion for his “misdeed”.

Robbie — May 8, 2008 at 7:28 pm

yeah… there’s no reason to think that a guy who cheats on his wife would be differently honested in his public life.

DivGuy — May 8, 2008 at 9:33 pm

a basic public consensus that if you sleep around on your spouse you are a bad person, and to hell with your future in politics, because we still have enough talent in America to replace you with someone who isn’t a bad person and is nonetheless capable of being a ‘gifted’ and ‘dedicated’ public servant.

So, I presume that you will refuse to support John McCain, who cheated on his first wife and left her for his current wife and then-mistress, Cindy?

q — May 8, 2008 at 9:38 pm

are there any sentences in this that don’t end in a question mark or exclamation point?

Ben — May 8, 2008 at 10:53 pm

So what counts towards this needed “ounce of moral character”? Voting against torture? Basing tax policy upon reasonably honest budget projections? Opposing wars that manifestly fail the just-war criteria? These all strike me as more important, from a moral point of view, than whether a particular politician has lived up to his marriage vows (which a whole lot of Americans–John McCain, Newt Gingrich, and Henry Hyde included–have not).

Vito Fossella sounds like an unpleasant man and I don’t feel much sympathy for his situation. But after watching what’s happened in our government over the last seven years, I have to dig pretty deep to find any outrage over it.

Behelden — May 8, 2008 at 11:09 pm

Your premise is correct that someone who can’t be faithful to their spouse isn’t the type of person who should be entrusted with public office. They may or may not betray the public trust, but we have no reason to take the chance.

Additionally, let’s not forget that Spitzer was flouting the law while simultaneously serving in a role as the lead protector and enforcer of the law. The betrayal of the public’s trust in his case was complete and for Nussbaum to not comment on it somewhere in the midst of her pooh-poohing of America’s prudishness is rank.

Gary — May 9, 2008 at 1:55 am

Let’s see what Professor Nussbaum says or does if Senator Obama wins the White House, and nominates Cass Sunstein to the Supreme Court.

Tom O'Gorman — May 9, 2008 at 7:18 am

Ben, you make some decent points, but my sense of this piece is that James isn’t especially outraged at the behaviour of Fossella, but at the notion that politicians shouldn’t have to maintain a basic minimum level of sexual fidelity in order to hold on to office. His ire is directed at Nussbaum’s argument, not so much the politician’s conduct.

You definitely have a point about McCain, Gingrich and Hyde, et al, although I think Hyde managed to address his moral failings honestly in the course of his political career. He also showed immense courage in taking on the cause of the unborn in US politics, which demonstrates a certain level of moral character.

mattc — May 9, 2008 at 7:37 am

“A man who did what Spitzer did would have a lot to discuss with his wife and family, but he would have broken no laws, and it would be laughable to accuse him of a betrayal of the public trust.”

This is what set Polous off. An entirely different post would be required to debate the policy stances that correlate with an “ounce of moral character.” I assure you, though, Spitzer had none. And neither does Fossela. Must be something in the water here in NY.

bs23 — May 9, 2008 at 7:46 am

What I’m angling for here is simple: a basic public consensus that if you sleep around on your spouse you are a bad person, and to hell with your future in politics…

You’re not getting this consensus from me; I find it mildly offensive that elected officials should somehow have to serve as moral guides for citizens of a free state. I give as much attention to private lives of public officials as I expect them to give to mine. Not none, but not much.
Besides, I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that even if the guy had permission from his wife, you’d chide him just the same.

Tel — May 9, 2008 at 11:46 am

“What I’m angling for here is simple: a basic public consensus that if you sleep around on your spouse you are a bad person, and to hell with your future in politics, because we still have enough talent in America to replace you with someone who isn’t a bad person and is nonetheless capable of being a ‘gifted’ and ‘dedicated’ public servant.”

He wasn’t married at the time, but Thomas Jefferson did father several children with one of his slaves, starting in 1795. Should his political career have been over? He would have never been President. Franklin Roosevelt would have been drummed out of politics in 1918. I doubt that we could have easily replaced either of those public servants. If we throw out all of the adulterers from public office, I would guess that about a quarter of government jobs would go unfulfilled. (Though that would certainly be a creative method of cutting the budget).

LP — May 9, 2008 at 2:54 pm

Someone who fails in their private life like Vito or Bill or Eliot has failed in their public life, because they are the beneficiaries of a public trust which requires them to live out their daily lives during their term in office with an ounce of moral character.[...] the case of Vito Fossella is especially instructive, here, because it reveals how the adultery and the bastard child and the drunk driving are all part of an interlinked personal problem that does affect his ability to serve his constituents.

Could you give a few examples here of how these politicians actually, concretely failed their constituents, in the sense of actually not doing their jobs that they were elected to do?

Steve — May 9, 2008 at 4:29 pm

Okay, LP, how about the months of time and millions of dollars spent dealing with the fallout of Bill Clinton’s inability to keep it in his pants and his decision to lie about it while under oath? Think he might have been able to do something with all of that time?

LP — May 9, 2008 at 5:45 pm

@Steve,

To clarify: I’m talking about an instance of an adulterous politician failing to do his job, that isn’t based entirely on the fact that people got upset about the adultery (which is the attitude under discussion here). In other words, aside from the fact that it upsets people, does adultery actually correlate to falling down on the job?

Doug — May 10, 2008 at 2:11 pm

I was with you until “bad person.” I don’t think that label helps the discourse. I do agree that both Spitzer’s and Fossela’s behavior is disqualifying. It’s not simply infidelity, but the illegality (Spitzer) and the long-time secrecy (Fossela) that makes it problematic for me. For Bill Clinton, the disqualifying behavior was taking advantage of a subordinate and lying about it.

Ben — May 11, 2008 at 2:47 pm

OK, if Poulos is right and marital fidelity is essential to the public trust of elected office, why don’t we just add a marital fidelity test for holding office to those for citizenship and age? Unless every candidate is subjected to a thorough background check before being placed on the ballot (not to mention recurring check-ups throughout his or her career), this whole mindset just lends itself to games of gotcha.

jag — May 12, 2008 at 12:39 pm

Apparently many readers have never had the misfortune to work FOR people who cheat on their spouses…..lets just say people who cheat on their spouses often have little regard for other laws, rules and scruples that they find “inconvenient”.

BigM — May 12, 2008 at 9:53 pm

I can’t quite agree with this equation of private adultery with public malfeasance. Do we have to then ask what kind of a father Ronald Reagan was? Should Rudy Giuliani have been refused the mayoralty of New York - a city that was virtually reborn under his leadership - because he was far less of a husband and father than David Dinkins? In politics, as in life, I try not to make judgments on what goes on in other people’s marriages.

But that is not to say that Nussbaum makes sense. Eliot Spitzer, the politician she defends, was a zealot, a man who delighted in harassing others. Is it relevant that the people he hounded were something Nussbaum dislikes (wealthy businessmen) rather than something she approves of (adulterous johns)? In any case, Spitzer would not have hesitated to prosecute a politician for the very acts that cost him his office.

It is also a bit nauseating to see Nussbaum, and others like her, prettify prostitution with euphemisms like “sex workers.” In fact, these are usually harshly exploited women, who have suffered far more than, say, Anita Hill, even if her boss did ask about a public hair on a Coke can.

John Tabin — May 13, 2008 at 10:41 am

He wasn’t married at the time, but Thomas Jefferson did father several children with one of his slaves, starting in 1795. Should his political career have been over?

Tel: If memory serves, it’s not clear that that’s true; Sally Hemmings had children with someone in the Jefferson family, but the DNA evidence is inconclusive as to whether it was Thomas himself. Either way, of course his political career should have been over — he owned slaves!

mark — May 13, 2008 at 3:58 pm

I’ll offer this bit of gossip. Cass Sunstein was married when he and Nussbaum got together. (Sunstein’s wife famously threw his clothes out the window when she found out.) Which is only to say that Nussbaurm’s “enlightened” perspective on adultery is self-interested and consistent at once.

David Paz Sr — May 13, 2008 at 4:17 pm

Vito Fossella you must immediately resign. I say this as a life long Republican. But I am really disgusted Republican. Don’t put your family through this public trashing any longer. What you have done is almost as bad as what Spitzer did. Except that he got caught paying money for his. You have disgraced your wife, kids and family. You are unfortunately a CHEAT. You are unfit to serve your constituents. This wasn’t a momentary error in judgment or small mistake. You hid this for at least 3 years and only you getting caught DRUNK DRIVING brought it to light. Between you and Spitzer, the Republicans have a hard time preaching morality to anyone.

David Paz Sr — May 13, 2008 at 4:25 pm

To John Tobian,

In no way am I condoning slavery. But you comment about Jefferson and people of era who owned slaves is wrong.You need to investigate the origins of slavery. In 1807 Britain outlawed slavery. In 1820 the king of the African kingdom of Ashanti inquired why the Christians did not want to trade slaves with him anymore, since they worshipped the same god as the Muslims and the Muslims were continuing the trade like before.
The civil rights movement of the 1960’s have left many people with the belief that the slave trade was exclusively a European/USA phenomenon and only evil white people were to blame for it. This is a simplicistic scenario that hardly reflects the facts.
Thousands of records of transactions are available on a CDROM prepared by Harvard University and several comprehensive books have been published recently on the origins of modern slavery (namely, Hugh Thomas’ The Slave Trade and Robin Blackburn’s The Making Of New World Slavery) that shed new light on centuries of slave trading.
What these records show is that the modern slave trade flourished in the early middle ages, as early as 869, especially between Muslim traders and western African kingdoms. For moralists, the most important aspect of that trade should be that Muslims were selling goods to the African kingdoms and the African kingdoms were paying with their own people. In most instances, no violence was necessary to obtain those slaves. Contrary to legends and novels and Hollywood movies, the white traders did not need to savagely kill entire tribes in order to exact their tribute in slaves. All they needed to do is bring goods that appealed to the kings of those tribes. The kings would gladly sell their own kins.
This explains why slavery became “black”. Ancient slavery, e.g. under the Roman empire, would not discriminate: slaves were both white and black (so were Emperors and Popes).

Boonton — June 2, 2008 at 11:19 am

James,

Joe Carter cited your post on his blog (www.evangelicaloutpost.com). I wrote up a response to it in the comments and here it is for your reference as well:

Goodness. “A lot to discuss with his wife and family?” [referring to Martha Nussbaum's claim that a politician in Europe so caught would not be sanctioned in the policial system] What a trivialization! What an incredible moral deafness to the reality of adultery, betrayal, and intimacy! To get such language from a moral philosopher ought to trigger spontaneous rounds of flabbergasted scoffing. But instead, we practical moral philosophers of everyday life seem to have convinced ourselves that we don’t have the luxury of counting on our public officials to exercise a minimum of self-control — even if only for the relatively few number of years they’re in office!

There’s gotta be a word to describe it when someone announces they consider something to be very important but then acts as if that value has no meaning at all. Here Poulos tells us that adultery is very important because it is a betrayal of intimacy. Fair enough but he tells us this because he is saying adultery needs to be attacked publically. But isn’t the public the very opposite of the intimate?

This is not a trivial distinction. A wife who privately learns of her husband’s adultery is free to use a host of tools at her disposal to address the attack on her marriage. One of them is to make the issue public by divorcing him, making her knowledge of the affair public or both.

What happens, though, when adultery is considered ‘fair game’ for political punditry? The wife is not empowered by learning of her husband’s affair but blindsided. She does not have the option of dealing with her husband privately while avoiding public humuliation. In fact, she probably faces tremendous pressure to “stand by her husband” for the sake of her family. In a culture where adultery is not considered fair game for punditry the wife has the leverage to threaten the wayward husband with the possibility of a public divorce in order to motivate him to reform for the sake of his family.

Only after the wife is put through the humiliation of the public press conference can she quietly decide to divorce her husband. If she doesn’t, though, he has in a sense won since his family has been ’saved’ and he can now return to politics as a ‘reformed man’. I’m not saying the husband enjoyed the public attention but it is the wife who bears the brunt of the insult and it is unjust since she is not at fault. After the dust settles, the wife has no real leverage besides pressing the ’self-destruct’ button and filing for divorce. So what’s been accomplished? You’ve basically ended up attacking the wife and afterwards telling her the choice she has is remain in the marriage in a humuliating status of submission or destroy her marriage. This is done in the name of being ‘pro-family’ and ‘pro-marriage’.

Poulos seems to suffer from the “we must destroy the village to save it” meme. Being able to attack politicians who have affairs is just so appealing (and politically it always carries with it the hope that when the opposing party has someone who seems undefeatable there’s always the long hope that the press will discover another woman on the side) that he is blind to the fact that he is actually advocating a state of affairs that is not healthy to marriage.

Karen — June 4, 2008 at 12:25 pm

Wow, I can’t believe the majority of the tone I’m hearing in these comments. Apparently most Americans no longer consider adultery really “wrong,” it’s just something that’s between a man and his wife. I assume this man stood up in a church (or somewhere) and made a VOW to his wife that he would keep himself for her for all time. A person who refuses to keep the most basic vow of fidelity to what should be the most important person in his life becomes a betrayer, a cheater, a liar. Sex is not something that should be lightly tossed around, and it should NEVER be something that is shared with someone other than your spouse if you have promised before God to be faithful to that spouse. Illicit sex is also not some irresistable force that people just “fall into,” unlike how Hollywood likes to portray it–there are basic boundaries of decency and morality that a “good person” will fence themselves with to protect themselves from the temptation of an affair. You are dead right to say that this man is a bad person for deliberately cheating, betraying, and lying not only to his wife and his family but also to the public, who trusts him to be an honest and honorable man.