I hope this is not a topic that has been beaten to death in this forum already, but something somebody posted in another forum made me see this in a whole new light. It was this (I’m not putting their name because this isn’t personal):
I read this and thought, now hold on a minute. I had to pass a drug test to get my last job, and a lot of people I know have to submit to random drug testing as a condition of their employment. And if any kindergarten teacher was found to be gay, a leather freak, a swinger, or all three, they probably would not have their job long. I think that is obvious. So why, then, are public figures any different, (if in fact they are)?? If I have to pass a drug test to keep my job, why should Bush be allowed to not answer whether or not he used cocaine? If adultery is reason for formal disciplinary action in the military because of its effects on moral, why should Bill Clinton, the Commander in Chief, be allowed to cheat on his wife and have people take him seriously when he claims it is “nobodys business but ours”?
I used these two politicians as well-known examples, not because I support either one. I personally feel they should all be held equally accountable. After all, WE are.
I suspect what you’re really hacked off about is the notion that we shouldn’t care about our public leaders’ private sexual conduct. And the reason for that, assuming that we’re talking about private conduct between consenting adults, is that it has no reasonable bearing on their ability to execute the duties of public office. And even assuming that the military ban on adultery is appropriate, the Commander in Chief is (warning! stunning revelation!) not a member of the military.
Obviously, private sexual conduct is quite different from your other example, private drug use. I think it’s well within the public’s right to know whether a public official’s judgment is impaired by dugs or alcohol. And please tell, when was the last time a public official was caught taking drugs and the public rose up in support of his right to get fucked up in private? Sheesh.
keep in mind that our public officials have less “private” life than the average American citizen. If I go to the Doctor to have a spot removed from my skin, no one’s going to hear about it on CNN for example. Nor is anyone likely to spend time interviewing all of my friends from college, former co workers et al to see if any of them have any good stories. So, on the balance, I’ll take the smaller intrusions that a private citizen would have.
(by the way -Public includes criminal convictions, it’s public information).
I give you…Marion Barry! Re-elected mayor of Washington, D.C. after being convicted of cocaine possession.
I don’t see the argument of “private sexual conduct has no bearing on the job” as a very good one. Isn’t that a matter of opinion? And what if it’s strictly a moral stance? What if someone has a moral problem with being led by a pervert or philanderer? (I’m not pointing fingers, I’m just arguing the point) Who is anyone else to tell them what they should care about in their leaders? Admittedly, I think the media tends to overemphasize such things because they sell copies and get ratings; but the reverse of this is, they sell copies and get ratings for a reason. Whether people find it shameful or titillating, they really do care.
Try again. Barry was IIRC booted from office (resigned or forced out, I can’t recall), but was only elected again after he’d gone through rehab. Personally, I would have thought the first betrayal of trust was reason enough not to vote for him. But voting for an ex-crackhead is far different from voting for a practicing crackhead, and certainly does not imply suport of the former behavior. See, e.g., the current occupant of the Oval Office. Or are you claiming that all those people who voted for Bush were expressing their support for his right to get falling-down drunk while playing with the nuclear football?
Please enlighten me in what way private, consensual sexual activity between adults could have a quantifiable effect on what my first post called the “ability to execute the duties of public office.” That is, in ways that distinguish sexual conduct from, say, golf or other socially-acceptable activities that could distract the office holder from the performance of her duties. Unless you can demonstrate such an effect, I’m going to have to say that no, it’s not just an opinion.
I’m not saying that we should admire Clinton’s private life, or that people aren’t entitled to their opinions about it. But I am saying that we’re on a road to nowhere when we start caring more about who’s doing the nasty with whom than we do about an official’s performance in office.
What people should care about in their leaders, is: are they capable of running the country without running it into the ground, and can they be expected to resist the temptation to screw the little people for their personal advancement? That’s all, folks.
An analogy: The flight attendant enters the cabin and asks if anyone on board knows how to land an airplane. Someone raises his hand and says, “Yes, I was jumpseating home on this flight, but I’ve got 12,000 hours in 747’s.”
Now, if you knew that he’s a leather fetishist and spent last night at a swing party, would you care? Why? You’re not hiring him as a moral icon, you’re hoping he won’t get you killed!
Ah, but somewhere along the way we decided that we needed out leaders to have the same sexual mores as we do ourselves, as well as supreme administrative ability and economic prescience. And we’re finding out that it’s just not possible.
Over in Europe (which does not serve as my touchstone for everything, but in this case…) they heard about an American President who had consensual sex with a legal adult not his wife. And the cry of “So what?” was heard in the land.
My main hope concering our new Presidunce is that his handlers won’t let him screw up too badly.
The prevailing opinion in the UK tends towards the idea that unless the indiscretion interferes with official duties it’s not the end of the world. The former Liberal Democrat leader, Paddy Ashdown, admitted an affair with his secretary, and his personal standing in opinion polls actually rose. The foreign minister, Robin Cook, moved in with his lover; the now deceased Tory politician Alan Clark was famous for his flings (and threesomes, even). Maybe it’s because politics here is quite dull; a blind eye is turned to the juicy stories.
Personally, I agree wholeheartedly with minty green and Screwtape. Politicians should be judged on what they do, not who they are. Everyone is well within their rights to dislike someone and feel moral disgust at their actions, but unless those actions jeopardise their ability to run the country I don’t see the big fuss. The only exception I could see would be if the politician in question was a strong proponent of so-called “family values”; i.e., if they were being hypocritical with regard to their policies.
I’m not saying it does matter. I’m saying that if people think it matters, that is their right. And if people think what presidential candidates do in private matters, they are going to want to know what they do. I think it is not unreasonable to think that A)Some people (an undeterminate number) care, and B) Some other people (not necessarily all of group A)may, in fact, vote differently if they know all the private details. I happen to think that what kind of person you are has a lot to do with how you do your job. If it didn’t, why would companies interview prospective employees? Wouldn’t it be easier to just look at what they did at their old job and say “well, he did some high-tech stuff and went to a decent school. He’s obviously qualified, hire him!” People are the sum total of their character, not just who they are at work.
Apologies, should have remembered this in the last post.
So the title of the thread is “Why SHOULDN’T we care about the private conduct of public officials?” To which part of your answer is that, gosh darn it, people DO care about the private lives of public leaders. That’s about as circular as reasoning gets. Perhaps you should start a new thread, inquiring why we care, rather than whether we should care.
And as for mattk’s hypocricy argument, the point is that a purer-than-thou, “family values” office holder who gets caught diddling the help (see, e.g., Newt Gingrich) has revealed a propensity to lie to the public (see, e.g., Bill Clinton). And that does indeed implicate their worthiness of the public trust.
It may be an indicator of character, but I don’t see that it’s necessarily an indicator that the person is unfit to lead the country. If they attempt to lie, then that may be a much deeper issue, of course, but again it does not necessarily indicate an inability to govern. I’m more concerned about politicians that are corrupt and will abuse their mandate for a few pounds.
Because, clearly, my position requires mandatory polygraph tests to determine whether people hold heretical opinions, followed by summary imprisonment of the infidels. :rolleyes:
Sorry. My reply was intended for Lizard. However, I do agree that a candidate that lies is far more likely to earn my disrespect. My (poorly-phrased) point was that lying about sexual affairs and lying about financial impropriety, while both are poor conduct, the latter is a far greater concern to me as it may indicate a willingness to compromise policies for cash.
No misunderstanding at all, mattk. Your point is a good one, in part because it serves to reminded that at least Clinton was never a hypocrite when it came to sexual misconduct. You’d think that one of these days, politicians would figure out the cover-up is virtually always worse than the offense.
Focusing on morality in a candidate is usually initiated by the opposition to avoid focusing on their political integrity. So, when Republicans, who obsess on morality, try to demonize people, they are hoping nobody notices that they contradict themselves by demanding better schools, by cutting taxes, more defense goodies, by cutting taxes, and a more free country while they try to institutionalize Christianity and anti-abortion and social control policies. (“I trust the people,” he said). Critics of Reagan called this “triangulation” because he was a master at it. It essentially means to confuse the issue, or pander to the popular fantasy or mythology (Hitler did this well). In this way Reagan was able to cut taxes, get re-elected and borrow and spend like no tomorrow. Wait, isn’t “no tomorrow” an official Christian position too?
I think your opening assumption is flawed. I don’t agree that it is acceptable for anyone to have to pass a drug test to get a job, with the possible exception of jobs that require operating machinery such as jets or boats or buses, etc. And even then I’m not so sure. If you want to get high on your own time, I do not agree that it is any damn business of your employer’s.
I am also disgusted at the idea that a kindergarten teacher should be precluded from being gay, a swinger or a leather freak if they wish to continue to teach kindergarten. The teacher’s private sexual behavior has less than zero to do with his or her ability as a teacher. So, there is nothing at all “obvious” about yoru conclusions.
And finally, I am consistent in these beliefs. My political leaders’ private behavior has no bearing upon either their actual ability to perform the job, or my opinion of their ability to perform the job. ESPECIALLY their sexual proclivities…indeed, I fully expect that MOST men who are powerful, controlling, and interested in running the government of the USA are probably also the sort of men who have large and perhaps even unusual sexual appetites. It kinda follows.
There is a difference between a test for current drug use, and an employer attempting to rule out the possibility that an employee has ever used drugs. (This is not to say that I approve of drug tests for most jobs, or of this country’s drug laws in general, but those are whole other threads in themselves.) A criminal conviction of any sort might be an issue to an employer, but I suspect that in most cases an old conviction for possession would be less of an issue than attempting to lie about it.
The laws which criminalize the private, consensual use by adults of recreational drugs other than alcohol or tobacco do not appear to be going away at the moment. However, general laws against private, consensual sexual acts by adults do appear to be eroding rather steadily; in my own state (Georgia), our Supreme Court recently struck down the law against consensual sodomy (oral or anal sex, regardless of gender) as a violation of the state constitution’s guarantee of privacy rights. Those sex laws which haven’t been repealed or struck down by the courts are generally not enforced, with the partial exception of prostitution laws, and even there enforcement is very spotty. Generally speaking, employers don’t require random testing for adultery, fornication, or sodomy among their employees. The military are something of a special case; even there, I don’t know how consistently the regulations against consensual sex acts are enforced, and at any rate the president is, as has already been pointed out, a civilian. I also suspect that your hypothetical kindergarten teacher fired (I’m assuming by a public school) for his or her private sex life would probably sue, and–I hope–win.
And who is anyone else to tell me what moral or political stances I should disapprove of or disagree with in my fellow citizens?
Well, Americans have the “right”–in the sense that they won’t be sent to the re-education camps if they do–to believe that Jews or black people are unfit to hold office, and to vote accordingly. I wouldn’t want Americans who held such views to be shot, imprisoned, banished, or stripped of their citizenship. However, I certainly would oppose such views, and would vote against politicians who held them or pandered to them, will use my own freedom of speech to speak out against people who express them, and so forth. People who say “No _____ should ever be president” are expressing their opinion about the way things ought to be, as is their right; those of us who say “____ should not bar someone from the presidency” are simply expressing our opinion on the matter, as is our right. Incidentally, I don’t think adultery is necessarily in the same moral class as, say, homosexuality (or “fornication”, i.e., pre-marital sex). In a perfect world, I might prefer not to vote for an adulterer, but other considerations will probably frequently override that one consideration. Homosexuality on the other hand is at the very worst morally neutral in a political candidate (to me, that is), and if all other things were equal (which they never are) I would probably be inclined to vote for a homosexual over a heterosexual, just as I would be likely be similarly inclined towards a Jewish president or a black president or a female president. Those, of course, are my opinions on the matter, which I have a right to express, and which anyone else has a right to disagree with.
Which I think of as a bad thing. We also shouldn’t subject politicians to it.
**
Not to me it’s not. In fact where I live there are laws to prevent that from happening. I would hope they exist where you live too. Private lives and all that.
**
Same reason you’re allowed. An interviewer couldn’t legally ask you that in most area’s. Have you ever been asked this question? I don’t think so.
**
Being Gay is grounds for discharging. Disobeying orders is grounds for execution. Do you want either of these applied to private or political employment? Didn’t think so.
It’s a good thing, because we can focus on the real issues, instead of minor shit.
As for this quote from Minty Green
**
I would beg to differ with you on this on a number of levels.
I never said I thought it was acceptable. In actuality, I don’t. But I still have to live with it. Why shouldn’t they?
**
In reply to both this and what oldscratch (and oldscratch, aren’t you from Californian?) said on this topic, hey, I’m from rural Ohio. There was a high school teacher in my area who was fired because he had an affair. I know damn well that any teacher who did any of the above things would been dropped by any school within two hundred miles of where I lived like a bad habit. There are lots of ways to do it that are legal. Not renew their contract, or give them a crap job until they quit in disgust. Suing would get them nowhere, because no judge or jury of local people could ever be convinced they had a case.
But that is all secondary to questions of its “rightness” or “wrongness.” I never expressed my opinions on teachers and drug testing themselves before now. The main point I wanted to get at all along is that WE-the common people- have to submit to arbitrary and sometimes blatantly unfair judmentalism with regards to our private lives all the time. Why do politicians complain as if it’s so unfair and they are being personally picked on?
