Patterns of Behavior and Why Rep. Weiner Had to Go

For some who focus exclusively on the "sex scandal" aspect of Rep. Anthony Weiner's behavior, they see inconsistency between the Democratic Party's insistence that he resign and the political survival of other politicians who have engaged in dubious sexual behavior, some of which was illegal. And it is fair to argue that, when the behavior does not involve minors or non-consenting adults, scandalous behaviors are usually survivable.

One of the more absurd comparisons I've heard is to the behavior of past presidents, such as Jefferson, Roosevelt and Kennedy, whose antics weren't known to the public. That's not a distinction - before Weiner's antics were known to the public he, also, avoided any consequence. One of the least coherent comparisons is Michael Medved's factually challenged¹ rant about how unjust the world is because Weiner was pressured to resign but Clinton was not.² I've heard comparisons to Rep. David Vitter ("it's illegal to hire prostitutes but not to twitter suggestive photos to other adults", Sen. Larry Craig ("he was convicted of disorderly conduct, but was allowed to complete his term"), and others.

I've also heard a variety of theories as to why Weiner was singled out - theories that his public persona, his alleged abrasiveness with his colleagues, his status as an up-and-coming leader for the party, etc., made it somehow more critical that he be removed. I don't agree - he could have been marginalized within the party and, as a spokesperson, once the scandal becomes "old news" needs not be any less effective than Elliot Spitzer.

Here's the thing: When you have a politician who cheats on his wife with other women, you can generally expect that if you dig you will learn of other affairs. If the cheating is with men in restrooms, sure, you can expect that digging will probably reveal that's not a one-time behavior, either. If the politician likes to hire prostitutes, again, a thorough investigation will likely turn up a lot more prostitutes with whom he's consorted. None of which changes the essential nature of the story.

Do you believe that somebody who engages in narcissistic, casual exhibitionist behaviors "kept it in his pants", so to speak, before the invention of Twitter? Andrew Breitbart apparently has a small dossier of photos, including an x-rated photo "accidentally" shared with the world. Even had Weiner survived the initial scandal with his implausible denials of responsibility, his scandal is a gift that keeps on giving - with an increasing number of increasingly explicit photos, and an increasing number of women reporting his conduct. For the Republican Party, Weiner had become a gift that keeps on giving.

Am I wrong in my inferences? If I were, I somehow doubt that Weiner would have followed his mea culpa by announcing that he was checking into some form of "rehab", inpatient mental health treatment. I suspect that he could have held on at least as well as Larry Craig, and perhaps as well as Barney Frank. But instead, I think the party legitimately feared that continued investigation would reveal a history of similar conduct dating back to Weiner's youth, and that given how casual he was about his online contacts that it was only a matter of time before he was discovered to have send explicit pictures to a minor. (I understand he's already under investigation for pictures he sent to a 17-year-old, and his antics were known to a sufficient degree among right-wing muck hounds that they were actively trying to solicit pictures from him with fake online identities.)

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1. Medved writes, "Clinton abused his authority with and used government resources in sex-capades with a White House intern" - if you don't care enough about the facts to know after this much time that Lewinsky was not an intern, or if you know and choose to lie, why should you be regarded as anything but a low-wattage intellect and a partisan hack.

2. Is he complaining that Weiner should have stayed because Clinton stayed, that if you excuse behavior of one sort you must forever excuse behavior that's arguably similar, that a President and a Member of Congress are equivalent players in our political system... Nah, he's just ranting about Democrats.

Do Sexual Ethics Matter in Politics

I often hear it argued that a politician's private life should remain private, and that infidelity should be considered irrelevant to a politician's public life. This is true to a point - if you know that a particular politician is inclined to have extramarital affairs and you elect him anyway (cough Clinton cough) then you shouldn't pretend its a huge shock or somehow an indictment of his character when he continues to act in character. If you care that Rudy Giuliani occasionally dresses in drag don't vote for him - but it's public information and the voters elected him knowing that he likes to play dress-up (and I have no reason to believe that, in his case, it's anything but a lark).

I heard it argued that the breaking of the story in relation to John Edwards was a public service, as he was hiding a scandal from his supporters and donors that would have devastated his chances of election had he been nominated for the Presidency, and similarly that the disclosure of Anthony Weiner's exploits on Twitter was a public service to the voters of New York who might have supported him in a run for mayor. The implication of that argument is that, absent an election, the behavior of both men is irrelevant to their public lives. I've also heard it argued that if you take Newt Gingrich's infidelity while married to a cancer-stricken wife and combine it with Arnold Schwarzenegger's love child you have John Edwards - but Gingrich is deemed a serious presidential candidate and Schwarzenegger's image is at worst a bit tarnished. Is that fair?

Well... yes. It isn't so much that Edwards suffered a collapse of his public persona because he had an affair that resulted in a child, so much as it is that he was revealed to have a private life completely at odds with the persona he was selling to the public. And when it looked like he was going to be caught, the cover-up was pretty outrageous.

But I think there's something else that the "It's their private lives" crowd is missing. The question of whether you can neatly compartmentalize fidelity - "He cheats on his wife and fakes his religious fervor, but I trust him to be faithful to his oath to uphold and defend the Constitution." Perhaps some compartmentalization is possible. Perhaps Bernie Madoff would never have dreamed of stealing from the collection at his synagogue, even as he happily ripped off his investors.

Perhaps with some relationships the flexibility of the marital vows is part of an explicit understanding between the partners (although that was pretty clearly not the case with Edwards - although that brings us back to the issue of lying to voters and supporters over something that could blow up during an election. Perhaps you can rationalize the deception in those cases - it's society that's being unreasonable in holding that a perfectly qualified individual is "unelectable" if he has an open marriage or is an atheist, and thus he's justified in pretending otherwise in order to obtain and hold office. But it seems to me that most people act pretty consistently across their lives - if they don't steal at work, they don't steal at church. If somebody like Madoff doesn't steal at church it's probably because it's too little money to be bothered with - but if that church were to have a considerable endowment and were to invest with him, "game on".

I personally believe that somebody who is dishonest in relation to the most central personal relationship of their lives is likely to display the same level of dishonesty in other contexts. Liars lie, cheaters cheat, and thieves steal. Some dubious behavior may hint at personality traits that could be beneficial to a political leader - if we're honest, there are times when a psychopath's sang froid, ability to fake emotion, lack of conscience, and ability to lie without the usual outward signs of deception could be useful to a President. That's not to say we want a psychopath in office, but maybe we do want a guy who can have a huge scandal break just before his State of the Union Address, and who will nonetheless proceed to present that speech as if nothing untoward has happened. Both the human psyche and the world are complicated. But if you're electing a thief, liar or cheater, you should have the opportunity to know what you're doing.

Update: In the New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg argues that

[Weinergate] confirms a pet theory of mine: the Clinton Rule, which states that when a married politician appears before cameras and microphones and starts babbling absurd lies about some sexual something, the person he is really trying to lie to is his spouse. The lies that get told to the public and the press are side effects.

and

By itself, the fact that a person has lied about sex tells you nothing about that person’s general propensity to lie.... If the politician is a habitual or characterological liar, the public record will show it and the lying-about-sex is redundant. If the politician is not a habitual or characterological liar, his lying-about-sex is misleading—is itself a lie, in a way.

Hertzberg assumes that the public record will be both available and clear. It may be that it's the lies about infidelity that lead people to look more closely at the rest of a politician's record. But he's also compartmentalizing behaviors, as if you believe that a person's essential character is consistent across the board, somebody who cheats on his spouse is in fact likely to display similar conduct in other contexts. Even if we limit it to "He'll only lie to me if it's necessary to save his political career," and even if I think that a public reaction to his infidelity would be exaggerated and thus sympathize with his desire to keep it secret, I don't see why lying to save his career in this context would not suggest that he will lie to save his career in other contexts. Frankly, if the argument is that the public needs to shift its opinion on infidelity and be less judgmental of politicians' affairs, even if there is an individual price to pay before cultural perceptions shift, politicians would do themselves and their peers a much greater service by being honest.