Matt Yglesias

Why Does Adultury Only Matter For Democrats?

Mike Tomasky says he’s finally figured out what it takes to be banished from public life in the United States:

I’ve spent the last 14 years thinking well, we’ve finally learned in America what you have to do to be utterly banished — you have to literally get away with murder, or two of them (oops, I forgot this is Britain; I mean allegedly! Allegedly! And did I mention that he was acquitted by a jury of his peers?).

And now we add to the category a second condition: if you cheat on your cancer-stricken wife with another woman and still decide you can run for president, and you get busted, you’re pretty much finished. Yes or no?

He’s talking about John Edwards. But I have a question about this theory: what about Newt Gingrich? It’s true that Gingrich hasn’t launched a presidential campaign, but cheating on his cancer-stricken wife he’s done. Then he divorced her and married a second woman on whom he also cheated. And now he’s on his third marriage. And he converted to Catholicism! And he’s a defender of traditional marriage! And he’s still a high-profile public figure.

Consider also the starkly contrasting treatment of Elliot Spitzer, forced into resignation and disgrace for seeing a prostitute, and David Vitter, sitting pretty in the United States Senate.

Logically speaking, since there’s only one of the two parties that puts a very high premium on the idea that state regulation of individual sexual behavior should be the main role of government, these allegations should be more damaging to Republicans. Hypocrisy on the part of the media is part of the story. But part of the issue, I think, is just partisan and ideological solidarity. A politician can survive a great deal if his co-partisans are willing to stand by him, and conservatives are much more inclined to stand by their man than are progressives.

Missing: Eliot Spitzer

Michael Hill writes for the AP about Elliot Spitzer’s long struggle with AIG, his return to the spotlight, and the dim prospects for a Spitzer comeback: “It would be a long shot. The trail for a married politician caught soliciting high-priced prostitutes would likely be prohibitively steep.”

I have to say that I don’t really understand this. If soliciting prostitutes doesn’t ruin your career in Louisiana politics, why should it ruin your career in New York politics? Spitzer’s decision to resign has always struck me as basically just a case of blinking. I remember when the Monica Lewinsky story broke, and a lot of pundits immediately assumed that Bill Clinton would “have to” resign. And I think that was a real possibility. But he didn’t. So even though people weren’t thrilled with this aspect of his conduct, it quickly shifted from a public debate about his conduct to a public debate about the desirability of booting a popular, effective president from office and he won. I can see why Spitzer may have decided he didn’t want to fight the fight; but that’s ultimately what he did. A politician who’s well-liked by his constituents pre-scandal, hit by a scandal that has no real bearing on his job performance, can usually hang on if he wants to.

And by the same token, I don’t think there would be any real barrier to Spitzer coming back in some form. I’ve heard some people say that they never liked Spitzer’s Wall Street work and therefore they’re glad he’s not around anymore. And I’ve heard more people say that they did like Spitzer’s Wall Street work and therefore it’s too bad that he’s not around. But the concern about the sex scandal is almost entirely a “meta” thing, people think it’s too bad that other people see Spitzer as too tainted.

My Assigment Desk

Elliot Spitzer uses his most recent Slate column to call for a renewed spirit of competition and innovation in American business. Yawn. You know what issue I’d like to see Spizter address? Prostitution. It’s illegal. But the laws against it are pretty sporadically enforced. And I think there’s a lot of sentiment that punishing people for consensual acts is wrong, and also that criminalizing prosecution leaves women exposed to violence, abuse, and rape at the hands of pimps and cops alike. At the same time, prostitution legalization hasn’t, where it’s been tried, exactly ushered in a utopia.

So what’s former prospector and former state attorney general Elliot Spitzer think about this? Does he think he deserves to be thrown in jail? The hooker he used to see? And if not, does that call for broader reform of the laws regulating prostitution? Or is there some principled reason why the laws should be on the books but not enforced in this particular case? Seems to me that if Slate’s editors got him to address these issues they’d get a lot of traffic.