Spitzer and Mosley are about legality, not morality or the ability to appese powerful constituents – so any suggestion of hypocrisy is really just a propaganda tool to cater to pre-existing prejudice.

I agree that what matters is the ability to adapt in changing environments so that policy formation is not responsive but pro-active in creating choices. Which is exactly why the self-affirmation prescribed by votematch is beside the point.

Leaders lead by shaping agendas, not by responding to events.

Ideally, presuming these good liberals respect different choices and lifestyles, politicians should be judged only by their own professed moral values. If they took drugs when they were young “as a laugh”, but want to lock up the sort of people that sold them drugs, then they should be held in contempt by the public. If they use prostitutes in their private life while persecuting them in public office, then they deserve to be judged.

Perhaps the reason that they sometimes are not held to account is that they, to an extent, merely reflect the dissonant interests of people generally (who often want to persecute young people for behaviour equivalent to how they behaved when young, or wish to propound a public moral view while not keeping strictly to it themselves).

If they use prostitutes in their private life while persecuting them in public office, then they deserve to be judged.

Agreed.

If they took drugs when they were young “as a laugh”, but want to lock up the sort of people that sold them drugs, then they should be held in contempt by the public.

So people aren’t allowed to change their mind about anything, ever, no matter what the circumstances? Surely we want politicians to be able to modify their position (not necessarily regarding drugs) in the light of new (or merely better explained) evidence.

My position is that if someone acts at odds with the policy that they are currently pushing, then that is relevant. But if they acted contrary to that policy over a decade ago, that might be interesting background, but needn’t really be hypocritical.

If you have a friend and they do something you don’t like (adultery for example, since thats what most political private life stories are about) you can reasonably judge that person on that basis, and judge harshly if you choose.

So you can cut off from that firend, you can tell them what you think of them, you can simply dislike that person as a result.

But when you judge harshly you have to do so in full knowledge of your own relationship with that person. You can weigh up that you may have had fun with them for a long time. You have to consider if you know its an abberation or a character flaw. You can weigh what impact it will have on your other firends. And so on.

With politicians that same process works differently.

You can still judge harshly – but the things you weigh it against are different. So you weigh it against their policy on education, their competence in any given position, their voting intentions on civil liberties, and their innovation as a leader.

And when people do that they by and large conclude that personal life issues are insignificant. And because of that it is hard for a paper to justify an intrusion on the basis of public interest.

except where hypocricy is involved. In such cases the public tend to judge harshly and so that indicates some public interest.

“So people aren’t allowed to change their mind about anything, ever, no matter what the circumstances? Surely we want politicians to be able to modify their position (not necessarily regarding drugs) in the light of new (or merely better explained) evidence.”

Well I should first say that drugs present a somewhat extreme (perhaps rare) example of social, cultural and legal dissonance. But drugs policy is also a cause of tremendous harm so it is worth focusing on (it is bad enough that drugs themselves are dangerous before the criminal law becomes involved).

People are, of course, allowed to change their minds about drugs policy. But their change in policy ought to be reflected by a proportionate change in attitude. If someone goes from using drugs (even just a few times) recreationally to advocating depriving people of their liberty for dealing in the class of substances they were happy consume, you would need to see some chastened visages, sincere apologies for past misdeeds, explanations of why they erred – rather than the sort of “well it was a bit naughty, but it was a long time ago… private matter etc etc”. Politicians who take that line are implicitly suggesting that completely understandable errors that young people could almost be expected to commit ought to be subject to criminal sanction (even though they themselves escaped such sanction in similar circumstances).

I imagine this strange dissonance of “hard on drugs/ not that my mistakes taking drugs” will not really be solved until people realise that drug use is not a proper subject for the criminal law.

…a politician’s affairs seem to me to demonstrate very little about their method of governing, neither does taking drugs as a teenager.

Engaging in extra-marital affairs, unless done with the support of the spouse (an unusual circumstance), indicates a willingness to break promises and to deceive those close to you. When done with the consent of the marriage partner it displays an interest in conforming to social expectations in public in order to obtain the benefits of doing so, while privately flaunting these standards.

Taking drugs can imply personal recklessness, and of course, a willingness to break the law when it suits you for no reason other than your own pleasure.

Politicians often tell the public that ‘the innocent have nothing to fear” when introducing increased surveillance into our lives.

The principle works both ways. An honest man of integrity should be happy to stand by his actions in life, and not insist on conducting them behind a veil, hidden from the sight of others.

Thomas agreed- I don’t like Vote match for that reason as well- character matters as much as policy because politicians have to respond to things that happen which are beyond their control as well as doing the things they planned to do.

Nick agreed- we all to some degree are hypocrits! I definitely am- and in that sense say poltical hypocrisy makes politicians seem normal and fallible not angels setting themselves above us- in a sense that is of course the reason why people like Ken Clarke so much, he reminds them of their own imperfections, fat, cigar smoking, genuine bloke.

Jono of course- there is a statute of limitations on hypocrisy! though as Nick’s second comment points out there is also the way that a politician treats his past behaviour- does he say that I was an idiot when I was a kid but today… or does he say look young people experiment but they ought to be locked up and I was special.

Margin 4 Error as you’ll notice my discussion doesn’t really affect adultery- I’m more interested in how John McCain ran his unit in Vietnam than in how many women he has slept with. The public interest test for the media is another matter and is very different to resolve because in my view there is a confusion between two meanings of the term public interest- that which the public are interested in and that which they have an interest in. One of my first blog posts was about that issue http://gracchii.blogspot.com/2006/12/public-interest-and-press.html

Demon I think your conclusions are too broad. Basically I’d judge someone’s integrity in public life by whether they have carried out their promises in public life- its pretty easy to tell and usually politicians have a track record on that. Their promises to their spouses are very different in nature and therefore are less relevant to what they say to us the public. As to drugs yes it indicates a willingness to break the law and you are right to argue that that is an issue, I continuously get irritated at how blase some people of my generation who consider themselves upstanding citizens are about drugs. There may be though a social peculiarity in that sense about drugs which may mean that it is a law so widely broken that it doesn’t mean that someone will be inclined to break other, less socially opposed laws. I’m expressing myself clumsily but there is a point there.

On your last point, I think personally that most people and I would include myself in this have no real wish to see their private lives out in public- none of us behave perfectly and afterall noone but the politician has actually put themselves on display: Intrusion needs justification and there are good reasons why a politician would seek privacy and seek to act behind a veil even if he or she had nothing to hide.

Thomas:

Spitzer and Mosley are about legality, not morality or the ability to appese powerful constituents – so any suggestion of hypocrisy is really just a propaganda tool to cater to pre-existing prejudice.

I beg to differ about Spitzer, he was seen as a moraliser by many Americans, and of course as state AG he prosecuted some prostitution rings. Perhaps you and I are working with different definitions of hypocrisy?