From the vault, circa Aug. ‘08
In the end there’s only one meaningful rubric by which to judge the personal lives of public servants: it’s not about whether you are or aren’t a hypocrite, but whether or not your secrets have so tormented you that you’ve forsaken your natural capacity for sympathy in exchange for a compensatory desire to punish and persecute those in whom you see yourself.
It shouldn’t have mattered that Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston had marital infidelities, but it did because they’d led a decade-long witchhunt to persecute Bill Clinton for that very thing.
It shouldn’t have mattered that Larry Craig was a closeted homosexual, but it did because he chose to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a party and a policy that relegate homosexuals to second class citizens.
It shouldn’t have mattered that Eliot Spitzer was seeing a sex worker, but it did because he built his early career on locking up sex workers.
Related: I just learned how to reblog myself.
