Political Messiahs, Political Pariahs, The Problem of Moral Leadership in America

A year ago last January, 2009, I gave my presidential address at the Society of Christian Ethics meeting in Chicago, Illinois.  At that time Governor Blagoyovich was being forced out of office because of allegations that he had attempted to sell President Barack Obama’s vacated U. S. senate seat. While this was a tragedy for the state of Illinois, it made my address look prophetic.   My address was, however, prepared long before Blagoyovich’s violations.  The address was an ethical reflection of the phenomenon of moral disjuncture in evaluating political leaders on the basis of a too narrow focus on their personal moral actions in contrast to a misguided ethical evaluation of the morality of their public policy.

Accordingly, I contrasted George Bush’s squeaky clean, evangelical personal life,(his recent life, not his youthful indiscretions) accompanied by the immorality of his leadership of American forces into war with Iraq in comparison to Bill Clinton’s personal indiscretions. Indiscretions that of course hampered his administration’s struggle to  provide millions of fearful Americans with a right to national healthcare.  We all now know there were no weapons of mass destruction and also that the Clinton Administration failed to lead us into an implementation of national healthcare.  The Obama administration is now still overseeing our continued presence in Iraq as well as expanding our war with Afghanistan.  We are still struggling to get implemented  widespread national healthcare and we have approximately 45 million Americans without it.  Yet what I want to focus on today is the announcement by New York Governor David Patterson that he will not run again for re-election.

Gov. Patterson has decided not to run, heeding calls from friends and foes alike  that recent allegations that he intervened in a domestic dispute case for a top aide in his administration are too unsavory to permit his re-election.  These allegations have yet to be clearly established, yet Patterson has, in effect, stepped down at the end of his current term.  He is probably right to do so in the sense that his ratings had been low, the economic collapse has been extensive in New York and his draconian budget reductions would probably have to continue apace into the foreseeable future.  Be that as it may,  what I want to know is why, given that his re-election was always going to difficult, did Gov. Patterson not just jettison his aide as soon as he became aware of the domestic violence issues.  For once, Patterson was not the miscreant.

In modern day America, for the most part,  it is now, not only illegal, but also clearly unpopular to beat your spouse.  Not too many years ago,  beaten women were often counseled by a variety of supposed moral leaders to “suffer” an occasional beating to keep the family intact.  In the black community, not infrequently, the church would suggest that women suffering for the sake of Christ could win their spouses to Jesus.  This advice was seriously bad theology and terrible pastoral care and the church is beginning to work itself out of this quagmire.  Yet Patterson, who started his administration with a pre-emptive moral strike, by confessing to his own domestic infidelities, was not adept at distancing himself from his administrative aide.  This reality, however the investigation boils out is puzzling to me.  It is as if Patterson was beset by a political moral inertia.  No leader needs to fall on his or her sword for an aide.  In King Saul’s day, it used to be the other way around, failed underlings fell on their swords for their leader (Yes, I know that Saul actually did finally fall on his sword.).  In this modern, i-pod, twitter, instant news world, your sins will literally seek you out.  A modern “prince” unlike in Machiavelli’s days has much more difficulty seeming to practice virtue publicly, while practicising vice privately.

Oddly enough,  the famous disjuncture between public morality and private morality has in a certain sense reversed itself.  It is now easier to keep certain public policies secret than it is private indiscretions.  Patterson was, of course, thrust into office, only because his former leader, Governor Eliot Spitzer was caught as a prolific user of call girls.  He was forced out of office and narrowly escaped prosecution.  In such a charged atmosphere of public spectacle and private vice, politicians seem to still be slow to recognize that there lines and rivers that like the Rubicon, once crossed, do not allow retreats.

Perhaps this last fiasco actually served as a convenient escape hatch to allow Gov. Patterson to move over and let his party present the electorate with another more attractive candidate.  Perhaps not.  What is indisputable is that in modern America a politician’s religious position, personal morality, personal and professional associations are all grist for the electoral mill.  President Barak Obama had to disavow his pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright in order to be elected.  Rev. Wright committed no felonies–he was guilty of more serious offenses–he criticized the political morality of America publicly in his church.  The exercise of his first amendment right to free speech and to freedom of religion generated, for the Obama administration an electoral crisis.

What I am wondering is, whether or not  our focus on the private shenanigans of our elected officials simply our own private escape hatches?  Are we more comfortable tsk, tsking this leader or that because their feet of clay become publicly uncovered?  Those clay feet are the only ones that they have, the only ones that we can see and are in fact no different than our own fragile feet.

In America it is becoming increasingly more difficult to distinguish between political messiahs and political pariahs because we are looking at the wrong phenomenon with the wrong moral lenses.  We are making this mistake and so are our politicians.  Domestic violence should be punished and discouraged.   But we the electorate must also more actively examine and discuss the moral qualities  of political and public policies and not just the latest blunders surfaced in the private lives of public figures.   Finally, however, given that what is now done in the dark shall be brought to light all would be public servants must now consider elective office to be similar to a religious calling.  Since private indiscretions can no longer be kept private those seeking office must be purer than Caesar and Caesar’s wife.