Media, Morals, and Politicians

I found it surprising how much media attention was given to the most recent scandal concerning the governor of New York. It is as though having an immoral, hypocritical politician who betrays others is somehow a new phenomenon. I often wonder if such stories are really news, as they seem much more sensational than they are insightful. Not that newspapers are solely responsible; they simply respond to consumer demand in order to maximize profits.

Concerning President George Washington, it has been said "in all history few men who possessed unassailable power have used that power so gently and self-effacingly for what their best instincts told them was the welfare of their neighbors and all mankind" (Flexner, Washington, xvi). Indeed, while "some sincerely wish for more power in order to do good, only a few individuals are good enough to be powerful" (Maxwell, The Tugs and Pulls of the World, 2002).

Although some argue that a politician's private moral choices should be completely separate from his public political choices, I have a hard time trusting a politician's loyalty to the general public when he cannot be loyal to his own wife. The Lord certainly will not turn a blind eye to bad moral choices, public or private. Indeed, "there is not an indoor and an outdoor set of Ten Commandments" (Maxwell, The Prohibitive Costs of a Value-free Society, 1978)

As Edmund Burke warned, “… society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more of it there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” (Leo Rosten, A Trumpet for Reason, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1970.)