Why Carl Paladino's Adultery Matters

Periodically, the issue of whether or not politicians' sexual improprieties should be a factor in judging them comes up. Typically one camp suggests these are private matters that should stay private. The other camp, arguing that politicians' sexual improprieties should and do matter, typically advance one or more of four distinct arguments.

The first argument isn't really an argument at all, and it doesn't really deserve consideration beyond mentioning that it's out there. There's a degree to which some people will use a politician's sexual improprieties simply as a vehicle to attack him, but it's not the real reason for the attack. The relentless, sex-based attacks on Bill Clinton throughout his Presidency, even before credible allegations of adultery finally emerged, are an excellent example. Unfounded rumor at one point, as I recall, even had him hooking up with actress Sharon Stone.

This isn't really an argument per se. By definition it means you'll care about the sexual improprieties of a politician you disagree with, and not care about the sexual improprieties of a politician you agree with.

But, there are there arguments for caring about politicians' sexual improprieties that I, for one, consider perfectly legitimate.

First is what I call representational morality. This is the idea that our elected leaders should represent the best of us, including exemplifying the moral ideals that we hold more often than we live up to. Reason two comes to us from the Biblical saying that he who can't be trusted in small matters can't be trusted in great ones. In other words, if a man will betray the trust of his family he might also betray the trust of his people.

Applying these two arguments is a personal matter, depending on each voter's values and expectations.

The third reason is what will be mostly considered today. Whereas the other two reasons to care are essentially private, this one is essentially public.

A politician's first duty is to remain true to the political persona he creates, and that persona is also the first thing we have to judge him by, even before he enacts a single policy. Politicians, wrote Political Scientist Richard Fenno, spend a lot of their time engaging in the “presentation of self.” When they do this, by definition they are playing a character. Sometimes that character is a version of the real person, sometimes it's not, but sincerity isn't the issue here. The issue is that when a politician creates a public political persona to play, it's fair to judge him by how well he can hold do it. To thine own self-created image be true. Or else why bother creating it at all. And further, it's fair to judge him by the logical consequences of that persona.

By this standard, sexual improprieties might matter a lot more for some politicians than for others. David Paterson, for example, has not made his happy marriage part of his political persona. Therefore, shocking allegations of public “necking” with a lady not his wife at a New Jersey steak house were shocking chiefly for their undeniable stupidity; it was stupid of the Governor to allow himself to be seen this way even if there was nothing going on between him and the woman. We may not want David Paterson to be cheating on his wife (though we know he's done it in the past, as he's spoken about it), but if he were still cheating and it became known, no one would be terribly surprised. He hasn't put his own personal morality into play as a political issue.

John Edwards, on the other hand, made his happy marriage part of his political persona. And, thus, his adultery was genuinely shocking in a way it wouldn't be for David Paterson. If a politician cannot be true to his own political persona, what's left for him to be true to? There are excellent reasons why sexual improprieties have likely ended his political career. He put the issue out there.

Eliot Spitzer's sexual improprieties were particularly easy to judge. He violated both his own political persona, and the law. Bill Clinton's were harder, as his persona was as ambiguous as the legal status of many of his actions to cover up his affair.

Some politicians, when caught, can plausibly make the excuse that their private lives are entirely private and we shouldn't judge them by it. Whether or not we agree is another matter, but some can plausibly make the case. And some politicians can not plausibly make this case. Either they have put their values or their own domestic bliss front and center, or in some (seemingly rare) cases they present a persona that's so hyper-sexual in nature you can't help but look.

Carl Paladino is perhaps the rarest case of all. His weirdly contradictory persona, not ambiguous like Bill Clinton's but openly contradictory, is both hyper-sexual and values laden. Either way, he's in effect put his own bedroom front and center. His adultery should matter, and matter a lot.

First of all, he has expressed his political persona in values terms. His verbal assaults on President Obama as not being Christian “in his heart” are one example. Especially when one considers that, in context, Paladino's statements went beyond answering the question he was asked. Paladino was clearly attempting to to cast himself as a values candidate. To refer to someone as being “not Christian in his heart,” as Paladino did to President Obama, is clearly to imply that you're qualified to judge. Paladino's website, and his recent Daily News interview, also reference Paladino's staunch Catholicism. In Catholicism, adultery is a serious sin. Paladino and his supporters have openly touted the candidate's “conservative values.” Typically, the phrase “conservative values” implies a lot more than cutting taxes, at least to the voters if not to the political class.

Values are clearly part of Paladino's political persona. And his adultery violates his own publicly-held, much-trumpeted values.

Another part of Paladino's political persona, which has surprisingly been little-commented on in the mainstream media, is sexual potency, especially as contrasted with that of Andrew Cuomo's It seems very important to Paladino that he show he's bigger than his opponent (and I think we all know what I mean by that). A picture on Paladino's Internet site, for example, contrasts the two candidates by presenting Paladino as a big, masculine looking dog, and Cuomo as a small, feminine looking dog (named Fifi). Paladino's repeated threats of physical violence and his expression of political matters in violent, physical terms are surely also proof of a man showing off his testosterone count, as is his repeated references to the political contest as a fight. Almost all American politicians to some degree engage in this kind of hyper-masculine discourse. In fact it's almost impossible to avoid, to some degree even for women in politics. But Paladino's put hyper-sexuality front and center, deliberately and intentionally.

Paladino's public persona thus presents us with a strange paradox: morally righteous and devout Christian on the one hand; sexually aggressive, baseball bat wielding, street fighting overman on the other.

Paladino's adultery, especially as ongoing, secret, and child-producing as it was (this was not the openly “libertine” sexual impropriety of a figure like Roger Stone), is a violation of the first half of his persona, and a logical and necessary consequence of the second half.

And, thus, it's fair to judge him by it. He's put it out there, for all to see.