How do we frame New York Governor's scandal according to progressive values?

It seems to me this is an opportunity for us to demonstrate our values, to walk our talk.

I think it's reasonable to expect progressive politicians to live up to their own standards. I would hope that also means living up to my own standards.

Spitzer didn't live up to my standards. He didn't live up to his own standards. He didn't live up to his own words, and he didn't live up to his previous behaviors as attorney general.

I am disappointed. I am also angry. To express that is to be authentic, it seems to me.

Part of my task as an advocate of sustainable culture is to help folks begin to accept the consequences of our decisions, to accept the consequences of our behaviors. It seems to me that Spitzer's career as attorney general involved getting acquainting some folks with the consequences of their decisions and behaviors.

So it seems to me Spitzer should be subject to the same consequences he would have subjected others to. No less. Also, no more. I won't condone wallowing in it or blowing it out of proportion.

Ideally progressive politicians would demonstrate how to walk a moral high road by not getting into these problems. If they cannot do that, I expect them to demonstrate progressive values by accepting consequences with maturity.

And if progressive politicians cannot demonstrate maturity by accepting consequences, then I will express my authentic disappointment and anger about that, too. To me that's not just being progressive, or being American, but just plain being human. I'd like to think that's authentic.

That's how I think about the situation myself. And that's how I intend to talk about it with others, whether conservative, progressive, or biconceptual. I share it with the hope that others may find it useful.

Cheers

What I do care about is how so many success stories involve power and wealth and how they seem to prey on human weakness. $80,000 had to be spent to ensure secrecy and a false front. The police state was looking for vulnerable Democrats and they found one. All of these evils involve forms of subversion, from prostitution, to spying, and probably other hidden things. How do people allow themselves to get caught up in such complicated machinations? Most of the progressives I know are too cheap or lazy to get mixed up in such stuff. They would rather read a good book. I build ship models.

I think it's worthwhile to care about some standards. In this case it seems to me that standards are mixed in with rules, laws, personal reputation, culture, social norms, frames, and our perceptions of all those things. It can be difficult to sort out those elements while the dust flies.

In this particular case, I think some hullabaloo would have been triggered by just about any perceived transgression by that particular person. I suspect even unpaid parking tickets could have caused a public relations problem for him.

It seems to me he created a frame about himself. He established a reputation as someone who obeys rules himself and enforces rules for others. And he said some unequivocal statements about other rule-breakers that reflect badly on him now.

Unpaid parking tickets would have had the advantage of not evoking a marriage-and-family frame. Unfortunately the former governor's extracurricular hobby went straight to our culture's frames and expectations about marriage.

Was someone digging for dirt to use against him? I suspect so. Unfortunately that isn't helpful at the moment because, as we all know, frames trump facts.

I do hope that we might shine some light on politically-motivated, highly partisan, dirt-digging. Later. Heading off the temptation to try that argument now, publicly, is one of the reasons I framed my first comment the way I did. It annoys me when conservative noise-makers talk about responsibility, then run from responsibility when it's actually time to demonstrate it. So far I'm pleased that I've seen relatively little of that now, at least publicly, from progressives.

I hope that's real, and not just that I'm not monitoring the media venues where that kind of talk is going on. I hope progressives really do stay on a moral high road. I'd like to look back on this episode later and see that progressives handled the whole thing with maturity and appropriate responsibility. So far, so good ... I think.

Cheers