Lest anyone think that after reading Peter’s post responding to my thoughts about the question of Newt Gingrich’s moral standing that I think that hypocrisy is worse than infidelity, let me state that I don’t. But I was not comparing garden-variety hypocrisy with every day infidelity. I was discussing Newt Gingrich.
Gingrich’s serial infidelity is a serious problem, and I imagine that it troubles many husbands as well as their wives that Peter thinks are the main audience for these critiques. But my point here is that this aspect of the former speaker’s biography fatally undermines his candidacy because he conducted himself in this manner while not merely prating about moral values, as do most hypocrites, but while also setting in motion an impeachment process that was rooted in charges of someone else’s infidelity. Gingrich’s shenanigans meant that the impeachment hearings were not a case of Republicans standing up for high standards but merely a cynical and partisan effort to sink a flawed sitting president.
That President Clinton deserved the opprobrium that those investigations rained down on him is beside the point. While there were reasons to question the wisdom of the entire impeachment process while it was ongoing, the revelation of Gingrich’s hypocrisy ended the discussion about moral values and shamed the congressional majority that he led as much as it undermined faith in his own character.
Peter is, of course, right to say that we are all hypocrites in some manner. As La Rochefoucauld famously wrote, it is “the homage that vice pays to virtue.” But when hypocrisy becomes not merely a foible but a policy, it must be considered to have ascended to a higher realm of misconduct.
[...] Remember Monday when I said Newt Gingrich’s serial infidelities would be a problem for him? I love being ahead of the curve. [...]