Despicable argument used by “Social Conservatives for Giuliani”

(Below, James N. doubts that the consequences of a Giuliani presidency to conservatism would be as dire as I claim.)

The lead article, “Rudy—The Candidate for Social Conservatives,” at the website of Social Conservatives for Giuliani, includes this passage:

Some of the greatest conservative leaders in America have had less than spotless personal lives, but that did not stop them from doing what is right for our country. President Reagan’s divorce did not stop him from vaulting a country languishing in the failed liberal policies of the Carter administration into a new era of prosperity and safety…

To lump Ronald Reagan’s personal life in the same class with Giuliani’s is despicable. Yet it is exactly what I have said all along must happen as a result of the Giuliani candidacy and a Giuliani presidency. A quick review of well-known facts: Ronald Reagan’s first wife, Jane Wyman, left him and ended their marriage, primarily over the fact that she didn’t like his politics and his political activities. He was wounded and devastated by this, and didn’t fully recover until he married his second wife Nancy Davis several years later. There was no public adultery, there was no private adultery that anyone knows of, there were no public attacks on his wife, there was no attempt to remove his wife and children from their home. There was nothing spotted about Reagan’s behavior at all. Yet these “social conservatives” for Giuliani are perfectly willing to suggest an equivalence between Giuliani’s catastrophic marital and family history and Reagan’s blameless history, purely for the sake of removing any criticism from Giuliani.

And this, by the way, is why it is absurd for Giuliani to claim that his marital history is “private.” His own supporters are using his marital history, not only to tarnish the character of Ronald Reagan, but, through the use of the moral equivalency argument, to remove the very possibility of making moral judgments about anyone’s behavior. If Giuliani’s personal history were just his personal history, it wouldn’t matter publicly. But because he is running for president, and if he becomes president, his personal history has and will have an enormous public effect in eliminating moral standards in America and thus destroying conservatism.

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James N. writes:

“But because he is running for president, and if he becomes president, his personal history has and will have an enormous public effect in (1) eliminating moral standards in America and (2) thus destroying conservatism.”

I’m not sure you are right about either of these contentions (the numbers are obviously inserted by me).

The President must respect morality in his official acts, and no man who would not do this should be President. But I am drawn back to how much the idea that “the personal is political” is informing your view of this. I mean you no disrespect, but every time you write a statement like this, I can’t avoid the mental association. “The personal is political” is a leftist, indeed a totalitarian, view that means no man, even those who serve in high office, has a space in his life which does not belong to the public.

If moral standards in America derive from the state (rather than the other way around), you would have a point. But I think the founders explicitly rejected the proposition that the state and its officials were guardians or enforcers of morality (as opposed to the People, their churches, and their voluntary associations).

As far as conservatism being destroyed (or more destroyed than it already is), to quote a popular leftist slogan of my youth, “you can’t kill an idea.” We are starting to get some traction with the public as leftist ideas and leftist enactments turn people’s lives upside down. This process will continue, regardless of the President’s own actions.

To be clear, I think Rudy’s public abuse of Donna Hanover is a perfectly legitimate issue. Anyone who feels that they should not vote for him because of this is making a reasonable, and perhaps even a righteous decision.

But I think you are elevating that simple transaction (mistreatment of someone who perhaps didn’t deserve it) to Olympian heights by associating it with the destruction of morality in America and the end of conservatism.

Usually your writings are crystal clear to me—they are so forceful because you make complex phenomena easy to understand, and to overcome.

But on this point, I’m not following your thinking.

LA replies:

But, as I said, if G. were simply a private person, his bad behavior would not be of public significance. But his being president is entirely different. The president is a big deal. People need to approve the president. So they start approving everything about Rudy. I just gave an example of this with the quote where the “Social Conservatives for Giuliani” equate G.’s sins with Reagan’s non-existent sins. Do you not see that as a problem?

You say I’m elevating the consequences of G.’s sins to Olympian heights. Well, did the country’s approval of Clinton’s depraved behavior, in which half the country was saying, “Everybody does it,” not have a major effect on the moral code of our country? Are you not aware that oral sex among teens has become common since the Clinton years? And that was the left half of the country that was saying that. Now it’s the GOP and conservatives who are and will be saying that. So the damage will be infinitely worse, indeed of Olympian proportions.

Of course the idea of morality or family values would not be destroyed. But the idea of family values as something that people publicly express and that plays a role in our politics would be effectively destroyed. If “destroyed” is too strong, I’ll amend it to “drastically weakened.”

This has nothing to do with the left-wing idea that “the personal is the political.” We’ve discussed this at great length before. If I am making the personal the political, then all earlier American society made the personal the political. George Washington was making the personal the political in his first inaugural address (frequently quoted by me) where he said that that “the foundations of our National policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 19, 2007 07:42 AM | Send