The Tragedy of Hypocrisy

So, farewell Governor Spitzer. As a Democratic rising star, he might even have become President Spitzer one day. He has paid a high price for his indiscretion, but he knew the rules of the game when he first stood for public office and he has no one else to blame but himself.

Politics is a blood sport, played for keeps. As Margaret Thatcher said on the day her ungrateful Conservative colleagues evicted her from Downing Street, "It's a funny old world." How swiftly even distinguished public careers are brought crashing down, particularly when sex is involved.

It is safest to have no secrets in politics, starting with secret lovers. While American politicians traditionally have been unseated by corruption scandals, their British counterparts have mostly been undone by sex. The role of prostitution in British political life has a long and colorful history.

The most famous scandal in living memory, which shook Harold Macmillan's government to the core in 1963, was the result of a sad middle-aged married man paying for sex. When the war minister, John Profumo, hired the prostitute Christine Keeler, he should have done his homework. Another Keeler client was Yevgeny Ivanov, naval attaché at the Soviet embassy. Although Ms. Keeler did not pass on any secrets to the Russian — her pillow talk rarely stretched to asking the location of nuclear missiles — Profumo was fatally compromised.

Yet, and this is typical of the Brits, it was not so much that Profumo had paid for sex, or even humiliated his wife Valerie Hobson, a glamorous film actress, that cost him dear, but that he had lied in the Commons when challenged over his dangerous liaison.

Other brief encounters between British politicians and prostitutes also have ended badly. When Jeffrey Archer, the best selling novelist and, as it turned out, the appropriately named vice chairman of Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives paid off a prostitute, he sued and won substantial damages from the tabloid that suggested the cash was for services rendered.

His wife Mary appeared in court as a character witness and was described by the judge as "fragrant," a clear steer to the jury that Mr. Archer had no need to resort to whores. The judge asked whether, with Mary waiting at home, the charge made any sense. "Is he in need of cold, unloving, rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel round about quarter to one on a Tuesday morning?" the judge asked.

As it happens, Mr. Archer was in such need. Years later, when it emerged that he had lied about his alibi, he was convicted of perjury, stripped of his peerage, and sentenced to four years in jail. Again, the major offense in British eyes was not that he had hired a tart, but that he had lied.

Prime Minister Heath was quick to act when Scotland Yard told him three of his ministers were listed in a prostitute's little black book. The trio took very different routes to their salvation. Lord Lambton was confronted with the truth and promptly resigned.

Geoffrey Rippon stood firm, telling Heath he thought he had done nothing wrong and that if Heath wanted to make an issue of it, he should fire him. Heath blinked and Rippon survived, though it was such an open secret he had been part of the tart-going trio that whenever he walked through the members' lobby in the Commons, political reporters would softly whistle the Harry Lime theme from "The Third Man."

A strange fate overtook the last of Heath's wayward ministers, Lord Jellicoe. Challenged by Heath over his name appearing in a tart's address book, Jellicoe immediately tendered his resignation, though it transpired he had been too noble too hastily. It was discovered that the number alongside the name "Jellicoe" was not his but that of a man with the same surname. So poor Jellicoe resigned for the wrong tart.

Mr. Spitzer's sin was of a quite different order. Politicians, even presidents, can sometimes withstand the revelation of their sexual peccadilloes, but the governor's offense was not so much carnality, nor deceit, but hypocrisy. The Europeans have found that sexual adventures, however exotic or unlikely, are forgiven by voters so long as they practice what they preach.

President Clinton left the White House as a popular figure, even after months of exposure as a liar and an adulterer, perhaps because he had never made any pretense that he considered monogamy or abstinence to be virtuous. Not so Senator Craig, Representative Mark Foley, the Reverend Ted Haggard, and countless others who have enjoyed the support of social conservatives while leading a sexual double life. Barack Obama won his Senate seat, on which he quickly built a presidential campaign, because of his Republican predecessor Jack Ryan's proclivity for kinky sex.

We are just beginning to understand the full extent to which Mr. Spitzer betrayed the voters' trust, not because he trawled in forbidden waters but because he was full of humbug. The fall of such a talented individual is a tragedy for him and, perhaps, for New York, and a devastating blow to his wife and daughters.

But if he is driven from office, he cannot claim it is because of his overweening sexual appetite. He may be obliged to resign because he hoodwinked us, holding high the sword of justice in one hand while grasping the key to the Mayflower Hotel's Room 871 in the other.

nwapshott@nysun.com