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This summer two American senators have had their secret lives revealed in humiliating circumstances. Senator David Vitter of Louisiana admitted to a “very serious sin”, after his name appeared on the phone records of a Washington escort agency. Senator Larry Craig was given a 10-day suspended jail sentence after apparently cruising for gay sex in a public lavatory.
This weekend, Mr Craig resigned from the Senate. Mr Vitter, however, is hanging on. So what does it take for a sex scandal to be truly fatal? Why do some politicians survive this sort of thing and others perish?
In the Anglo-American heartland of the political sex scandal, this is not a marginal question. The French may pride themselves on allowing politicians to lead their private lives unmolested. But in recent years sex scandals have led to the impeachment of an American president and contributed mightily to the implosion of a British government. The UK Conservative administration of the mid-1990s was badly wounded when its unfortunately named “Back to Basics” campaign for traditional values was followed by a string of salacious revelations about Tory politicians – ranging from gay affairs to auto-erotic strangulation.
In the US, the Republican party is in danger of suffering similar damage. Senators Craig and Vitter are the most prominent Republicans to have run into trouble so far. But last year representative Mark Foley had to resign from Congress after sending sexually explicit messages to under-age male pages. And this summer Bob Allen, a Republican state representative in Florida, was chucked off Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign – after making the Craig-like error of soliciting sex in a lavatory from an undercover cop.
The press tends to get a taste for this sort of thing, so there may be more scandals to come. The law of averages certainly suggests that there must be other senators who are harbouring guilty secrets, but who have not yet had the misfortune of seeing their favourite brothel or public lavatory raided by the police.
But when the dreaded day arrives – and the secret is exposed – what happens? There seem to be no iron rules to predict who will survive a scandal. Political consultants have their theories. The nature of the offence obviously matters. Breaking a law is worse than breaking your marriage vows. Gay sex is more politically hazardous than the heterosexual variety. Brazening it out is better than lying.
Go through this checklist and it becomes clear that Mr Craig was more vulnerable than Mr Vitter on several counts. A conservative horror of homosexuality certainly played a part. But he was also convicted in court, unlike his colleague from Louisiana. And after admitting to his crime, Mr Craig’s later denials made him look daft and dishonest.
Obvious hypocrisy is also bad news – which makes it much harder for social conservatives such as Mr Craig to survive a sex scandal. But liberals who have broken no laws can also see their political careers finished by a sex scandal. Think of the implosion of Gary Hart’s presidential election campaign in 1988 after he was caught dallying with an actress.
Mr Hart had made the mistake of challenging the press to follow him around and prove infidelity. That made him look absurd, as did the fact that he was photographed balancing his lover on his knee on a yacht called “Monkey Business”.
It is absurdity – the snigger factor – that seems to be the truly fatal element in any sex scandal. Lying, hypocrisy, even a little law-breaking – all of that can be survived. But when politicians lose their dignity, they are finished. Frequently, it is the small details of a scandal – and the bizarre little lies – that do the real damage. Mr Craig suffered more than Mr Vitter in large part because far more details of his indiscretion were revealed to a delighted public. Tapping your foot in a public lavatory will never seem safe again. Waving your hand under the cubicle was probably never a great idea.
But it is Britain – the home of the saucy seaside postcard – that has repeatedly demonstrated that it is the ludicrous details in a sex scandal that are often most damaging. It was bad news for Mark Oaten, a leading member of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, when he was caught using male prostitutes. But why did he have to suggest that his behaviour might have been provoked by the stress of going bald? Ron Davies, a cabinet minister in the Blair government, also erred when he tried to argue that he had strayed into a gay pick-up spot because he was looking for badgers.
Years later, it is the weird details – rather than the serious charges – that are remembered. In the 1970s Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of Britain’s Liberal party, was tried and acquitted of conspiracy to murder a male model. A serious matter, obviously. But the case is now colloquially remembered as “Rinkagate” – after one memorable detail of the incident. The would-be assassin failed to kill Norman Scott, the male model, and instead shot his dog, Rinka. When Mr Thorpe was defeated in his bid for re-election to parliament, he found himself facing a satirist running for the “Dog-Lovers’ party”. Even if he had improbably won re-election, he was finished as a politician. Nobody would ever take him seriously again.
But there are politicians who have faced appallingly embarrassing sexual scandals and survived. Bill Clinton is their patron saint. Remarkably, he managed to emerge from the Lewinsky affair with his job and his popularity largely intact. He left office with 65 per cent approval ratings.
Mr Clinton appeared to break many of the rules for surviving a scandal. He lied and he provoked plenty of sniggers, with his lawyerly reinterpretations of words such as “is” and “sexual relations”.
The “comeback kid” stayed in office because congressional Democrats rallied round him in the impeachment hearings. But he survived politically because – despite all the excruciating details – he never totally lost his dignity. By the end it was his prosecutors and persecutors – with their monotonal, prurient questions – who came to seem rather odder than the president himself.
Mr Clinton’s survival also owed something to the fact that his sin was not completely at odds with his public image – so the gap between the public and the private Clinton was not too ludicrous to handle. Politicians are often unusual people who have to pretend to be regular guys. When the gap between image and reality becomes too glaring, they begin to look ridiculous and political death follows. Senator Larry Craig is just the latest to learn this bitter lesson.
<FONT color=#003399>gideon.rachman@ft.com</FONT>
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