David Petraeus is not the first man in power to cheat on his
wife. For hundreds of years, we have seen Presidents and government officials
alike have affair after affair. What is different now, however, is that these
scandals get mass amounts of news coverage. Government officials caught in the
immoral act of cheating feel they need to resign in order to weather the news
storm that occurs from the scandal. As we can see through the current David
Petraeus scandal, what used to be an issue between a husband and wife has now
become an issue between husband, wife, the media and the public.
Since when did cheating on your wife require a press
conference, front-page headlines and ultimately a resignation from public
office? JFK cheated on Jackie multiple times but we never got a press
conference regarding it. Clinton was President during one of the most
prosperous economic times our country has seen, all while he was engaging in
plenty of “extracurricular activities.” David Petraeus shouldn’t have resigned
from his position as CIA director because of his affair but should only have
resigned if he did something wrong in the capacity of his job.
What is interesting though is that David Petraeus did absolutely
nothing wrong as CIA director. He did not pass on classified information, he was
upfront about his affair when asked and he hasn’t had any failures within his
position that would put this country in danger. If anything, he has been one of
the most successful CIA directors that this country has seen, with the wisdom
of 10+ years of combat experience to back up his decisions. Yet when the public
found out he cheated on his wife, he quickly resigned and all of his
credentials go out the window.
This isn’t the first time we have lost a good leader because
of cheating. Two of the biggest sex scandals we saw in the past few years were
from Elliot Spitzer (who got caught up participating in a high-priced
prostitution ring) and Anthony Weiner (who sent lewd photos to some of his
female Twitter followers). While Anthony Weiner tried to blame his
indiscretions on his Twitter account being hacked and Elliot Spitzer just flat
out denied his involvement with high priced prostitute until federal
wiretapping proved otherwise, David Petraeus admitted to his indiscretions
right away. These men did not resign because they were failing in their jobs,
but instead because they were failing in their marriages. While infidelity is
immoral and wrong, it isn’t something that should force you to resign from your
position in public office. If a regular person wouldn’t resign from their job
because of an affair, a government official shouldn’t either.
Another reason why Petraeus shouldn’t have resigned is
because of how quickly the drama of the affair has come and gone. While it
originally was splashed across the headlines on all major news sources, it has
now died down to a small sidebar story on the websites and is nearly impossible
to find in the hard copies of the newspaper. It wasn’t worth it for Petraeus to
resign from position in the CIA just because he had one long week of scandalous,
front-page news coverage.
Hopefully Petraeus will take his time off to work on the
issues he has in his marriage. It is clear that he and his wife have some
issues to either work out or dissolve completely. This scandal should be
something that is only a scandal between him and his wife (and possibly Paula
Broadwell- she seems very possessive of Petraeus). After all, we have seen
plenty of government officials have affairs and not acknowledge them to the
public, and they continued to do their job just fine. I don’t know at what
point the public decided that they should stick their nose in everyone’s
business, but it is time we stop. Lets leave these government officials to do
their job, and stop worrying about their extracurriculars.
I think it would be interesting to look at politicians' affairs and what negative effects their publicity had on the career of the politician. As you talked about above, General Petraus' affair will have huge impacts on his career. Maybe this is because of the nature of his job, as head of our intelligence bureau, or maybe it's because of the nature of the affair. We can't really know with 100% certainty. A converse example is that of L.A.'s Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. He had an affair but is still very well regarded and liked by his constituents. He is widely considered an up-and-comer in the Democratic party and even served as DNC Convention Chairman this year. It doesn't seem as though his affair has had long-lasting negative effects on his political career. Is this an anomaly or are there other factors that determine whether or not someone's career will be destroyed as a result of an extramarital affair?
ReplyDeleteI was very bothered by Petraeus' resignation. Mostly because, like you said, it really isn't any of our business if he is cheating on his wife. Especially if his affair is not impairing his job in any way. In my opinion his performance did not suffer from cheating on his wife. While morally I think his actions were very wrong, who am I to judge him? Often times I think the public and media feel it is there job to judge political officials or celebrities, and I completely disagree with this. By taking on a public office, you are in some ways placing yourself on a pedestal to be scrutinized, but I think that scrutiny should pertain to ones job rather than personal matters.
ReplyDeleteActually, he resigned because he admitted to committing a crime. In the military, they don't follow Constitutional law per-se. They follow a uniformed code of military justice, which is almost designed for you to fail. They decide what's a crime and what's not. As soon as you fall on questionable ground, you're done. For high level military officials, it's actually deemed a crime to have an extra-marital affair. They also found some unclassified information on her email, that General Petraeus had apparently given her. It wasn't anything important, but it was information that citizens are not privy to. It raised questions of what else he had disclosed to her and ultimately resulted in the very appropriate response of Petraeus being terminated as a government employee.
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting that the military has its own definition of crime, and I'm sure it benefits our country. We want our important figures, especially the leader of the CIA, to be people we trust. If they are betraying the people closest to them, how do we know that they have our best interests at heart? Stepping down from one's job is definitely a strict punishment for cheating, but for this particular position of control, I think Kevin makes a compelling argument.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with this post. I recently had a debate over this with my roommate and I couldn't understand why it has become commonplace for an elected official to have to resign even though he is the most qualified for the job and did nothing wrong to put his job at risk. Personally, I want the most qualified and experienced person to be the leader of the CIA. As you said, he did nothing wrong to jeopardize his job and; therefore, should not be punished. What occurred was a terrible event between him and his wife, not him, his wife, and the whole world. We should not be sticking our noses so far into everyone’s personal business. Hopefully everything with work out for the best between Petraeus and his wife, but I do not believe that he should have had to resign from his job.
ReplyDeleteI'm more concerned with the hypocrisy by which the public chastises these politically important figures, even after they have done much good for our communities, counties, and humanity in general. If the reason why someone needs to resign from their job/ position is because of extra marital affairs of some other affair reserved for the household, then we would need to see a lot more job openings, including at other top positions, the County clerk, and even at the local In-N-Out. People need to turn off their TV sets and not click on the “Newflash” headline about the next government official that had an affair, and hopefully this will send the media a message that we don’t want to hear this. We have lost to many good and qualified people already.
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