private scandal

What kind of private scandal will sink a politician these days? | News.com.au Splat! Blog

What kind of private scandal will sink a politician these days?

Evan Maloney
Friday, September 26, 2008 at 08:18am


Firstly, let’s narrow down the notion of “scandal”. For today, at least, we’re not talking about a scandal that is related to the economic mismanagement of the nation (which was either the reason or the excuse for Gough’s dismissal), we’re not talking about professional misconduct (which saw Nixon finally steer America’s collective boot up his own butt). What we are looking at here is the kinds of private scandals that politicians get caught up in, like Rudd’s drunken strip-joint adventures or Clinton’s lateral thinking on the issues of cigar placement.

Today we’ve got Malcolm Turnbull confessing to having smoked dope. Once upon a time - probably the time when Malcolm was attempting to live the age of Aquarius for one night with a hot female university student by toking on a spliff - once upon as time a politician would have lost his job if he confessed to smoking dope. Clinton, a man who had the gravitational pull of a Jovian planet when it came to attracting personal scandals, was the first big politician to confess to dope smoking, although the drug never seemed to make it all the way down his throat.

These days it’s almost par-for-the-course a politician to confess to an experimental side to his his or her character in his or her youth, and it seems to more anally-retentive-colourless-dorkish a politician is the more likely they are to make a confession to a wild side in youth.

And meanwhile the real private scandals are pretty much underscored. Sarah Palin has been filmed having some kind of exorcism performed by a religious nutter who asks God to give the beauty-queen and foreign policy heavy-weight a lot more money and to protect her from witchcraft, and the American public might still be thinking about giving her the keys to the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal. There was a quote in the newspaper today when Kissinger was giving Palin a heads-up on the Georgia dispute and this was the response: “Good, good,’’ Ms. Palin said. “And you’ll give me more insight on that, also, huh? Good.”

Do you think she was actually listening to a word?

Anyway, strip joints, dope, even smoking cigar performances aren’t enough to get a politician removed from his or her job these days, and it’s probably a good thing, I’m sure that a toke on a joint in 1972 isn’t an indication that a person cannot do the top job. I’m skeptical Turnbull’s lips even met with the end of a joint in his life. My guess is that his political advisers have advised him to confess to smoking dope to trying and put a few creases of humanity on the starched white cloth of his public character. “People will think better of you if you show some human foible,” they might have said. “And the under-thirties might see you as a warmer and more likable man because they’re all smoking like Mt Vesuvius out there.”

Could it be that smoking dope confessions have gone from potentially ruining a career to potentially enhacing one’s chances of election? Could Amy Winehouse or Pete Doherty be the leaders of the future?

What scandals from politicians private lives can sink them now?