[i43_politics_morality]求互改，求指教

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43. to be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards.

Everyday’s political news abounds with such information as politicians pandering forvotes, waffling on tough issues, their sex scandals, extramarital affairs or illegitimated children. The public on the whole hereby tend to hold a negative attitude toward them and show intense concern and stress on public officials’moral character. But people then may exaggeratedly or even wrongly concludethat morality play an indispensable and significant role in the exercise of political power.

First ofall, it is too harsh a requirement for politicians to take both a political  position and a moral position. Morality, by definition, is ground rules for asociety that almost everyone in the society agrees on. Namely, a moral proposition is only really moral if at least 90% of people in the society are in favor of it. However, a political leader intends to appeal to a particularconstituency, which, in democracy, means that any percentage more than 50%, for instance, 51%, is enough. In consequence, an idea or behavior which is favorable and supported in the political realm may hardly satisfy all thesocial moral expectation and it would be less effective and almost impossible in politics if political leaders endeavor to satisfy all the members insociety.

Meanwhile,the moral quality and judgment are in nature personal and private thing, which unfortunately be over- expanded and exaggerated on public affairs, especially when facing celebrities like politicians. Mass media like newspapers, in order to catch readers’ eyes, usually pay too much attention on public officials’off-work life such as their marriage life and then make moral judgment, which notwithstandinghave nothing to do with their works. So a wall between private and public is essential for everyone, of course including public officials. It is not merelya problem of morality and politics, but also a protection to privacy.

What’smore, politicians’ moral character people always concerning are not necessarilyaffects their job performance. Bill Clinton, for example, still maintained extraordinarily high approval ratings for the job he was doing as President,even though was charged by the improper sex relationship with Monica Lewinsky.You may doubt that this is not exactly private immoral behavior, after all,Lewinsky was a White House intern, but we can still draw the same conclusion when make even a cursory review of other past Presidents’ private life andtheir political performance. Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy all had extramarital affairs. Thomas Jefferson, many believe, fathered children by one of his slaves. But all these can never erase the incredibly significant contributions they have made to the development of American society. That is why I appeal for an independent evaluation on the politicians.


Over stress on politicians’ morality, which I have to point out at last, will in turn leadto an illusion of strong morals. As we know, in order to please voters who exceedingly value moral quality and to capture the vote, politicians willpossibly pretend to exemplify the morals and present a pleasing and ethicfacade. But just turn on the TV, you can easily get the truth if carefully comparing the difference between what and how they actually did, and the previous resolutions, promises, fiery and passionate speeches they had made.Therefore, evaluating a politician mostly by his morality and ethics sometimes seems too naïve and superficial.

Based onthe above analysis, we can conclude safely that exaggeration of morality inpolitical realm is not reasonable. But it does not mean that politics can exist without morality; otherwise, defalcations and corruptions may easily come intobeing if a political leader does not have the fundamental moral character to distinguish the right from the wrong. What really and urgently we need to do isto avoid confounding public officials’ political position with moral positions,and set up separate evaluation standard, in public and in private, in job performance and in social life, in special political occasions and in everyday actions, so that to judge a public official objectively, impartially and rationally.