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I also disagree with plonkee that marital fidelity and business fidelity are two different things. I think the personal relationships are the first place a person like this starts acting out because they know they will very likely get away with it; there are fewer laws governing how one must treat one’s relatives than there are governing how one must behave in a business transaction. (This is likely one of the reasons Westerners look askance at other cultures which have strict rules about marriage and family behavior: we have no equivalent institution since Christianity lost most of its teeth in the West.) I think that it’s when a person gets away with mistreating their family that they move on to mistreating other people. Had Spitzer never been caught buying a hooker, who knows what else he might have gotten up to. If his wife doesn’t make a further example of him by dumping him on his butt in the street, he might try it anyway. Not because she made him do it by letting him get away with infidelity, but because people like that think they’ve gotten away with something if they haven’t gotten the worst punishment possible.

(And I wonder if he would even consider it a punishment to be dumped by his wife. Obviously he doesn’t care about her or he wouldn’t have been off buying hookers.)

The comments on the prostitute’s MySpace page were unreal (it’s linked from her Wikipedia page, which is linked from Spitzer’s)–all positive comments, which goes without saying on MySpace, but then they acted like *she* was the one put out of joint and kept telling *her* to keep her chin up, and most of them seemed more interested in her music career than anything. Bizarre.

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@Retired Syd: Spitzer definitely set himself up – just like Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, etc. You can’t throw fire and brimstone at people and then expect them to be merciful when you fall. Spitzer was a total hypocrite, and now – in retrospect – clearly somewhat off his rocker to make idiotic choices like that. And I’m glad you caught my dig about the president – I was thinking of a specific president, whom I usually refer to as the “WPE.”

@Curmudgeon: True. One of the defining characteristics of millionaires in The Millionaire Next Door is “only married once.” Keeping your promises means not defaulting on debts, running a strong business, etc. – so you’re right, I could have gone that way.

I guess I’ve always looked at divorce this way: if you get to the point where you are married with kids, you need to be ready to wreck your whole life (financially and otherwise) to get divorced. That means there had better be a good, good reason and not just “we don’t like the same TV shows.” Of course abuse would fall in the “good, good reason” category – I don’t mean people aren’t in situations where they should consider it – but marriage is the new “going steady,” – a vague committment easily broken.

@Elizabeth, @First-time Poster: I break promises all the time – “I’ll take the trash out before I go to sleep,” for example. There is a distinction. I always point out to people that I am a massive and frequent lawbreaker: I jaywalk, I go 5 miles above the speed limit, etc. It is unreasonable and rare to keep all of your promises, but it’s probably a good thing to aspire to – I do. I may not get there (ever) but I’d like to see even marginal improvements in our political leaders. I don’t think asking a sitting governor to keep his promise to his wife, the state, etc. by not transporting a woman across state lines for the purpose of prostitution is too much to ask. Would I be as mad at Spitzer if he got caught speeding? No, but then again, would I be mad at a schoolteacher who repeatedly taught my kids that George Washington’s name was Fred Washington? Yes, because I expect teachers to know their stuff – I expect the people who are charged with upholding our laws (many of whom are lawyers, to boot) to do a better job. It’s all relative, but moral relativism is a slippery slope. If you tell me 10 times you’ll call me back on an important matter, then yeah, I would be suspicious of you the next time I need a call and you tell me you’ll call me back. It’s a small thing, but after a while it matters…

This is not to excuse the politicians you name, all of whom have gone way beyond a few well-meant white lies, but I guess I think the statement, “anybody who can’t keep a promise is suspect in my eyes,” would make you suspicious of a heck of a lot of people.