“The private lives of public people may be considered private only so long as they don’t trade on them to advance their public careers. If an individual presents himself to the public for election as a happily married father of three, then he has made his weekend with a secretary or his visit to a prostitute of either sex a matter of public interest. If he makes a point of drinking milk in public, then the public will want to know whenever he gets drunk. If he buys his suits at Wal-Mart for the cameras, then proceeds to holiday on rich men’s yachts, he will be photographed with telephoto lenses. But if he were to present himself to the public for election as a believer in specific policies, he might well be judged on those … He would probably even be able to fall down drunk in public from time to time without anyone much caring so long as the interests of the citizenry were looked after.””
The above excerpt comes from a book called The Doubter’s Companion
by John Ralston Saul. He is a Canadian author and essayist, as well as the current President of International PEN, a worldwide association of writers. Saul is known to comment frequently on the nature of citizenship and the public good.
Seeing how Canadians will be heading to the polls tomorrow to elect a new Prime Minister, I thought it was particularly apt to consider the private lives of public servants. Personally, I think Saul may be a little too idealistic. Even if a politician chooses to keep his or her family out of public discussion, scandals arise not infrequently and they suddenly become a matter of public scrutiny.
Perhaps one of the more prominent examples of this is former United States President Bill Clinton. You could argue that someone like Hillary Clinton didn’t really rise to the forefront of the media until Bill’s multiple transgressions hit the front pages of newspapers across the country and around the world. Their personal relationship became a matter of public interest.
And that’s part and parcel of taking public office, just as it becomes an inherent part of becoming a celebrity. If you don’t like prying eyes, don’t put yourself on the stage, right?
Hillary Clinton was a very active, intelligent and integral part of the Clinton Presidency a long time before his personal transgressions. She was in fact compared to Eleanor Roosevelt in status as a First Lady.
Personal information and personal lives are unfortunately part of the being a public figure. You need to be aware of that when you run.
She may have been active and intelligent, but I don’t think she quite hit the public eye at that level until Bill had his “issues.”
I’ll have to disagree on that as she was active right at the beginning of Bill’s first term, including her Clinton Health Plan. If you read her bio on Wikipedia, it will back up me up on her prominence in the Presidency from the start. We as Americans knew Hillary a long time before Monica.