What Changed From Clinton to Spitzer?

Conservative Reader makes several good points last night, along the lines of:

He said, it seems as time goes on, we are becoming more and more intolerant of bad behavior. Not that it should be okay to engage in illicit sexual activity, but there was a time when bad behavior on the part of politicians was treated with more of a “boys will be boys” kind of mentality. His question to me today was, “What’s changed since Bill Clinton?”, alluding to the fact that Clinton brazenly behaved very badly and suffered little consequence.

I doubt that’s the focus.

I do agree, that there are some changes since Clinton… at least to some degree. Here’s the key, though; Our collective willingness to put up with pols and their excesses has gone down rather dramatically since the 24 hour news cycle… and blogs with it… came to town. Crimes against us are harder to ignore when they’re we’re being reminded of them for days on end after they happen. Your friend is quite correct in that of itself what Spitzer did, would probably not have gotten noticed in let’s say 1968.  If you’ll recall, that’s the year, Teddy Kennedy took a left off the bridge.  think about it.  Can you imagine Teddy Kennedy surviving the onslaught of the 24-hour news cycle after the death of Mary Jo Kopechne?  I certainly can’t.

I think also that there is a movement… ehhh..  An undercurrent, if you will, which is more socially conservative.  Keep in mind that in the 60s it was all the rage to be anti-establishment.  Nowadays such people are the establishment.

It is that combo, I think which really sets us apart from the earlier times and situations your friend mentions.

There’;s this, too; I suspect and suppose that some of the anger Spitzer is feeling just now from the voters is a betrayal. Bill Clinton didn’t betray quite so many people. Look at all the history of his misdeeds that was laid out before he attained the White House. People knew when they elected him he was a slime-ball. Not so much Spitzer, whose spit and polish image fools a great many people it should not have.

I also think part of this anger is Democrats putting pressure on him to disappear, given the rather inconvenient timing of this revelation. As I said recently, the criminal aspect of this is going to come up in the news again just before the general election, in the form of a nifty little reminder of what Democrats considered a hero.

(Edit: Bit, replaced link)