"Political Hypocrisy" Isn't Really a Redundant Expression

We aren’t very consistent in our view, I’m afraid. Since we learn what our views are in different settings and under the influence of different values, we are always trying to reconcile one view we hold with another. It isn’t like going out looking for your three dogs who have escaped and are out wandering around the neighborhood. It’s more like this. There is a court somewhere which as part of its duties, declares various dogs somewhere in your state to be “yours.” You have to find out that they are “yours,” find out where they are, go find them, and bring them back to your yard where, just recently, they belong. If this court is active, which it is during the times of our rapid intellectual growth or change (not the same things), you will be out trieving dogs[1] most of the time and most of the dogs that are “yours” will not be in your yard. Ever. ************************************************************************************************************************************************************ That is the fundamental reason we are inconsistent. Of course, there are others. Even people who pride themselves on ideological consistency are not consistent, although their problems can ordinarily be solved by rapidly evolving definitions of the key terms. ******************************************************************************************************************************************************* But my principal interest today is in the common practice of referring to nearly any inconsistency as “hypocrisy.” What does that really mean? The Greek antecedents are plain and back as far as hypocrites = stage actor, they are understandable. They are puzzling if you try to go further back than that. For most of the centuries of its use in English, it has meant someone who pretends to be good and admirable who actually is not. I think the most prominent use of it today displays a kind of moral laziness and I cite the well-known Lord Finkle-McGraw as my authority. In Neal Stephenson’s delightful and unnerving The Diamond Age, he introduces a group called “The New Victorians.” They are a very conservative group, socially, and much respected. Now. As Lord Fink-McGraw explains in this passage, it was not always so. The case that the charge of hypocrisy is mostly moral laziness comes in the passage where the early days of the New Victorians are described. It was way back at the end of the 20th Century. Think back. Moral values had fallen to such a level that no one was willing to take a moral stand. But, as Finkle-McGraw says, “people are naturally censorious,” and some ground for criticism must be found. It was in that way that “hypocrisy” was elevated from “a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices.” ************************************************************************************************************************************************************ In this way of looking at it, the great service that the charge of hypocrisy provides is that you don’t have to have a standard yourself. Any inconsistency in the speech or in the behavior of an opponent is enough to cue “hypocrisy” as the charge of choice. That is damaging enough, giving that it elevates consistency to THE virtue and turns every public person into a piñata. But the classic response is also damaging: “That was then; this is now.”[2]****************************************************************************************************************************************************** How did we get so many hypocrites into public life at the same time? Let me count the ways. Being a member of the House of Representatives requires that you rail against the Senate for being dilatory. When you become a senator yourself, you brush off the House criticism as one that does not respect the “traditions of debate” in the Senate. Right. When you are a candidate for the presidency, you rail against the incumbent’s failure to plot a clear (or a moral—depends on which party is out of power) path. When you are the incumbent and actually have to govern, you dismiss such criticism as naïve, which, in an important way, they are. Right. The activists of the Republican and Democratic parties are well out in the tail of the distribution of opinions of their parties. The Republican activists are well to the right of Republicans generally; the Democratic activists are well to the left of Democrats generally. To secure your party’s nomination, you need to satisfy the activists, who control the nomination process. To be elected, you need to satisfy the majorities within the parties, and the Independents as well. This means that you will be backing away from whatever you said in the nomination phase and under the construction we are exploring, this would be called hypocrisy. It would be turned into a moral offense and the argument the charge cues will be a “morality” argument, ten times hotter than the instrumental one and much less open to the compromises that will be required in any case. ********************************************************************************** Of course, some things actually are hypocritical. Establishing mechanisms by which purportedly anonymous sexual transactions can be prosecuted and then being caught in that mechanism yourself is more than inconsistent. It is hypocritical. Making a political career out of gay bashing, then having to confront your sexual abuse of a same sex member of your office staff is more than inconsistent. It is hypocritical. I do think, however, that we can profit from Lord Finkle-McGraw’s insight and oppose these actions because they are wrong, rather than because they are inconsistent. This may be costly, because “wrong” requires us to offer a standard of value of our own, but it is the right thing to do anyway, and refusing to do it because it is difficult is just typical Washington hypocrisy. Ooops. [1] Since they have just become yours, you can’t really re-trieve them. [2] The form used by the Nixon administration, that a given explanation was “no longer operative” really isn’t worse than the current version. It is just clumsier.