Dobel / PRIVATE LIVES

ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY

OF PUBLIC / MayOFFICIALS
1998
This article discusses the moral importance of privacy and its place in the lives of public offi-
cials. It examines the tension between the legitimate claims of citizens and overseers to scru-
tinize the private lives of public figures and the rights of officials to privacy. It argues that
these legitimate reasons break down in practice almost all barriers to scrutiny due to the
weaknesses of the limits and the incentives of American politics and the modern media. The
article explores the consequences of a world where public officials possess no private lives.
These unsavory consequences exemplify the dangers of denying any boundaries between
private and public. The article concludes that citizens need to redefine the boundaries of pri-
vate and public life and suggests standards by which citizens can judge the private lives of
public officials.

JUDGING THE PRIVATE LIVES OF

PUBLIC OFFICIALS

J. PATRICK DOBEL
University of Washington

Scandals in their private lives have destroyed the careers of many promi-
nent American public officials. In recent years, the vice president of the
United States, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, seven gover-
nors, two chairs of the House Ways and Means Committee, the House
whip, five senators, more than 30 members of the House, and the head of
the FBI have resigned under pressure because of private scandals. Four
presidential campaigns have been ruined, and three Supreme Court nomi-
nations have been withdrawn due to scrutiny of the candidates’ private
lives. In the past 20 years, 32 people were convicted of treason, and in all
but one case, the individuals committed treason for private reasons involv-
ing money, sex, or substance abuse. Discussions over private matters of
friendship, economics, family, religion, or sexual relations have intruded
into campaigns, nominations, and even deliberations over career officials

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The author would like to thank Richare Zerbe, Walt Williams, Bob Plot-
nick, and Hubert Locke for their critical comments on various aspects of this article. He owes
a special debt to the reviewers who helped clarify the argument.
ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY, Vol. 30 No. 2, May 1998 115-142
© 1998 Sage Publications, Inc.

115
116 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / May 1998

at all levels of government. The private lives of public officials have be-
come public with serious consequences for the quality of political life and
discourse. When President Clinton’s White House lawyer, Vincent Foster,
committed suicide, he left a despairing note complaining that in American
politics “ruining people is considered sport” (Apple, 1993).
Attacks on public figures’ private lives are as old as American politics.
The intensity of the modern focus on private lives, however, has occurred
for several reasons. First, the self-imposed restraint of the media to avert
their eyes from private lives of officials ended, whereas legal develop-
ments limited the libel claims that public officials could make against
malicious accusation (Sabato, 1991). Second, the decline of the political
parties has given the media more prominence as gatekeepers to office and
has made politics more person focused. Third, candidates and interest
groups exploit the new media standards and use private scandals to dis-
credit competitors and their positions. Finally, groups ranging from the
religious right to some feminists have questioned the validity of the dis-
tinction between public and private lives, thereby weakening the claims of
privacy that public officials might assert.
This article will argue the dilemma that the controversies over private
lives present arises from the clash of two legitimate moral claims. First,
individuals and public officials, in particular, have legitimate claims to
privacy. Second, principals and citizens have strong rights to information
about the persons who occupy public office. This conflict generates some
broad guidelines but leaves no clear and absolute demarcations between
public and private lives. This lack of definitive closure is aggravated
because modern politics and media coverage erode the privacy of public
officials. The article concludes with standards balancing a respect for pri-
vacy with legitimate scrutiny by which citizens and principals should
1
evaluate the private lives of public officials.

PRIVACY CLAIMS OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS

Rights to privacy involve the capacity to protect realms of one’s life

from scrutiny or control by others. Privacy protects a range of domains
covering one’s body, thoughts, emotions, religion, relations of intimacy
and friendship, property rights, or personal associations. Privacy rights
also extend to strong moral expectations about how private information
will be used or weighed when it is obtained. For instance, one may not be
able to control outside knowledge about his or her religion or intimate life,
 Dobel / PRIVATE LIVES OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS 117

but people have the right to ask that the information not be considered in
certain judgments about them, much as a jury might be instructed to dis-
count certain information in its verdict. The actual content of privacy
rights are negotiated within a society and can change over time as privacy
claims are accommodated to other moral norms. Privacy is achieved
through internalized social practices that lead people to respect others’
privacy, such as when a person refuses to eavesdrop on a conversation,
averts his or her eyes when passing an open window, or discounts private
facts and focuses on competence in job decisions (Reiman, 1976).
Strong moral foundations ground the rights to privacy. First, they arise
from privacy’s intimate connection to personal autonomy and freedom.
Privacy underlies the capacity to take possession of one’s own life by
granting persons the capacity to stand back from the demands of public
life, peer pressure, or authority. People can reflect in solitude or with
friends or advisors to make sense of, reject, reshape, or accept the many
internalized dimensions of selfhood. Claims to protect one’s body from
involuntary intrusions form a foundation, but these protective claims
move quickly to encompass attributes of mind and spirit, such as thoughts,
emotions, religious beliefs, or intimacy. Privacy provides an antidote to
the incursions of socialized power into one’s psyche and physical world
(Rubenfeld, 1989).
Privacy gains greater moral worth from how it supports human rela-
tionships. Relations of intimacy and friendship need privacy to flourish.
The exclusionary and protective nature of the private realm can encourage
the risk taking and revelations through which intimacy and trust grow. Pri-
vacy abets the growth of common and shared experiences that become
foundations for reference and trust among human beings. Under the rubric
of private relations, individuals can legitimately, with no moral harm, pre-
fer some to others, such as family, friends, colleagues, or coreligionists
(Gerstein, 1978; Nagel, 1978). Privacy encourages cooperation and trust
within different types of relationships, ranging from personal and family
2
affiliations to clubs, economic partnerships, or religion. This enables the
individual to withhold or reveal the self to people in different ways and to
sustain a rich personal life, so that people can develop different types of
relations with different individuals and not have all relations reduced to
one transparent level (Rachels, 1975). Private relations allow a communal
sense to grow and to nourish many forms of social practice and association
3
(Lippke, 1989; Schoeman, 1992).
Privacy also contributes to critical judgment and free reflection. Indi-
viduals cannot judge and think with honest clarity when they must judge
118 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / May 1998

in the public eye and under the scrutiny of others who possess authority,
power, and influence over them (Benn, 1975). Privacy encourages persons
to give and receive advice with honesty and care. Privacy also contributes
to creativity and innovation in life. Withdrawal from conventional
demands and scrutiny can provide the psychological or social freedom
from which to challenge accepted wisdom or find unique insight. All these
aspects counterpoise the world of Winston Smith in George Orwell’s
(1947) 1984, where every action is monitored by Big Brother. The antithe-
sis of privacy is slavery, where a person cannot have a private life or rela-
tions of intimacy or control over one’s body or creations (Patterson, 1982).
The right to privacy plays out as a complex moral and social practice. It
should not, however, be elevated to an irrefutable and opaque right.
Because claims of privacy can hide or exclude, they can be abused and can
hide harm or oppression. For instance, the privacy of family can protect
the rights of a spouse to abuse, or the private suffering of a cancer patient
hides that fact that the cancer was caused by the dumping of toxic wastes
by a private company. Any claim of privacy can be legitimately chal-
lenged by other moral claims and be renegotiated on those bases.
The moral realm of privacy has particular cogency for public officials.
Privacy provides the opportunity for individuals to reflect on actions and
practices and to recover from the physical and psychological demands of
public office. Private lives enable people to keep intimate relations alive
and meet obligations to family, friends, and partners that can wilt and be
neglected because of the demands of official life. Energy, insight, endur-
ance, and capacity for innovation and independent judgment for public
officials flow from the resilience and richness of their private lives. Their
private lives can support or limit the public obligations and provide other
sources of reference beyond interest groups and power (Dobel, 1992).
Democratic life can drive officials to make judgments on the basis of
short-term calculation goaded by public opinion. Privacy carves out a
realm for intimacy, reflection, grace, or prayer to restore persons and
anchor their moral lives. Strong private lives provide the moral resources
for officials to make judgments that move beyond public opinion but still
hold them accountable.
Contrary to some feminist commentary, privacy in public life has par-
4
ticular moral urgency for women and minorities. Women and minorities
often enter the public realm as outsiders, and social mores place stricter
limits on their acceptable behavior. Social myths that sustained their out-
sider status and limited their access to power often use claims about the
private place or insufficiencies of women and minorities. For women, in
 Dobel / PRIVATE LIVES OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS 119

particular, because of their traditional association with the private realm,

entering public life entails a number of risks. They can be accused, in the
way men seldom are, of abandoning their private obligations for public
ones. Additionally, the sexual and economic limits regarding acceptable
behavior for women are drawn more rigidly and narrowly. Violations of
these strict codes can be and have been used to subvert women’s credibil-
ity in public life. Women cannot rely on patterns of acceptance or rituals of
public excuse or forgiveness that would enable them to escape public cen-
sure and delegitimation in the way men might to handle accusations of pri-
5
vate impropriety. Even as these mores change, women and minority pub-
lic officials need the protections of privacy to limit the depredations on
their legitimacy that can occur by exploiting traditional roles, images, and
limitations (Brown, 1988; Elshtain, 1981).6

OFFICE AND RELEVANCE

All individuals start with a strong prima facie claim to privacy that lim-
its the ability of people to pry into their lives. The dilemma arises from the
legitimate moral rights of principals (and citizens acting as principals) to
evaluate the persons to whom they delegate power, responsibility, and
authority. Principals have a moral responsibility as citizens, overseers, or
superiors to ensure that the persons to whom they give career, appointed,
or elected office have the competence to do the job. As individuals who
will be subject to their actions, principals have an additional moral interest
in ensuring that officials will not abuse their power. The actual range of
areas of which principals have a right to know and how they should weigh
information depends on the structure of the office. Public office involves
what Michael Walzer calls separation, in which one realm has its own
moral logic and demands that are not necessarily continuous with,
although they may be grounded in, the rest of one’s moral life (Nagel,
1978; Walzer, 1983). In this sense, the domains of private life would cover
the areas of life outside of competencies needed for the office and gener-
ally cover most events prior to the taking of office, such as private eco-
nomic relations, religious affiliations, friendships, familial and intimate
relations, recreation, sexual life, gift giving, personal pleasures and hob-
bies, thoughts, secrets, and even personal prejudices and beliefs.
In this tension between two moral claims, the rights of privacy suggest
that people should be judged only on the basis of what is relevant to their
performance. Any legitimate scrutiny of private lives should be linked to
120 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / May 1998

the relevance of the private considerations to the competent performance

of official duties (Lichtenberg, 1990). At first blush, this narrows the scru-
tiny of private life. It should mean pieces of information, such as scandals
in private life where personal conduct violates accepted mores but which
does affect the ability to perform in office, should be ignored or dis-
counted. The power of the relevance standard to exclude or discount pri-
vate information depends on the clarity of boundaries around an office, the
competencies needed, a notion of integrity, and the idea that humans are
not seamless creatures.
The very idea of role or office depends on people’s capacity to disci-
pline themselves and demarcate their private and public lives. Public
office is bound by law, standards, and expectations of impartial, fair, and
competent action. To live such a role requires personal integrity, which
means that persons can live up to promises they make and can balance
commitments to different roles in their lives that often create tensions
7
within the self. It is a fundamental expectation of office that individuals
live up to promises and limit private considerations in performance
(Dobel, 1990a). For instance, officials should be capable of putting aside
personal hardship, such as marital problems, family pain, or just plain bad
days, on their jobs. Officials are expected to overcome personal prejudice
or dislikes in their judgments. It can be a mark of character and honor
when a person overcomes personal travail or prejudice to fulfill his or her
8
responsibilities. Public integrity sustains this capacity for separation and
helps constrain political conflict within an institutional framework. Integ-
rity enables individuals to differ without reducing conflict to vendetta, yet
permitting civil disagreement without poisoning all human relations
(Dobel, 1990a, 1990b; March & Olsen, 1988).
The moral claim to focus on performance is underlined by the empiri-
cal fact that private rectitude does not guarantee public honor or effective-
ness, nor does private moral stumbling indicate public moral insuffi-
ciency. Henry Adams (1918, pp. 128-167) remarked ruefully that when
his father, Charles Frances Adams, the American ambassador to England,
fought to keep England from aiding the Confederacy during the Civil War,
all the men whom Adams most respected as private individuals, such as
Gladstone and Lord Russell, dissembled and supported the Confederacy.
However, the individuals whom Adams did not respect as private indi-
viduals, such as Palmerston, proved to be reliable allies in keeping Eng-
land from supporting the Confederacy (Dobel, 1988). When he was Secre-
tary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton paid extortion money to the
husband of a woman to carry on an affair with her. Yet when the husband
 Dobel / PRIVATE LIVES OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS 121

asked for a government position, Hamilton refused because the man was
not competent to serve office. He revealed the entire sordid affair and
risked public humiliation over private actions rather than sacrifice public
honor (Ross, 1988, pp. 20-29; Rossiter, 1964, pp. 28-30).
The structure of public office, then, suggests the following legitimate
concerns for principals: accountability, delegation, honesty and promise
keeping, coercion and power over others, use of public resources, and
symbolic and ritual responsibilities. Morally, public officials derive their
authority from the claim to act on behalf of citizens (French, 1983, pp. 1-
45; Nagel, 1978). Citizens’ consent and obedience authorize their actions
and ground their legitimacy. Citizens finance their office. Public officials
act on behalf of laws that carry the full coercive control of the state behind
them. In theory, public officials are accountable to all citizens, and all citi-
zens are principals who have the right to acquire relevant knowledge about
the officials’ public performance, most clearly in elections where citizens
9
act directly as principals to elect and delegate.
The rights of citizens to acquire relevant information about public offi-
cials, however, are limited by delegation. Legal and moral delegations
remove the right to scrutinize lives from the general citizenry and place it
in hands of institutional principals (Burke, 1986). This delegation respects
privacy because it limits the number of people who have the moral warrant
to intrude into the privacy of officials. This changes, however, as individu-
als move to higher levels of responsibility and power. The higher the level
of responsibility, the more effective power and discretion an official has,
the more legitimate broad public scrutiny will be. Usually this implies that
career officials have the most protections, appointed officials less, and
elected legislators and executives the fewest privacy claims.
In this light, the moral structure of office can best be seen as obligations
10
held together by a web of promises and oaths. When persons take on pub-
lic responsibilities, they promise to abide by the standards, laws, rules, and
procedures that constitute and bound their positions. They pledge a good-
faith effort to perform conscientiously the tasks of their position and act
with the competence required by office. Personal honesty in making
promises and being accountable is basic to their legitimacy. Additionally,
officials control public resources that should be used with efficiency and
care. Often they stand at the intersections of wealth and creation and face
temptations to use government power and resources for personal gain. In
addition, some officials exercise considerable coercive power over the
lives of citizens, which can be abused to harm citizens (Kipnis, 1976).
Most official positions entail discretion. As power and responsibility
122 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / May 1998

increase, discretion also increases. This discretion brings constant pres-

sure from the morally complex and troubling decisions that face public
officials. The exercise of coercion over time or the decision to use means
not available in private life intensely strains the moral capacities of indi-
viduals (Dobel, 1988, 1992; Walzer, 1973; Williams, 1978). Tragic
choices, dirty hands, morally problematic outcomes or means, and trade-
offs among good outcomes pervade government and can erode the moral
commitments of officials (French, 1983, pp. 243-248; Hampshire, 1978a;
Nagel, 1978). Individuals implicitly promise to resist these temptations
and not abuse their office.
Finally, many positions carry a symbolic and ritual dimension. Offi-
cials may perform public rituals that help legitimize, reassure, and provide
access to citizens. Often they invoke ritual and rhetoric, and represent the
aspirations of a people or program. Ceremonial tasks and presence per-
vade the life of higher level public officials. Trust in government and pro-
grams is earned by individuals acting in these capacities, as well as by
institutional effectiveness (Edelman, 1985, 1988).
In sum, public responsibilities demand individuals who are honest,
accountable, and competent, possess integrity and self-discipline to keep
promises and resist temptations, are able to exercise judgment under com-
plex and difficult circumstances, and have the imagination and skill to
exercise the symbolic dimensions of the office. These characteristics are
notoriously difficult to assess. Furthermore, principals must often judge
prospectively before individuals take office. Integrity and judgment, how-
ever, as well as competence are embodied in and revealed through habits
of decision and learning formed over time and revised in light of experi-
ence and deliberation. They reside in the person in a unique and essential
way and cannot be reduced to formulaic rationality (Hampshire, 1978b;
Steinberger, 1993). The fact that judgment, integrity, and competence can-
not be rationalized and are tied to contexts means principals should focus
on persons’ performance in office. Work experience presents the best test-
ing ground where the judgments and quality of character reveal them-
selves and should be the focus of assessments of suitability for office.
The complexity of public office, however, suggests that beyond minis-
terial jobs and very tightly controlled technical positions, there will be no
very clear or easy ways to set a priori boundaries around private areas. For
instance, two areas that are clearly private immediately become subject to
legitimate scrutiny within a performance focus. First, a person’s health
can be legitimately examined to ensure competence, safety, and balanced
judgment. At the most fundamental level, each human remains one person
 Dobel / PRIVATE LIVES OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS 123

in his or her body. Humans’ physiological underpinnings, such as

strength, disposition, stamina, and physical or mental health, influence all
realms of life (Korsgaard, 1989). Physical or mental impairment can
affect judgment and performance and are legitimate grounds for inquiry.
Alcohol or drug use can debilitate judgment and performance or make
individuals vulnerable to abuse of office. Wilbur Mills, one of the most
powerful and effective chairs of the House Ways and Means Committee,
drank so excessively that he often did not remember his actions on the
House floor, yet he served as chair for years. Senator Edward Kennedy
suffered from a drinking problem, yet served as an effective and powerful
senator. But the costs of substance abuse creep up over time. Representa-
tive Mills ruined his career and ended drunk in a Potomac basin with a
stripper named Fanny Fox (Congressional Quarterly, 1992, pp. 86-89).
Edward Kennedy crashed off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, and a
young aide, Mary Jo Kopechne, died in the drinking-related accident. His
own effectiveness and stature were later diminished by his alcohol-tinged
entanglement in rape charges against his nephew (Congressional Quar-
terly, 1992, pp. 94-96).
Second, personal economic relations can be legitimately examined.
Most conflict-of-interest laws and disclosure requirements build on three
related premises that undermine this private area. First, economic inter-
ests in one’s area of authority can corrupt judgment; second, these inter-
ests can tempt individuals, and office should not be subject to undue temp-
tations on people with heavy responsibility; and third, economic conflict
of interests can undermine the appearance of fairness and impartiality and
hurt the legitimacy of government. Additionally, these economic interests
also can affect performance if linked to family and friends. These con-
cerns permit a natural extension of legitimate scrutiny to these economic
entanglements. The actual nature of the information principals may need
in these areas will differ according to the nature of official responsibility,
but both private areas clearly fall within the legitimate concerns of princi-
pals to examine individuals and blur boundaries.
An even greater blurring occurs because past performance and public
records can have serious limits as guides to actions. Relevance tied to pub-
lic record depends on consistency of the person over time and comparabil-
ity of the positions. People, however, change, sometimes slowly, some-
times quickly. They can reach breaking points as the multiple stresses of
life press on them. Divorces, new marriages, illnesses, and other events
can change them. Many job pressures corrode personal integrity and skill
over time (Kipnis, 1976). Individuals can also move from one domain to
124 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / May 1998

another—staff to line, legislature to executive, local to state or state to

national office, private to public sector—where proven skills and success
may not transfer. Each change, especially changes where people take on
more responsibilities and higher stakes, involves confronting new chal-
lenges and pressures that past experience may not capture. For instance,
many officials who move from private to the public sector are frustrated by
the pace and difficulty of action. They can also become enmeshed in
conflict-of-interest problems when they carry private-business practice
into public office, such as when CIA Director William Casey refused to
give up stock in companies that did business with the CIA (Allison, 1980;
Woodward, 1987). In these cases, the aspects of a person’s life revealed in
private life may provide some valid information that past office failed to
reveal. The most careful study of this issue concluded that “it is often not
possible to tell in advance what private activities may be relevant to our
assessments of official performance” (Thompson, 1978, p. 141). Private
actions may “raise reasonable doubts about future performance on the job
even if an official’s past performance has been faultless” (Thompson,
1978, p. 141).
The rights of principals to have adequate information on people they
delegate, hire, appoint, or elect to public office are strong and legitimate.
These rights are bound, however, by strong privacy claims. But the need to
discover issues of integrity and competence related to the complex struc-
ture of public office does warrant looking into some private areas. The
areas of belief, intimacy, religion, and many associations still should have
strong boundaries around them because of a prima facie irrelevance to
office performance. Past performance, however, may not always be a suf-
ficient guide, and as people seek levels of high responsibility, great discre-
tion, and high symbolic import, other areas may be examined.

THE EROSION OF PRIVACY

The focus on performance and relevance should create a high threshold

for most public officials to protect their privacy. It should be clear, how-
ever, that no clear and absolute boundaries can be drawn. This lack of clar-
ity is now aggravated for many public officials, especially elected and
appointed, because the institutional incentives of American politics align
to undermine the privacy claims. Politicians have always attacked private
lives as a way to destroy opponents. As the range of private actions subject
to scrutiny widens, the incentives for politicians to use private attack in
 Dobel / PRIVATE LIVES OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS 125

lieu of political debate increases. Any peccadilloes, real or unproved,

become weapons to use against an opponent. Appointed officials, elected
officials, and even career officials can be attacked with past scandals even
after legitimate ascension to office (Ginsberg & Shefter, 1990). In a clas-
sic example, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, when he was a minor-
ity Republican member of the House of Representatives, undertook a sys-
tematic campaign to allege and uncover relatively minor economic abuses
to destroy then Speaker of the House Jim Wright. Earlier, the Democratic
Party used unproved allegations about Senator John Towers’ drinking and
womanizing to discredit his nomination as Secretary of Defense, motivat-
ing many Republicans to support Gingrich. In turn, Democrats pursued
Speaker Gingrich for his own relatively minor economic abuses of office.
Gingrich was forced to publicly apologize for his actions and was cen-
sured by the House (Barry, 1990, chapters 8, 13, 14, 23-25; Madsen &
Shafritz, 1992, pp. 122-123).
The culture wars in American politics provide a perfect framework for
attacks on private lives. Given the propensity of individuals and voters to
identify the salience of certain aspects of private life, such as sexual prac-
tices, religious belief, or marital life, with broader political and economic
issues, political leaders have a strong incentive to paint others as embodi-
ments of cultural corruption. Issues related to an official’s competence are
often framed around private rather than public stances. This displaces
political consideration away from the policy issues and public integrity
(Hunter, 1991).
At the same time, many citizens legitimately seek to know and under-
stand the character of public officials, especially candidates, in more per-
sonal ways. The breakdown of the party system in the United States means
that no real political screening or disciplining mechanisms exist for candi-
dates or high-level executive officials (The Freedom Forum Media Stud-
ies Center, 1992, pp. 11-15, 30-33, 79-82). Candidates use party labels as
mechanisms to advance their own power, and politics is built around a
swirl of personal coteries vying for power (Ginsberg & Shefter, 1990).
Citizens get little reliable information about a candidate from party labels,
and party loyalty provides little buffer against personal accusations. The
quality of the person becomes much more important in the absence of an
institutional infrastructure to screen, choose, and control candidates. Pub-
lic officials present themselves as individuals with impeccable private
lives, mentioning their marital status, economic success, or religious
beliefs as proof of their integrity. Candidates attempt to influence citizens
by relying on consultants who craft careful images and structure
126 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / May 1998

campaigns around that image (Sabato, 1981). The electronic media cre-
ates the illusion of intimacy, which persuades citizens that they know a
person based on the media image (Grove, 1992; Shickel, 1985). The
power of the image enables a public official like Ronald Reagan to inspire
confidence, despite the fact individuals may disagree with him on most
issues (Postman, 1986). In this world, citizens look to private lives to
reveal the quality of the person hidden by images.
The rules in American politics have fundamentally changed and are not
likely to return to earlier reticence about private lives. Public officials will
continue to use private lives as vehicles of attack or as warrants of their
worth. Citizens will look to private lives to provide clues about the integ-
rity of individuals. The incentives of the media and press amplify both
trends. Ironically, many editors and reporters cite the standards of rele-
vance discussed in this article as their justifications for exploring every
aspect of a person’s private life. The standards of relevance, however, are
generally meaningless for most of the modern media. Alternative media
sources and communication on the Internet, fringe political publications,
and television and print tabloids ensure that a wide range of morally irrele-
vant information about private lives enters the public forum. There are
very few moments when responsible mainstream journalism can now
even judge whether a story should be pursued. The media also engages in
“feeding frenzies” that indiscriminately dig up any aspects of personal
lives and throw them to the public to judge (Barker, 1994; Sabato, 1991).
In the words of one prominent journalist, the “character issue” has become
“an excuse to cover anything we want” (CNBC interview with Kurtz,
11
June 22, 1993).
In the mid-20th century, the press adhered to informal rules that pro-
tected the private lives of public officials. Such informal rules buttressed
the public integrity of President Franklin Roosevelt by both underplaying
his own physical infirmities and concealing the family discord and uncon-
ventional marital arrangement of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt (Good-
win, 1994). On the other hand, they also covered up serious abuses, such
as the alcoholism that afflicted Wilbur Mills, Chair of the House Ways and
Means Committee, or the physical infirmities that debilitated President
John Kennedy (Reeves, 1993). The emergence of private scandals that had
clearly influenced public performance, as well as the investigative report-
ing successes of the 1970s, transformed the culture of the press and made
it far more skeptical of the private lives of public officials and far less toler-
ant of private abuses of public trust (Barker, 1994; Sabato, 1991). Given
the media’s power and resources, the capacity of public officials to
 Dobel / PRIVATE LIVES OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS 127

exclude or protect domains of privacy has been severely weakened. The

dynamics of competition, moreover, drive media coverage to the least
common denominator and eliminate any effective screening of relevant
information (Alter, 1992; The Freedom Forum Media Studies Center,
1992).
The media’s obsession with private lives encourages public voyeurism
that rebounds back to drive the media itself because such privacy-invading
stories garner readers, viewers, and profits. This demand encourages more
revelations. The production of scandal has become a profitable staple of
media entertainment (Garment, 1991). Any attempts to edit information
on the basis of relevance within the media are often neutralized and inef-
fective due to the elastic nature of standards and dynamics of competition
(Barker, 1994).
Most disturbing for any privacy claims, the media coverage can create
a circular and self-fulfilling dynamic that permits any personal issue to
destroy a public official. Any public official must be effective to have a
legitimate claim to a position, but effectiveness can be undermined by the
revelation of private actions even when the actions have no bearing on
judgment. Media-revealed actions irrelevant to governing can dominate a
public official’s life even if they are unsubstantiated. Officials will spend
inordinate amounts of time answering questions and worrying about the
issue. Their families, friends, and work life will be invaded and affected by
the inquiries. Time, energy, and effort distract from their ability to do the
job. The attacks tarnish their office and begin to taint their principal. In
fact, a media frenzy ultimately renders them ineffective. Soon the press
runs stories about the ineffectiveness. Now the individual has truly
become ineffective and has a good reason to resign. This outcome had
nothing to do with their actions and everything to do with the results of the
12
media coverage.
The consequence of this erosion of privacy is that public life in the
United States presents a case study in what happens when the effective
claims of privacy are destroyed by politicizing all aspects of personal life.
The practical elimination of all distinction between public and private
lives leads to a moral-free fire zone. Political conflict vacillates between
personal exposure and iconography. No political or rhetorical arena exists
for conflict to take place without resorting to personal attacks. When indi-
viduals are opposed or attacked, the assaults are not limited to claims
about their beliefs, competence, or performance. Political and ethical
claims mingle in a politics that aims at the moral demonization of foes, not
an indictment of competence or disagreement over policy. This undercuts
128 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / May 1998

civility and a public realm where individuals can disagree, compete, and
deliberate without having conflict poison all other personal and social
relations. It reflects a noninstitutional politics where people, not parties or
institutions, become the focus of judgment and action.
The present approach to private lives of public officials inflicts serious
harm to civic life. First, many innocent human beings are hurt as they are
pulled into public scrutiny over private lives and relations of public offi-
cials (Longman, 1990, pp. 414-415, 420-421, 431-432). Second, the qual-
ity of life permitted to public officials has declined, and this discourages
others from entering public service. Third, the focus on private lives and
scandal often detracts from serious issues and trivializes concerns over
competence and policy. Fourth, this focus hurts the public service by
denying many worthy citizens a chance to serve. This is most telling when
attacks on private lives disqualify individuals from public service on the
basis of irrelevant attributes, such as sexual orientation or private activi-
ties that do not harm others or violate the public trust. The attacks gain
strength by legitimizing and encouraging the anger and discomfort of the
people who hold moral prejudices (Thompson, 1987, pp. 123-147)).
The collapse of public and private makes the excessive scrutiny of pri-
vate lives especially perilous to women entering public office. The past
rituals and rhetoric of public life excluded or questioned women’s ability
to act in public responsibilities. These norms were reinforced by expecta-
tions that limited women to private domains and defined strong limita-
tions on acceptable behavior. “Fallen” women had few resources to regain
status and credibility. Often their very entrance into the public domain
defined them as public women, an old term of insult as well as an imputa-
tion that they neglect their private obligations. The scrutiny of their private
lives can endanger their credibility in many more areas than men face. For
instance, no one would think to attack an absent father for devoting time to
public office rather than child rearing, but a woman can be challenged as
being an absent mother who is harming her children by devoting too much
time to public obligations (Matthews, 1992; Ryan, 1990). Consequently,
the collapse of private boundaries poses particular vulnerabilities for
women in public office.
The present political and media system does not have the capacity for
self-reform, given the incentives of politics and media. This means that
many qualified and proven public officials with strong public performance
records will continue to have aspects of their private lives exposed, even
when principals have no need for the information. In this case, principals,
especially citizens and overseers, must apply the second part of the right to
 Dobel / PRIVATE LIVES OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS 129

privacy and ignore or discount these revelations as what is due to a person

when unnecessary information has come to their attention. Only by exer-
cising this strong prerogative to judge can principals fight against the
breakdown of private and public life that characterizes media coverage
and political debate.

STANDARDS OF JUDGMENT

In seeking information on officials or responding to the welter of infor-

mation from the media and political opponents, principals need a clear
approach with reasonable standards. These should address the claims of
privacy, account for the structure of public office and legitimate assess-
ment, and provide a usable basis for screening and weighing information
about private lives. I propose the following approach based on the pre-
sumption that knowledge from private realms is not necessarily relevant
to decisions about office unless other reasons intervene. This involves a
two-step judgment. First, ask if the information is relevant to assessing
performance in office. If not, information should not be sought or should
be dismissed. Second, if information is relevant, ask how it should be
13
weighed in judging a public official’s worthiness.
This approach has the following eight aspects: (a) Begin with public
performance; (b) examine health and patterns of economic interest and
advice taking; (c) distinguish private actions from abuse of power; (d)
keep the circle of scrutiny to the lowest possible number; (e) when the
record is weak or inappropriate, look to areas that can illuminate the per-
son’s integrity, honesty, and promise keeping; (f) scrutinize public per-
sona for consistency; (g) examine actions that undermine the ability to live
up the symbolic dimensions of office; and (h) place the private action in
14
the context of a person’s character over time and the alternatives in place.
First, focus on the relevant public record and past performance in
office. Public actions over time reveal if a person is hardworking, caring,
promise keeping, honest, honorable, and a competent achiever. Relevance
should push judgments to focus on the requirements of office and past per-
formance in offices. The demand for relevance structures a person’s
assessment by requiring that information answer the following questions:
Does the information relate to the skills needed for the office? Does it
demonstrate the judgments needed for the office? Were the skills and
judgments in past arenas tied to similar areas? If not, can the experience be
analogized to the type of judgments that will have to be made in the new
130 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / May 1998

office? Finally, are the pressures, temptations, scope of authority, and

stakes of judgment similar in the other arenas? To the extent that past per-
formance reflects plausibly similar skills, judgments, pressures, and
stakes, then performance in office and public record should be the overrid-
ing determinant of suitability for office.
The concentration on competence and public record should create a
high threshold on private information that must pass the following two
primary tests: (a) that insufficient information exists from public perform-
ance to judge someone, and (b) that the information is clearly relevant to
the capacity to carry out an office. These relatively narrow standards are
tied to past performance and aimed at relevant judgment, integrity, and
competence. They provide a plausible way to direct and judge examina-
tions of the lives of public officials and should protect many personal
domains from scrutiny.
Unfortunately, a private life can leak into and influence public life in
many ways, and to the extent that they do, they can be scrutinized. Private
turmoil can leak into official or public life. A hard divorce, a broken rela-
tionship, or a sickness or death in the family can distract people from their
official commitments. Individuals can become preoccupied and unable to
exercise the effort and skill demanded by their position. In 1885, after 10
years of consistent service in the United States Senate, Florida Senator
Charles W. Jones missed 2 years of Senate meetings. He had been smitten
with love for a wealthy woman and spent all his time in Michigan wooing
her (Ross, 1988, pp. 141-143). Sometimes a spiral occurs in which the
pressures of office erode the quality of one’s private life and undermine a
marriage and friendships. Losses in private life, such as divorce or eco-
nomic setbacks, can rebound back to dangerous changes in public behav-
ior. Private turmoil can cut individuals off from networks of support and
undercut the buffers against pressures and temptations. In the end, an offi-
cial can lose the ability to separate the two realms, and they intermingle
with serious consequences (Dobel, 1988).
Second, principals have the right to know about health conditions that
affect a person’s ability to live up to responsibilities. Health and substance
abuse problems can disqualify a person from office and are legitimate
objects of inquiry. They are also deniable and rectifiable. This is not a cost-
free claim. The revelation that his vice presidential candidate Senator
Thomas Eagleton had once been treated for depression threw Senator
George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign into disarray and forced
Eagleton from the ticket. On the other hand, overcoming physical disabili-
ties and addiction can be a source of strength and pride, as Governor Ann
 Dobel / PRIVATE LIVES OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS 131

Richards of Texas demonstrated. When attacked about past substance

abuse problems, Richards admitted problems with alcohol and revealed
how she conquered them. Mayor Marion Barry of Washington, DC, also
did this when he argued that overcoming his own drug problems and serv-
ing jail time represented a metaphor of redemption for the city of Wash-
ington (Brown & Ragland, 1994; Sanchez, 1994).
Similarly, private economic interests and patterns of advice and friend-
ship that may influence judgment are legitimate subjects for public scru-
tiny. Privacy claims can protect a person’s economic interests because
they are so central to making a life for oneself. However, scrutiny into the
private economic lives of public officials is warranted because most pub-
lic corruption involves economic interest issues. Economic interests can
also undermine the credibility of one’s judgment and the appearance of
fairness and can hurt the legitimacy of an institution when officials must
act on an issue affecting their private interests.
Public officials’ friends and associates or pattern of seeking advice can
provide information about the quality of their judgment. For instance, a
police officer’s association with organized crime or a hate group would be
subject to legitimate inquiry (O’Neal, 1971). Family and friends matter
when they can influence the exercise of power or profit from decisions.
Making judgments that affect one’s friends or relatives not only unduly
strains independent judgment but casts doubt on the appearance of fair
judgment. Things have improved considerably since the days when such
senators as Daniel Webster received retainers from companies for their
services (Douglas, 1992). But friends who give gifts or preference to rela-
tives, such as the company that gave a job to the ex-wife of Senator Robert
Packwood just as he was scheduled to vote on an issue important to the
company, illustrate how privacy claims break down (Packwood Report,
1995). Similarly, the wife of Senator Mark Hatfield, a senator noted for his
integrity, received a $55,000 fee for dubious personal services from a
Greek financier whose billion-dollar scheme for an African pipeline came
before Hatfield’s committee (“Hatfield Career,” 1991). The increasing
number of two-career professional couples in public life aggravates the
issue. Often one spouse will suffer as she or he must make career adjust-
ments to avoid conflict of interests (“Couples, Careers,” 1994; “The Per-
ils,” 1992). This area, as all the others, possesses ambiguity because the
connections are unpredictable but real. Suppose, as in the case of Presi-
dent Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, that an executive officer values
and respects the advice of a spouse and consults with him or her on all
issues. Suppose that this spouse goes to an astrologer for advice that
132 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / May 1998

influences the advice handed on to the executive. This very personal pat-
tern of relations could have significant bearing on public decisions and
would be a legitimate focus of scrutiny.
Third, the use of official power to satisfy some private desires or to
effect private gain is not a private action but a public crime. Any claims of
privacy depend on the assurance that protected actions do not violate other
legal or moral claims. The misuse of office for financial gain or to extort
favors violates the trust of office and conditions on which people are
granted power; it disqualifies people from public service and has no pri-
vacy protections.
The abuse of public office can be most notorious when individuals use
the power of office to extort or gratify their own personal desires. They can
lose the capacity to separate their private desires from their public actions.
Sexual relations, which because of their intimacy enjoy a prima facie pri-
vacy protection, can nonetheless provide vivid examples of abuse of pub-
lic trust. For instance, Representative Daniel B. Crane was correctly cen-
sured for having sexual relations with a 16-year-old White House page, as
was Representative Gary Studds (Congressional Quarterly, 1992, pp. 39-
41). Wayne Hayes, a powerful Committee Chair in the House of Repre-
sentatives, placed Elisabeth Ray, his mistress, on the payroll as a typist
despite the fact that she could not type or even answer the phones compe-
tently (Congressional Quarterly, 1992, pp. 47-48, 88-89; Ross, 1988, pp.
240-244). These actions violated basic norms of office and deserved expo-
sure and censure.
The capacity of private desires and interest to subvert public trust can
open some troubling areas of life to public scrutiny and judgment. Public
officials should know these distinctions and separate their public and pri-
vate lives to avoid abuses of power. One of the most consistent traits of
individuals who abuse government office for their own aims is the inabil-
ity to sever private desires from public actions (Dobel, 1984, 1992). The
Attorney General of the Reagan Administration, Edwin Meese, was cited
by government prosecutors for this inability to separate public office from
friendship or private interests when he used his stature to solicit business
for friends (F. Z. Nebeker, memorandum, September 12, 1988). Meese
demonstrated a moral blindness that could not distinguish private desires
and commitments from the obligations of a public official. The corruption
of power often subverts judgment and leads individuals to favor personal
goals over loyalty to public institutions (Dobel, 1978, 1984).
Fourth, to the extent it is legitimate to inquire into private lives, the
information should be limited to the smallest possible circle of people
 Dobel / PRIVATE LIVES OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS 133

who oversee and evaluate individuals. Although this is easier for career
officials, it places strong obligations on those who approve appointed offi-
cials to respect this limit despite political temptations to release informa-
tion. When private information comes out beyond that circle, it should be
discounted as “none of our business.”
Fifth, sometimes no public or performance record exists or is only
weak and limited. At others, individuals are moving from one domain to
another, where no clear analogy between skills and stakes exist. In these
cases, the public record alone is often not strong enough to enable princi-
pals to assess a person’s worthiness. In these cases, principals can look to
other private areas to discover the quality of promise keeping, caring,
integrity, strength of will, competence, and judgment.
Given the importance of democratic accountability, the temptations
and potential abuses of public office, and the moral structure of office, a
person’s integrity and ability to keep promises matter profoundly. If
doubts exist in these areas, it can sometimes open the controversial area of
sexual relations and fidelity. In other countries, marital infidelity is some-
times accepted, even as a point of honor, and there seems to be little evi-
dence that marital fidelity correlates with public honor and effectiveness.
Yet, when a public record is weak or troubling, individuals’fidelity to their
spouses could reflect their own basic capacities for keeping promises or
for disciplining their desires for public purpose. Infidelity, especially
durable and consistent, suggests a capacity for extended deceit to inti-
mates and friends.
Constant womanizing, moreover, because males are usually the issue,
can manifest not just problems with commitment but with women—a dis-
respect or one-dimensional obsession with them as objects of desire and
satisfaction. It suggests a capacity to discount the pain inflicted on spouses
and family by betrayal and deceit. People committed to a political order
that accords women equal respect and opportunity may be cued to deep
and disturbing attitudes toward more than half of humanity. Incessant
marital infidelity can alert citizens to the extent that politicians are more
driven by the need for power and adulation, because the womanizing and
15
obsessive ambition may reveal the same character source.
On the other hand, marriages can wither and die or be hollowed out
within public life just as they can everywhere. The death of a marriage is
no clear measure of the quality of a person. In some cases, commitment to
a dead marriage for the sake of children can manifest a strong moral char-
acter, and spouses may develop their own uneasy sexual agreements to
134 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / May 1998

keep the marriage afloat. Other times, marriages can die because public
commitment and devotion to office denied married couples time for inti-
macy and communication. These complexities suggest that despite its
potential to illuminate character, infidelity is seldom a clear or helpful
indicator of public integrity.
Sixth, if people make their private lives an issue in their public images,
they open their private lives to judgment in those areas, especially if they
had claimed their private lives were proof of their integrity. Similarly,
when a person attacks others for transgressions or proposes regulating the
private lives of citizens, his or her own adherence to such standards is open
to legitimate scrutiny. This enables citizens to judge the public hypocrisy
or the authentic capacity for truth telling and the moral consistency of a
person.
Principals may legitimately seek to discover if an official is genuine
and believes what he or she says. If an official is living with another person
or having an affair, this may be legitimate—if uncomfortable—knowl-
edge if he or she projected a different image. In the 1890s, W.C.P. Breck-
enridge, a Congress member from Kentucky, thrilled the nation with his
impassioned defenses of “chastity as the foundation, the cornerstone of
human society” (Ross, 1988, p. 133). “A pure home makes pure govern-
ment,” he argued (Ross, 1988, p. 133). These positions created a national
constituency for him. In 1884, Madeline Pollard proved that he had
seduced her at age 17 and fathered two children by her. The scandal rightly
destroyed Breckenridge’s career (Ross, 1988, pp. 131-134). President Bill
Clinton found that his moral leadership on family values rang hollow for
many people given his own promiscuous life. In 1980, Robert Bauman, a
leading Republican ultraconservative in the House of Representatives,
was charged with soliciting sex from a 16-year-old nude male dancer in a
gay bar. Bauman, married for 20 years and a father of four, had cospon-
sored legislation to bar gay men and women from housing and jobs. Not
unjustly, Bauman lost his family, job, and career (Congressional Quar-
terly, 1992, p. 90; Dionne, 1994; Ross, 1988, pp. 266-268).
A person’s private life can also become relevant by a public decision of
the official. When President Clinton appointed Roberta Achtenberg as
Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the open fact
that she was a lesbian made her intimate private life a public issue given
the political climate. Achtenberg and President Clinton chose to battle the
issue for the very purpose of breaking the public barrier to service
imposed by prejudices against open lesbians and gays. They sought to
confirm in a public forum that a person could be a competent and effective
 Dobel / PRIVATE LIVES OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS 135

professional no matter his or her sexual orientation and that the private
issue of one’s sexual orientation should not be central to the decision to
hire, elect, and appoint (“Helms to Fight,” 1993; “Senate Confirms,”
1993). At the same time, President Bill Clinton made his marriage a cen-
tral issue in assessments of him by claiming that he and his wife Hillary
constituted a team. He argued as part of his appeal that he respected and
listened to his wife’s advice and gave great weight to it. In making this a
direct point of the campaign and granting her significant influence in the
formation of his administration and health policy, he made his wife and
their relationship a legitimate issue of scrutiny (Fineman & Miller, 1993;
Pear, 1993).
Seventh, some private actions can subvert an individual’s ability to live
up to the symbolic dimensions of an office. Many public offices possess a
dimension beyond competence or policy commitments—they require
officials to exercise moral leadership (Rhode, 1988). When individuals
represent an institution and its purposes, their actions take on powerful
symbolic aspects that contribute to the legitimacy of the institution. Argu-
ments about this can be easy to abuse, especially if generalized to the
claim that a public official must represent a set of idealized values that are
ideologically correct. Officials, however, should act in a manner that
inspires respect for their position and the laws and policies that they repre-
sent. In an illustrative case, Appeals Court Justice Douglas Ginsberg’s
name was withdrawn from nomination for the Supreme Court when it was
revealed that he had broken the law and smoked marijuana in his office
with students as a law professor at Harvard. Many other public officials
escaped censure by revealing they too had smoked marijuana at other
times, but they argued that a past action in their youth should not be the
grounds to judge their present character. What gave the Ginsberg charges
cogency was Ginsberg’s very limited history as a judge combined with the
habitual and recent nature of his actions. In addition, he did it in a work-
place setting with students whom he should be teaching to respect the law.
Furthermore, he was nominated by a president who had mounted a
national campaign against drug abuse, and as a judge himself, he would
have to make judgments about the laws dealing with drug use. None of
these charges addressed competence, but focused quite rightly on the cost
to the legitimacy of the office and the person’s credibility in that office
(“Ginsberg Withdraws,” 1987).
Eighth, when private and unneeded information comes to principals’
attention, principals have special obligations to dismiss or discount the
information if possible. In assessing it, they should focus on the integrity
136 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / May 1998

and character of the official. This means that principals should distinguish
between an isolated mistake, a personal experiment, a tragedy, and a char-
acter flaw. Singular events or mistakes or tragedies matter far less in
assessing someone than patterns of actions over time that reveal basic
lineaments of character. Citizens need to fit patterns together and discover
when public and private actions reinforce each other or reveal discontinui-
ties or when they reflect youth and immaturity that a person has outgrown.
In The Laws, Plato exposes would-be rulers to vices so that they have
experiences that illuminate what is at stake. Living a boring life is not the
same as being a mature, wise, or fine human being. Overcoming failure,
personal wreckage, or alcoholism, or rebuilding a marriage or life can
demonstrate dimensions of character and strength as well as extend a per-
son’s moral imagination. For these reasons, it also makes sense to exercise
a statute of limitations on incidents that occurred years ago, even if ger-
mane to performance, if they are offset by a long and honorable life lived
after the incident. The past should not be a prison for anyone.

CONCLUSION

Three stories involving the troubling area of sexuality and fidelity dem-
onstrate how these standards can be applied. In 1995, Senator Robert
Packwood was accused of sexually importuning female lobbyists and
members of his own staff. He used his office to leverage favors and intimi-
date individuals for favors. These unwanted overtures occurred during a
15-year period. Packwood had served for two decades as a senator with a
strong public record, including consistent support for women’s rights.
After 1 year of hearings that proved the allegations, Packwood chose to
resign from the Senate rather than face certain expulsion. He had clearly
abused his power and office regardless of his public record. In the 1884
presidential campaign, the Republicans revealed that the Democratic can-
didate, New York Governor Grover Cleveland, had fathered a child out of
wedlock. The uproar over the revelation hurt Cleveland. Ultimately, how-
ever, voters correctly concluded that his long and impeccable record as a
public executive of the country’s most powerful state, coupled with the
fact that the affair had occurred in the far past and that he acknowledged
the child and had provided for her support, overrode misgivings about the
private scandal. Additionally, the alternative, Republican James Blaine,
had serious problems of his own with conflict-of-interest charges. In
 Dobel / PRIVATE LIVES OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS 137

1987, however, front-running presidential candidate Senator Gary Hart

had challenged reporters to follow him after charges of infidelity had been
raised against him. Having made the challenge, he continued his affair
with Donna Rice. When the affair was exposed, he denied the charges and
acted petulant and erratic. The revelations ended Hart’s campaign and
destroyed his support. They did so because people were already con-
cerned about his very thin legislative record and uneven performance in
official roles. Hart also sought to move from the legislature to the execu-
tive, where he would have considerably more power, responsibilities, and
pressures on him. The weak record and higher stakes led people to examine
other areas of his personal life, which turned up enough inconsistencies
about his strength of character, honesty, and judgment as to cause consid-
erable unease even among supporters. The affair and his handling of it,
rather than being overridden by the quality of his public service, rein-
forced the concerns about the weaknesses of his public service (The Pack-
wood Report, 1995; Ross, 1988, pp. 120-130, 287-288; Sabato, 1991;
Wills, 1990, ch. 2). Private scandal, as opposed to abuse of office, can sig-
nify great import with someone like Hart and mean little about suitability
for office with someone like Grover Cleveland or Franklin Roosevelt.
In conclusion, all officials have a strong right to privacy and a prima
facie right to be judged on the basis of their competence and performance.
There are, however, many legitimate reasons to inquire into private lives
of public officials, but much of the information will not be relevant, espe-
cially information thrown out by the media and opponents. It should be
treated as such in light of the standards suggested. Morally questionable or
scandalous actions from private life should always be considered in con-
text of character and personal history. Each private action may or may not
illuminate public integrity, and the same action may mean different things
for different individuals. Only careful judgments and respect for privacy
by principals will enable some restoration of balance in private lives for
public officials. The standards suggested here provide guidance about
how to frame judgments, but are not a definitive set of discriminations.
Finally, when people confront the moral flaws of persons exposed in
others’ private lives, they should beware their own self-righteousness.
Some persons may be saints or prophets, but saints and prophets make
notoriously bad rulers. We should judge as mortals judging other mortals.
The possibility of redemption should exist in political life as well as in pri-
vate life. We should judge with mercy.
138 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / May 1998

NOTES

1. The private lives of officials are mentioned in many studies of public ethics but usu-
ally in a cursory fashion. For example, see French (1983), Gortner (1991, pp. 42-50) and
Lewis (1991, pp. 53-59). The most systematic and thoughtful assessments have been written
by Thompson (1981, pp. 221-247; 1987, pp. 123-127). This article builds on and expands
Thompson’s basic insights.
2. Cooper (1991, pp. 176-199) discusses the range of affiliations and their impact on
public life. Claims of privacy and secrecy can be abused and encourage individuals to act
without moral restraint and to escape moral scrutiny and accountability (Zimbardo, 1969).
3. Schoeman (1992) provides an insightful account of the day-to-day role of privacy in
social practices that support dignity and humane social relations.
4. Boling (1996) provides an excellent survey and critique of the discussions within
feminist scholarship over the role and limits of privacy claims.
5. See Remick (1994) for a study of how Marion Barry, convicted for drug possession
while mayor of Washington, DC, and exposed as a constant womanizer, portrayed himself as
a redeemed man. He used myths of redemption deeply imbedded in the Christian and Black
American community to excuse himself and gain forgiveness and acceptance by the voters.
6. Matthews (1992) provides an enlightening account of the vulnerabilities of women
as well as strategies for renegotiating the public and private realms.
7. Cooper (1989) examines the central importance of roles and commitment in public
office. Dobel (1990a) extends this analysis.
8. This stance can become a problem if individuals neutralize their consciences, sever-
ing all connections within themselves so that they can go along with anything in office in the
name of subordinating personal self to public roles. See Sabini and Silver (1982).
9. This is further narrowed by three considerations: First, to whom is the person ac-
countable? Second, what are the legitimate private areas that are relevant to official perform-
ance? Third, what are the legitimate means that can be used to answer these questions? This
article focuses on the first two questions. Thompson (1987) examines the answer to number
three. O’Neal (1971) discusses the issue with specific relation to public employees.
10. Rohr (1986) demonstrates the central role promise taking plays in defining the moral
obligations of a public official.
11. For a defense of this untrammeled breakdown of public and private distinctions from
a major practitioner, see the lead editorial “Dark Side of History” (1997).
12. The story of Secretary of Labor in the Reagan Administration, Raymond Donovan,
demonstrates the ability of media coverage to end a public official’s capacity to govern, forc-
ing him to resign even when he was later exculpated of all wrongdoing (Longman Group,
1990, pp. 431-432).
13. Sabato (1991, pp. 216-219) provides an excellent set of standards that members of the
media could use to judge the merits of information they obtain about private lives of public
officials and decide whether to reveal the information. However, he is also very pessimistic
about the capacity of the modern media to implement them except on a sporadic basis.
14. Kurtz (1996) describes the debate over how to cover a past affair by presidential can-
didate Bob Dole. The affair was discovered and documented but went largely unreported in
the media. The unusual and rare debate for today’s media agreed that it was too long ago, ir-
relevant, and not germane to Dole’s presentation of himself. However, many editors felt that
 Dobel / PRIVATE LIVES OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS 139

if Dole had attacked President Clinton for his own character flaws around this area, they
would have believed it had become legitimate to report. The whole debate relied extensively
on the type of standards presented here.
15. For instance, Klein (1994) argues that President Clinton’s promiscuity in his private
life flows into a political promiscuity and pattern of deal making in public life.

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J. Patrick Dobel is an associate dean at the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the
University of Washington. He has authored many articles on public ethics and man-
agement and has written Compromise and Public Action: Political Morality in Lib-
eral and Democratic Life and Public Integrity. He has chaired a number of civic com-
mittees, including the King County Ethics Board, and consulted with numerous pub-
lic and nonprofit agencies on issues of ethics and leadership.