Oaten's real mistake

The only surprise in the news that Mark Oaten has brought disgrace upon a noble profession is that anyone should be surprised. Have they forgotten the old joke?:
How do you fit four Liberals on a bar-stool?
Turn it upside-down.
The interesting question is: why should it be conventional for politicians to resign in such circumstances?
Put it this way. Few of us care if our dustmen or dentists visit rent-boys, so why should we care that our politicians do?
It's because politics is differerent. Dustmen and dentists are technicians, selling definable skills. They can therefore be judged by their outputs; have they emptied our bins or fixed our teeth? Their character, then, doesn't matter.
Politicians, though, don't offer demonstrable, testable skills. Instead, they are like tele-evangelists. They sell us hope and illusion - the hope that things will get better if they were in office, the illusion that things have gotten better when they are in office.
Like tele-evangelists, this trick requires not so much technical skills as particular character traits - plausibility and credibility. As Richard Sennett pointed out in his great The Fall of Public Man, character therefore necessarily enters politics.
And this is where Mr Oaten went wrong. Visiting a rent-boy is like wearing a wig. It destroys the things politicians value above all else - credibility and seriousness.
It's in this sense that Mr Oaten has been guilty of misjudgment. He's committed the Ruth Kelly error, of believing that politics is a suitable profession for a normal human being.

Comments

[ricardo]

But why should visiting a rent boy affect one's credibility or perceived seriousness?

[chris]

Sorry Ricardo - I should have elaborated the comparison with wearing a wig.
Seeing rent boys, like wearing wigs, is inherently comical. It makes you a figure of fun. Being a figure of fun doesn't affect your ability to do jobs requiring technical skill. But it does affect your ability to sell snake-oil. People think - wrongly - that being credible and being serious are closely correlated. That's why businessmen and economic writers try to be so boring - they hope humourlessness will create credibility.

[dsquared]

I may be out of touch, but I am not yet sure that visiting prostitutes is "normal". If my dustman or dentist was in the habit of visiting prostitutes I would think I had a weirdo for a dustman or dentist. This might not worry me too much, but having a weirdo as prime minister would.

[dearieme]

I think I might care if I thought that my dentist were recklessly risking Aids.
P.S I still think your "gotten" is quite misbegotten.

[Robert Schwartz]

"Two countries separated by a common language."

I take it that a "rent-boy" is a male homosexual prostitute. Is that correct?

[stu]

robert, you are indeed correct.

Although i take issue with the term. it denotes an idea that gay people are peadophiles/sexual deviants and instantly sounds seedier that the word prostitute.

[chris]

Stu - I don't think rent-boy has any connotations of paedophilia, any more than working girl does. I wouldn't have used the phrase if I thought it did.