This is definitely the way to go. Instead of waiting nervously for his skeletons to fall out of the closet one by one, the newly appointed New York Governor David Paterson, who replaced his disgraced colleague Eliot Spitzer, took the bull by the horns and confessed all just hours after taking office.
After rumors of infidelity surfaced, Paterson and his wife Michelle admitted they had both had affairs during a rocky period in their marriage in a joint interview with New York's Daily News on Monday. The pair then faced reporters together at a news conference held this morning in the Capitol's Red Room.
"I didn't want to be compromised, I didn't want to be blackmailed, I didn't want to hesitate taking an action because the person on the other end might hurt me or my family. I just thought this was the time to come forward and reveal this," Paterson told reporters.
Perhaps this may serve as a new model, with politicians and statesmen confessing all before they take office (which Paterson didn't strictly do, but it's not like he got to pick his timing here) so they can get on with the important work at hand unfettered by sins of the past. After all, public officials only become truly accountable to us at the point that they begin their public service (or, if elected, start campaigning for office), and some of the best and brightest hopes are surely likely, at the very least, to have follies of youth buried in their past.
What are mistakes but opportunities to learn and grow? We, in turn, should learn to be more pragmatic about sin. To quote the big J.C., "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." If we allow our politicians to admit to more mistakes without fear of hysterical or over zealous judgment, we also allow them to better serve us. So let's be grown-ups about this, and get such compromising information out in the open where it is rendered benign. This has to be a more evolved policy than our current one, where the cardinal sin is getting caught.
It's at this point I'd like to give Obama the opportunity to hit the public confessional. McCain and Clinton have been in public service so long that their dirty laundry is by now well aired, but the press have only just started digging into the life of the new kid on the block.
If Obama does indeed win the Democratic candidacy, as it very much looks like he might, it'd be sad if the Republican's won the election by default were an unrecoverable scandal to break closer to November. The tenet of public service is to put those you serve above yourself (and your own career prospects). I'm therefore urging you, Obama, if you have anything you're hiding, whether it be financial or sexual impropriety, or something that could appear as such, to take a leaf out of Paterson's playbook and get it out there now. Your best shield in the upcoming battle is the truth.
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