More than 2000 years ago, the Ancient Greeks’ Ephebic Oath was a sworn statement declaring civic virtue. All Greeks swore not to bring dishonor or disgrace to their city and to leave it greater and more beautiful –better – than the way it was inherited.
This should be the goal of anyone in public service today – from elected officials to civil servants.That’s why it’s shocking that voters in the New York area have awoken to two nascent campaigns: Eliot Spitzer for New York City Comptroller and Anthony Weiner for Mayor. Apparently, both candidates believe that lacking scruples, shame and judgment are prerequisites to seeking office.
But this New York election seasons begs a larger question: why are voters constantly being asked to endorse the comeback tours of flawed, failed political figures?
Try as we may to forget, Eliot Spitzer is infamous for his spectacular, lightening bolt 2008 resignation as governor amid a mushroom cloud of seamy revelations, which included black socks, federal wiretaps, illegal money transfers, and the naked truth that Spitzer, a sitting governor, a husband and father of three, was known to a small cadre of $1,000-an-hour prostitutes as Client #9. This man wants to be city comptroller, perhaps fittingly to replace present city comptroller John Liu, whose current mayoral campaign has been dogged by numerous campaign finance violations.
Disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner is the second out-of-office elected official seeking personal redemption as he runs for New York City Mayor. Most recall Weiner, not for the one piece of legislation he wrote that got signed into law over 12-years in Congress, but rather for sending pictures of himself in various states of undress to random women via Twitter. Subsequently, he became known for impressive use of the word “certitude,” in the straight-faced, jaw-dropping fib he told on national television that, “I can not say with certitude,” that he was not the unclothed person of interest in the series of sexually explicit snapshots, nor that he was the one to send the musing Weiner’s Twitter account.
After setting this new low for insulting the intelligence of voters, Weiner chose to come clean only when faced with literally incontrovertible evidence: a lewd picture in which his face was visible. Weiner’s track record proves underscores a lack of judgment and good sense that disqualifies him, in my view, for any position of public trust, let alone Mayor of the financial and cultural capital of the world.
Is this the best that our community has to offer voters? Candidates who excel in dramatic ways to thumb their noses at the very purpose that inspired the Ephebic Oath: not bringing on disgrace. The Spitzer and Weiner candidacies fall miles short of this fundamental suitability test for leadership in Ancient Greece. Why should they pass muster today? And to be charitable, at least these two feigned disgrace; no such thing from accused serial sexual-harasser former Assemblyman Vito Lopez, who on the very same day he announced his (forced) resignation from Albany, declared his candidacy for a seat on the New York City Council.
In the interest of balance, it must be said that Democrats have yet to corner the market on ill-advised, self-serving candidacies: Republican, Appalachian Trail hiker and former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was just elected to Congress.
These examples prove one point: we the people should be expecting more from our elected officials and candidates for office. The public deserves more than a choice between outlandish personalities seeks to bounce back from scandal. The public rehabilitation of former-Womanizer-in-Chief Bill Clinton set a bad precedent for the quality and character of government representatives. In the years since the former president’s infamous encounter with a White House intern, we seemed to have, in the words of former US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), “defined deviancy downward.”
We need to put an end to this precedent. People deserve true advocates looking out for the common good, and predisposed to the true meaning of service, which is to place others before themselves.
The contemporaries of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had it right. The Ephebic Oath is vital to what communities, no matter how large or small, need – putting others and the greater good before ones’ self. It’s a sad state of affairs that there are some seeking to re-enter public service like Spitzer, Weiner and Sanford, who seem more interested in remaking their image than making a real difference in the lives of the citizens they seek to serve.
Senior Councilman Anthony J. Santino is currently serving his fifth term on the Hempstead Town Board representing the Town of Hempstead’s 4th Council District that will include the communities of Bay Park, Cedarhurst, East Rockaway, Harbor Isle, Hewlett, Hewlett Harbor, Hewlett Bay Park, Hewlett Neck, Island Park, Lynbrook, North Lynbrook, Malverne, Oceanside, Rockville Centre, South Hempstead, Valley Stream, Woodmere and Woodsburgh in January 2014.
