General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The Snowden Revelation That Might Start a War [View all]Igel
(35,300 posts)Take the situation of a wife whose husband is cheating on her. She knows he's cheating, but evaluates her situation and finds that the perks that come with a cheating husband outweigh the downside.
She may even--at least in former times--allow for this information to be relatively widespread as long as it can be ignored.
But as soon as everybody's speaking of it openly, then it's a different matter. Her reputation, her honor, her dignity are now at stake. Nothing has changed but it's now a matter of open, not private, offense. She is compelled to do something that she wouldn't have done before: Openly shame her husband, respond to the rumors and innuendo publicly, separate from, divorce him, and sue him.
In a sense you could say that it was the husband's indiscretion that ultimately caused this. (Then again, ultimately it depended upon their being married, both being heterosexual, both being born at the right times and meeting, or any number of other "ultimately"-statements.) The big point, though, is what made it from "this is tolerable" to "this is intolerable." That would be having the affair made public.
It's the same in politics. Obama is very likely going to deal with a matter of corruption, abuse of power, mismanagement, or an inappropriately run program--say, "Fast and Furious"--in a quiet and low-key manner. He might just rebuke the person or people involved. Doing something harsh might actually be counterproductive and draw attention to a distraction. However, if a leaker makes it a public matter, makes it something for the tabloids and talk shows, then the President would be forced to do something entirely different. What makes the difference? The public nature of what was done wrong. The claim could be made that the problem was the original, underlying problem. That could be dealt with in a low-key way. It's not nonsensical to say that public exposure alters how it has to be treated and, in fact, can make what isn't much of a problem into a problem. Take, for example, the IRS' way it was evaluationg applications for non-profit status. Many say there was no problem; some say there was a problem. Nonetheless, the publicity that accrued to the matter amplified the problem and forced it to be dealt with in a particular way. It's sort of silly to deny it--harshly moralist to deny it, which, in politics, is frequently a silly posture to maintain.