Mike Tomasky says he’s finally figured out what it takes to be banished from public life in the United States:

I’ve spent the last 14 years thinking well, we’ve finally learned in America what you have to do to be utterly banished — you have to literally get away with murder, or two of them (oops, I forgot this is Britain; I mean allegedly! Allegedly! And did I mention that he was acquitted by a jury of his peers?).

And now we add to the category a second condition: if you cheat on your cancer-stricken wife with another woman and still decide you can run for president, and you get busted, you’re pretty much finished. Yes or no?

He’s talking about John Edwards. But I have a question about this theory: what about Newt Gingrich? It’s true that Gingrich hasn’t launched a presidential campaign, but cheating on his cancer-stricken wife he’s done. Then he divorced her and married a second woman on whom he also cheated. And now he’s on his third marriage. And he converted to Catholicism! And he’s a defender of traditional marriage! And he’s still a high-profile public figure.

Consider also the starkly contrasting treatment of Elliot Spitzer, forced into resignation and disgrace for seeing a prostitute, and David Vitter, sitting pretty in the United States Senate.

Logically speaking, since there’s only one of the two parties that puts a very high premium on the idea that state regulation of individual sexual behavior should be the main role of government, these allegations should be more damaging to Republicans. Hypocrisy on the part of the media is part of the story. But part of the issue, I think, is just partisan and ideological solidarity. A politician can survive a great deal if his co-partisans are willing to stand by him, and conservatives are much more inclined to stand by their man than are progressives.

Kevin Drum’s done a series of posts on the carbon tax versus cap and trade issue recently, but I think the last one gets at the most important bit.

I’d put it this way: It’s true that the carbon tax I would design would be better policy than the cap-and-trade program congress is designing, but by the same token the cap-and-trade program I would design is better than the carbon tax law congress would right. Congress is an inherently problematic institution, populated by flawed human beings who are primarily accountable to the short-term desires of narrow interest groups. Consequently, it’s a rare day indeed when a congressional process results in an optimal policy outcome. But that’s just life. There’s no sense pretending that if advocates took a different approach that the inherent limits of politics would be transcended.

Brad DeLong did a post recently marveling at how little progress has been made on macroeconomic questions over the past eighty years or so.

The good news is that economics at least gives us the tools we need to help explain this phenomenon. After all, there are no particularly strong incentives out of there encouraging people to get big macroeconomic questions right. There is, to be sure, money to be made in writing on big macroeconomic topics. But a Dow 36,000 or a The Forgotten Man will earn you as much money—or more—than a more accurate book would. Nor are there particularly strong considerations of prestige or honor pushing in the direction of accuracy. It’s not as if the Council on Foreign Relations will blackball you or something if you get things wrong. Consequently, any given position—left or right or center or otherwise—that has a requisite level of political or financial clout will have its proponents.

What’s a little strange to me is that so many economists seem so disinclined to look on the dynamics within their own profession in the same cyncical light that they prefer to shine on other things.