Fifth, the Republicans were correct two decades ago when they argued that President Bill Clinton’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky was a grave case of misconduct. In addition to its effects on her life, it opened up the commander-in-chief to potential blackmail, and it’s now clear most people underestimated that risk.
Sixth, the current president was ahead of the game when he tried to render himself non-blackmailable through his own boastful outrageousness. (His modus operandi seems to be to make it impossible to accuse him of saying something more shocking than he has already said himself.) The verdict is still out, however, on how well this strategy will work as a defense against blackmail.
Finally, most people now have a new and better sense of why blackmail should be illegal. Economists have long faced an embarrassing question: If it helps deter undesirable actions, what exactly is wrong with blackmail? The traditional answer has long been that laws against blackmail prevent would-be blackmailers from investing too much time and energy into digging up evidence of wrongdoing. Yet those hardly seem like major costs, no more than police patrols would be.
Perhaps a better objection to blackmail is that it distracts everyone’s attention, degrades public discourse and, in the largest sense, works against the possibility of second chances in life. Of course there should be debate about what constitutes good and bad conduct. But the focus should be on what people did or did not do, and not so much about the drama of how the information was obtained.
This article provided by Bloomberg News.