America’s “Virtue Guru” Bill Bennett is staring at a pair of
snake eyes after last Friday’s Newsweek story revealed his
multi-million dollar gambling habit. It turns out he cycled through
enormous amounts of speaking fees and book royalties playing slot
machines and video poker, games involving no skill. The man who has
made a superb and publicly beneficial career of proclaiming the
virtues, including hard work and self-discipline, apparently drops
the lever on slot machines at $500 a throw.
The reaction of many conservatives will be to downplay the
story. They’ll repeat Bennett’s talking points about how he “didn’t
play the ‘milk money’” and “never put his family at risk.” Several
of the regulars on National Review’s weblog “The Corner”
questioned whether Bennett’s gambling could even be called a vice
as it was in the Newsweek story. The Weekly
Standard’s
Jonathan V. Last posted an article over the weekend referring
to the controversy as “silly.” Their comments reflect the
instinctive desire to protect Bennett because he has been the most
articulate and successful mass-market spokesman for social
conservatism during the past two decades.
But trying to whitewash the unseemly public vision of Bill
Bennett sitting before a slot machine for three hours at a time to
unwind after a speech before a family values group earlier in the
evening is the wrong thing to do. No matter how you slice it,
gambling millions of dollars is a betrayal of Bennett’s entire
public career.
As Drug Czar, Bill Bennett outlined the problems drugs create in
our communities. They drive families into poverty, increase
domestic abuse, lead to higher crime rates, create higher
unemployment, and drive a series of other social pathologies. He
made a similar case with regard to the damaging effects of excess
sex and violence in the television and music industries. In what
way is gambling any different? Is it not true that gambling addicts
wreck their own lives and the lives of those around them? Does
gambling not lead to higher divorce rates, greater dependence on
social services, and increased crime?
Thus far, Bennett’s response has been to say that he hasn’t hurt
anyone with his gambling. He says he hasn’t put his family in
danger and that he’s adhered to the law. Unless Bennett has gone
libertarian his answer is lame at best and certainly no better than
what the rich and famous have been telling us through their actions
for years. In other words, it’s okay to participate in socially
destructive enterprises because he’s sufficiently insulated by his
wealth not to be affected by it. Forget the fact he’s attacked
fully analogous industries with great vigor. Forget that gambling
enterprises have often been connected to organized crime. Forget
that his habit helps support an enterprise that has wrecked
thousands and thousands of families.
Aside from the lofty principles betrayed by Bennett’s high
dollar gambling, there are also major problems with the effect on
public perception. As the news story spreads out into the public
consciousness, charges of hypocrisy will fly and will stick to our
once effective secular preacher. Smug liberals will feel confirmed
in their stereotypical view of social conservatives as Elmer
Gantryesque hucksters who can’t walk their talk. Those who may have
previously felt convicted by the force of Bennett’s work will now
shrug their shoulders and leave self-examination behind. Worst of
all, Bill Clinton is smiling as yet another of his chief
antagonists receives public comeuppance for his own sins. One
wonders whether the conservative movement will offer us a single
hero who does not have feet of clay.
But enough about a skeptical public and Bennett’s enemies —
what of his friends? At a minimum, Bill Bennett will lose half of
his fan base as the news gets out. Family policy councils all over
the country who have invited him to speak conduct a constant war
against the expansion of gambling as a method of raising government
funds in their states. Southern Baptists and several other
Protestant denominations take an aggressive anti-gambling stance.
James Dobson’s Focus on the Family empire and its massive radio
audience will be extremely hesitant to work with Bennett again. It
may turn out that Bennett’s biggest gamble was deciding to blow off
steam in casinos in the first place. He claims he may have come out
close to even in his gambling activities. After he figures out what
he’s lost in future earnings from speeches and book royalties,
he’ll need to revise that estimate downward … significantly.
Sadly, Bennett faces several interviews in which he’ll be
confronted with his own words as the accuser. Newsweek led
its story off with a quote from The Book of Virtues: “We
should know that too much of anything, even a good thing, may prove
to be our undoing … [We] need to set definite boundaries on
our appetites.” In this case, he may have been prescient. It’s too
bad for his disappointed fans that he didn’t heed his own
advice.
