James Poulos, in the course of critiquing a silly op-ed by Martha Nussbaum, writes:

What I’m angling for here is simple: a basic public consensus that if you sleep around on your spouse you are a bad person, and to hell with your future in politics, because we still have enough talent in America to replace you with someone who isn’t a bad person and is nonetheless capable of being a ‘gifted’ and ‘dedicated’ public servant.

Ross Douthat seems to agree. I don’t–especially with this “bad person” business. I certainly believe that someone who cheats on his wife has done a bad thing. I would be reluctant to judge someone a “bad person” without knowing the context. (A long-ago affair? Serial womanizing? One time, with regrets?) For that matter, I’m not sure that moral judgment usually requires us to divide the world between “bad people” and “not-bad people”; sometimes, categorizing people that way may make it harder for us to see clearly.