The Art of the Public Grovel: Sexual Sin and Public Confession in America by Susan Wise Bauer

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The Barnes & Noble Review

John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, Ted Haggard -- another day, another high-profile leader publicly admits to a sexual transgression. Susan Wise Bauer argues persuasively that unspoken but strict rules of etiquette surround these confessions and that getting it right can make the difference between being permanently shunned or -- as in the case of Bill Clinton -- emerging from a scandal more popular than ever. Apologizing -- merely expressing regret -- doesn't cut it, says Bauer. What's required is a full-fledged confession: "I am sorry because I did wrong. I sinned." And forget trying to treat contrition as a private matter. A grovel isn't a grovel unless we all get to watch. Bauer, who holds a Ph.D. in American studies, traces the expectation that leaders beg our forgiveness for sexual sin to the influence of an American evangelicalism that preaches public confession an essential step toward redemption. She makes a strong case. But whether a reader accepts her premise or not, this exhaustively researched book offers a fascinating trip through more than a century of America's top sex scandals -- from Grover Cleveland's bastard child to Cardinal Law's protection of pedophile priests. The sex is the least of it. What's most intriguing is the history of arrogance, dissembling, bizarre self-justification, and, on occasion, canny political maneuvering. In the future, disgraced politicians and clergymen could use Bauer's book as a primer on the dos and don'ts of rescuing a career. Do: Confess and ask for forgiveness (Clinton, eventually). Don't: Confess in the pages of Playboy (Jimmy Carter). Really Don't: Claim you were "wickedly manipulated by treacherous former friends…with the aid of a female confederate" (Jim Bakker). It's a safe bet that sometime very soon yet another leader will find himself needing to practice the "art" described in this book. --Karen Holt

Synopsis

Whether you are a politician caught carrying on with an intern or a minister photographed with a prostitute, discovery does not necessarily spell the end of your public career. Admit your sins carefully, using the essential elements of an evangelical confession identified by Susan Wise Bauer in The Art of the Public Grovel, and you, like Bill Clinton, just might survive. In this fascinating and important history of public confession in modern America, Bauer explains why and how a type of confession that first arose among nineteenth-century evangelicals has today become the required form for any successful public admission of wrongdoing--even when the wrongdoer has no connection with evangelicalism and the context is thoroughly secular. She shows how Protestant revivalism, group psychotherapy, and the advent of talk TV combined to turn evangelical-style confession into a mainstream secular rite. Those who master the form--Bill Clinton, Jimmy Swaggart, David Vitter, and Ted Haggard--have a chance of surviving and even thriving, while those who don't--Ted Kennedy, Jim Bakker, Cardinal Bernard Law, Mark Foley, and Eliot Spitzer--will never really recover. Revealing the rhetoric, theology, and history that lie behind every successful public plea for forgiveness, The Art of the Public Grovel will interest anyone who has ever wondered why Clinton is still popular while Bakker fell out of public view, Ted Kennedy never got to be president, and Law moved to Rome.

Carolyn M. Craft - Library Journal

Bauer (The History of the Ancient World) has revised her recent American studies Ph.D. dissertation into this readable book. Traced here are the history of the confession of sexual sins of well-known politicians and religious leaders, from Grover Cleveland, who was elected President for his first term after he refused to acknowledge his sexual wrongdoing and his child out of wedlock, to President Clinton's having the highest approval rating of any outgoing President after his very public but carefully tailored confession, which made him appear more sinned against than sinning. Noting the spectrum from utter silence to wordy, involuted denials of memory and circular definition on the part of alleged wrongdoers, the book reveals how the public comes to sympathize with some and not with others; Aimee Semple McPherson, Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and Jim Bakker did not manage this art of public confession well, where they sought to morph into victims and be seen on the side of good, while Jimmy Swaggart managed a first scandal confession so well that President Clinton used it as his model. Helpfully, six appendixes make conveniently available the confession texts that Bauer references. Recommended for public and academic libraries.

Biography

Susan Wise Bauer is the author of "The History of the Ancient World" (Norton), the first part of a four-volume history of the world. Her other books include "The Well-Trained Mind" and "The Well-Educated Mind" (both Norton). She holds a PhD in American studies from the College of William & Mary.