December 12, 2004 - It is the little things that trip you up; little things like employing an illegal alien as a nanny and ignoring the requirement to pay Social Security Tax on a household employee’s wages. It ripped Zoe Baird out of contention for Attorney General. It kept Kimba Wood out of office. It made Mona Charon chary of going through the confirmation progress. Now it has left Bernie Kerik at home rather than at the head of Homeland Security. It’s the little things that become big embarrassments when you get to the level of the President’s cabinet. We call them the “nanny problem” and these days the first thing they ask you when the President considers you for a cabinet post is whether you have a nanny problem.

It may seem to be a little thing. Nobody asks the kid who mows the yard to produce his social security card or prove he is in the country legally. Nobody inquires of the cleaning lady if she has a green card. Most of us don’t realize that if we pay someone more than $50 a quarter for work around the house we are required to deduct and pay social security taxes on what we pay them. It is the law but most of us either don’t know it or simply ignore it just as Ms. Baird, Ms. Wood, Ms. Charon, and Mr. Kerik did. But then most of us don’t have nannies. We can’t afford them.

After Nannygate was used by the Republicans to bring down two Clinton appointees in a row the nanny problem became the threshold question for any potential Presidential appointee to answer. Despite all the other questions that have been raised about Bernard Kerik’s ethics and despite his bi-partisan support in the Senate it is the nanny problem that kept him out of the President’s Cabinet. It seems a petty matter to have such devastating effects on a man’s career.

It seems petty, but is it? Hiring an illegal alien and ignoring the law by not withholding and paying social security taxes demonstrates a disdain for the rules that we are expected to live by. Each of the four, Baird, Wood, Charon, and Kerik had risen to the top of their respective professions in private and public life. . For each of the four the few dollars they saved by not following the law and not paying social security taxes was a pittance. Each of the four had escaped the scrutiny focused on a Cabinet nominee during their ascent and that underlines the problem. Should we not be expecting the same standard of ethical conduct of our public officials at every level, from beat cop to police commissioner, which we expect of our highest public officials?

The fact is that we do not. We looked away and did not see the conduct we winked at when the nominees were on the way up, as they earned position and preference. When they reach the top and the revelation becomes an embarrassment to the nominee, the President and to us we use it to bring them down. Nannygate tells us much about the nominees but it tells us more about ourselves.