French morals, American justice

Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned as head of the International Monetary Fund, which he is widely credited with revitalizing at a pivotal time, throwing into high gear a global race to replace him following charges that he sexually assaulted a hotel worker in New York.

The 62-year-old Mr. Strauss-Kahn, in a statement released by the IMF shortly after midnight Thursday in Washington, said was leaving to "protect the institution," which has been largely paralyzed since he was arrested on suspicion of attempted rape in New York on May 14. In a letter to the IMF's board, he continued to deny that the charges against him. "I want to say that I deny with the greatest possible firmness all of the allegations that have been made against me," he wrote.

"I want to devote all my strength, all my time, and all my energy to proving my innocence," Mr. Strauss-Kahn said.

The IMF under Mr. Strauss-Kahn has played a key role in handling the fallout from the global financial crisis. It has bailed out more than a dozen countries with emergency loans, and worked with the European Union—less successfully—in keeping the crisis from spreading to Western Europe. So far, Ireland, Greece and Portugal have sought loans, though Greece hasn't come close to meeting the deficit-reduction requirements the IMF and EU set as conditions for the loans.

everybody knows, powerful men are frequently afflicted with satyriasis – a near-uncontrollable inability to keep their pants zipped. So long as they don’t pay a price, they just keep unzipping. These men are frequently oblivious to the effects of their behaviour. They truly feel they are entitled. And they’re usually enabled by those around them. René Lévesque’s sexual behaviour bordered on the predatory, but he was popular with journalists, so they ignored it. Mr. Clinton would jump on anything that moved. Arnold Schwarzenegger fathered a love child with the household help and, astonishingly, managed to keep it secret for 14 years. At least that relationship was presumably consensual.

The good news is that in Anglo-Saxon culture, this character flaw has become a serious liability for any man in public life. On this side of the Atlantic, it’s unlikely that DSK’s behaviour would have been tolerated by any major public institution. At the International Monetary Fund, by contrast, he kept his job even after a subordinate stated that he had pressured her into an affair. “I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t,” wrote Piroska Nagy, an attractive Hungarian economist, in a letter to investigators. She wrote that her boss was “a man with a problem that may make him ill-equipped to lead an institution where women work under his command.”

With his conspicuous wealth, his stupendous sense of entitlement, and his libertine tastes, DSK has more than a casual resemblance to the French aristocracy that the populace eventually dispatched to the guillotine. The bizarre reaction of the European socialist class suggests that they too are out of touch. On the whole, I prefer North America, where we expect the values of our rulers to more or less reflect our own. And when they don’t, we’re appalled.