It seems to be human nature to hate in others what we most hate in ourselves. There’s even a name for it: hypocrisy. And the humans who are most often guilty of this, as it turns out, are usually none other than our country’s fearless leaders.

Clearly former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is especially skilled at hypocrisy. After all, he won the hearts and respect of New Yorkers by fighting corruption, greed and unrighteous behavior — all while spending $80 thousand a year on high-class call girls (well, what he thought of as high-class, anyway; I’m not sure too many people consider Girls Gone Wild alums classy).

But he’s certainly not the only “do as I say not as I do” politician we’ve seen.

Ronald Reagan, beloved Republican President — touted as a bastion of virtue by the Christian Coalition — shoved family values down the throats of Americans for eight years. He huffed and puffed that the demise of the nuclear family (one husband, one wife, two-and-a-half kids and a dog) was the demise of America. Yet he was our first and only President to ever be divorced.

And Nancy Reagan, along with the then-happy, healthy cast of Diff’rent Strokes, relentlessly preached, “Just say no to drugs!” But according to her daughter Patti Davis, Mom was not only physically abusing her on a regular basis, but also had a major addiction to prescription tranquilizers. I guess Nancy thought that if the little happy pills came from a doctor and were in a bottle — and not from a guy wearing a bandana standing on a street corner — they weren’t really drugs. (And do I need to even go into what happened to the cast of Diff’rent Strokes?)

Mark Foley, Republican member of the House of Representatives from my glorious and sunny home state of Florida, often spoke out against the horrors of child abuse and exploitation. Who could argue with that? Child abuse and exploitation seemed like pretty bad things all around. Except that while on his soapbox, Foley had been sending sexually explicit emails and IMs to underage boys working as Congressional pages. I ask: where is Chris Hansen when you need him?

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is one of my favorite hypocrites of all — for loudly and disapprovingly leading the witch-hunt against Bill Clinton and the blue dress while having an extramarital affair. The balls on that guy!

Conservative anti-gay rights Senator Larry Craig also fit nicely into the hypocrites-are-us camp. The guy led a movement in 1989 to censure House of Representatives member Barney Frank, who was involved in a gay escort scandal. Twenty years later, Craig was caught soliciting a man for sex in an airport bathroom. “Allegedly.”

The list of politicians who publicly preach against the one thing that they themselves are guilty of is endless. And it makes me wonder: what’s secretly going on with outspoken political leaders whose true selves just haven’t been revealed yet? Is Health Care reform advocate Hillary Clinton actually a Christian Scientist? Or Green Party candidate Ralph Nader a closet baby seal clubber?

And does that make President Bush a Satan-worshipping terrorist? Guess we’ll have to wait and see on that one.

– Sascha Rothchild