http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15118302/site/newsweek/
It Takes a Sex Scandal
The real world cares about the Foley e-mails. If Democrats can’t win
now, they’re doomed to become modern-day Whigs.
By Howard Fineman
Newsweek
Updated: 2:24 p.m. ET Oct. 3, 2006
Oct. 3, 2006 - An Iraq war that has cost us nearly half trillion
dollars—and the good will of the world—might not have done it. Runaway
federal spending that allowed the national debt to reach $8.5 trillion
might not have done it. George Bush’s low approval ratings, the lack of
comprehensive immigration reform, the historical pattern of an
anti-incumbent “six-year itch” in presidencies, the cascade of stories
about administration ineptitude and dissembling and congressional
financial and lobbying corruption—none of these issues seemed destined
to end the Republicans’ 12 year reign in Congress.
Then came the Foley Scandal. If the Democrats can’t take the Hill now,
they deserve to go the way of the Whigs.
Real Americans outside the Beltway don’t look at politics the way we do
here. I call Washington the Cave of the Sightless Fish: we hear
everything, see nothing.
In the real world, families don’t care about abstract “investigations”
into “who knew what when.” While the Beltway is trying to figure out
whether Speaker Denny Hastert can save his job (he is dangling by
thread), the real world is focused on children: in this case, the
16-year-old congressional pages.
There is cause for concern. Parents send kids to schools that are
targets of attack. They send them into a popular culture of numbness and
corrosion. They send them to college loaded with debt and worried about
the fate of the planet. Families can empathize—deeply—with parents who
sent their children to Washington. The pages were supposed to learn
about civics and government, not sexual predation.
In America—or anywhere, really—scandals don’t crystallize into Scandals
until they turn into gripping personal narratives.
The sad, sordid vividness of Bill Clinton’s liaisons with an intern
named Monica Lewinsky nearly cost him the presidency. The Watergate
tapes made Richard Nixon an all-too-dramatic and familiar character: a
mix of Al Capone and King Lear.
Rep. Mark Foley and the pages will now become the faces and stories that
define a time. Polls showed that “political corruption,” per se, was not
cutting much. But that was when it was defined primarily by money. Now
sex is involved, and nothing screams “Out of Touch” like the way the
House hierarchy handled the Foley matter.
Read the supposedly benign and ambiguous emails that the House
leadership has known about for nearly a year. If they were so benign why
did they warn Foley to have no further contact with the boy in question?
And if they did warn Foley, why didn’t they launch an investigation?
The Foley Scandal is a missile aimed at the heart of the GOP’s most
important base constituency: evangelical, Bible-believing Christians,
who were already upset with the administration on a host of
issues—including spending and immigration.
It’s going to get uglier from here. The GOP will respond by unearthing
old stories of sexual misconduct on Capitol Hill. I know that the search
is on for complaints, however old, about unnamed Democrats who might
have come on too strong to male or female pages.
Democrats are focusing for now on Hastert’s fate, and the “who knew what
when” angle, but will soon get back to Foley himself—and those
excruciatingly explicit instant messages.
Can Democrats blow it even now? Sure. They don’t have the money and the
machinery Republicans do.
More important, the Democrats’ message is murky. In the Senate, they
decry the Mexican fence, then more than half of them vote for it. They
label the Iraq war as a mistake, then vote $70 billion more for it. They
object to Bush’s torture bill, yet flinch at a chance to block it in the
Senate.
It was that kind of profound indecision on a moral issue (slavery) that
led to the demise of the Whigs before the Civil War. The Foley Scandal
means that Democrats might be able to succeed with a campaign slogan
that says, simply, “Had Enough?” But if they take control of Congress,
they’ll still have to do what the Whigs could not, which is explain what
they are for, not just what we all are against.
© 2006 Newsweek
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Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
.
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