October 5, 2006
Congressional Pages III Posted by John Steele Gordon at 04:00 PM EST I certainly join with Ellen Feldman and Joshua Zeitz in hoping that this scandal does not cause the termination of the congressional page program. As Mr. Zeitz’s personal recollections testify, it must constitute one of the great highlights in the lives of those lucky enough to be chosen for it.
Mr. Zeitz writes that “Mark Foley is a sad anomaly.” He is indeed, and I feel far more sadness than anger regarding him. This is not to say I excuse him. He behaved inexcusably and is now paying—and will be paying for the rest of his life—a fearful price for his behavior. He has no one to blame but himself, but I still feel very sorry for this evidently lonely and unhappy man.
I feel especially sorry because, as far as I can see, his sins here, while certainly sins, are rather small potatoes as such sins go.
Consider what Rep. Gerry Studds, a Democrat, did. Studds actually had sex with a Congressional page. He was reprimanded—a slap on the wrist—by the House, then firmly in Democratic hands, not censured—a serious punishment—or expelled. He went on to win reelection several more times before he retired in 1996. So his constituents, obviously, were not horrified by the revelation.
Rep. Foley, on the other hand, exchanged “overfriendly” but nonsexual e-mails with one former page who didn’t like the vibes he got from them, complained, and the e-mails stopped. And he had at least one sexually explicit instant-message conversation with another former page who, judging from his half of the conversation, didn’t seem exactly bent out of shape over it. It might be noted that IM conversations are not automatically saved as e-mails are. As far as I know—I am not a nerd—the only way to save an instant messaging conversation requires highlighting it, clicking on copy, then going to a word-processing program and pasting it into a blank document. Not exactly the actions of someone severely traumatized.
So sleeping with a congressional page gets you a reprimand but having a sexually explicit IM conversation with an ex-page who is a thousand miles away gets you called a monster and worse. Does something seem a little out of balance here?
Frankly, I doubt that any real harm was done to the boys he interacted improperly with from afar. They were, after all, 17, above the age of consent in some jurisdictions, not 7, which the term “children,” often being used in the media and by hay-making politicians like Nancy Pelosi to describe them, brings to mind. How many people, when they were in their late teens or adults, never had to deal with something equivalent? Not many, I imagine, and “No thanks,” or “I gotta go,” is almost always the end of it.
Mr. Zeitz writes, “It would be a great shame to see such an important program scrapped because of one bad apple and his protectors. Blame Foley, Hastert, Reynolds, and Boehner. But not the pages.”
Well, certainly not the pages. Isn’t it just a little early to blame Hastert, Reynolds, and Boehner? I have seen no evidence whatsoever that they were aware of anything but the e-mails until late last week. And the e-mails were so innocuous that neither the Miami Herald nor the St. Petersburg Times, in possession of them, thought them sufficiently newsworthy to print. Foley was told to stop being a jerk, he said that he would, and what more was to be expected?
I might note that the people who are now howling for the head of the speaker for not acting swiftly to prevent a “predator” from “stalking” “children” are the very same people who voted to revoke the charter of the Boy Scouts because that organization bans gay scoutmasters. Of course, if hypocrisy were worth a dollar a ton, Washington politicians (of both parties) could pay off the national debt in a week.
The House Ethics Committee, made up of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, has this morning issued a blizzard of subpoenas in order to get to the bottom of this. I hope they do so and let the chips fall where they may. But with Mr. Foley already gone, I think that a few good ideas, such as the presumption of innocence, should be followed in the meantime. That is too much to expect from politicians, to be sure, but the rest of us might give it a try.
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