October 6, 2006
Foley and Clinton Posted by Fredric Smoler at 09:45 AM EST John Steele Gordon writes that he feels sorry for “this evidently unhappy and lonely man”—for Representative Foley—and I share his feelings. He goes on to write that Foley’s “sins here, while certainly sins, are rather small potatoes as such sins go,” and that also seems right. He then goes on to write about Gary Studds, whose active sexual involvement with a minor occurred some 23 years ago, and opines that while Rep. Foley has behaved “inexcusably,” Reps. Hastert, Reynolds, and Boehner are probably in the clear, and certainly deserve the presumption of innocence. People do indeed deserve the presumption of innocence, although the phrase may be slightly out of place, since I am not aware that anyone has accused Hastert, Reynolds, and Boehner of crimes.
Of course, there has been a more recent sex scandal than the one involving Representative Studds, the one that occurred when President Clinton had consensual sexual relations with an adult, and the comparison to that scandal may suggest why one portion of the electorate seems irritable about the Republican leadership, rather than only with Representative Foley. It is certainly possible to argue that the Clinton scandal was about perjury, rather than sex, although since the perjury occurred entirely the context of a perjury trap designed to exploit the common reluctance to publicly admit sexual infidelity, the majority of the electorate concluded that the scandal was in fact about sex. If you think that the Clinton scandal was indeed about sex, the comparison suggests that the Republican party is only erratically hyper-vigilant about sexual irregularity. Still, it seems too soon to conclude that the party observes a double standard. On the available evidence, the Republicans will use the impeachment power in a manner that threatens Constitutional stability, for partisan advantage, and propose amending the Constitution to ward off the possibility of same-sex marriage, again for partisan advantage, but will also, yet again for partisan advantage, more or less ignore the apparent sexual solicitation of a same-sex minor. So perhaps there is no double standard.
My guess is that the electorate has noticed that the Republicans are willing to rouse the persecuting spirit about homosexuality when they sniff a chance to, say, carry Ohio, but seem more genial and tolerant when it is a matter of losing a Congressional seat in Florida. The Republican leadership seems to suspect that the electorate is disquieted by this curiously elastic morality and this very selective indignation. I hope the leadership is correct.
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