I pride myself on being politically independent. I’m not registered with a major political party and have never voted for a major party presidential candidate. That’s not out of some abstract principle sheer stubbornness. It’s because I’ve yet to find a candidate I have much faith in, and I won’t be cowed into voting for “the lesser of two evils,” which by my reckoning is still evil. Democrats often disgust me as much as the Republicans.
But any regular reader of this blog knows that when dipping my toe into the muck of national politics, I’ve criticized Republicans a fair bit more than Democrats. Maybe Republicans make easier targets; paging Glenn Beck. Maybe I find the Republicans’ brand of hypocrisy more galling than the Democrats’ variety. Maybe it’s because I have more Democrat friends than Republican. Or may these last eight months will not prove to be representative in the long run.
Who knows? But whatever the reason, enough is enough.
I’m downright disgusted by the apologias some Democrats and their supporters are offering for Anthony Weiner. They range from the sanctimonious, such as Conor Friedersdorf’s piece in The Atlantic online, to the dismissive, such as Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC segment,which featured a cutesy graph of politicians’ sexual indiscretions.
Personally, I find Weiner’s actions to be deplorable. Not because he’s an unmitigated horn dog trolling the internet for cheap thrills, but because he’s a liar. And he lied to the people who matter most: the wife he was running around on, and the voting public th
at placed him in office to represent their interests.
For me, the current fiasco harkens back to Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential run. Does the name Gennifer Flowers ring any bells?
Not to be confused with Monica Lewinski, Paula Jones, and lord knows how many other women, Clinton carried on an adulterous affair with Flowers while Governor of Arkansas. Flowers spilled the beans during the campaign. Clinton went on 60 Minutes and denied it. Flowers then released a damning, secret tape recording of the two of them that strongly suggested they were intimate. Clinton again denied it. Though what he couldn’t deny were the anti-Italian slurs he had made on the tape against then potential frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, New York Governor Mario Cuomo. Clinton publicly apologized to Cuomo and continued to lie about the relationship. He didn’t come clean until 1998.
I remember that 1992 campaign. And I remember people saying things like, “Who cares what he does in his sex life? What does that have to do with being president?” When I would hear people say that, I would mockingly think to myself: Oh, how European of you.
I was mocking them, not Europeans.
No, I don’t believe a politician’s sex life is a legitimate barometer on his or her qualifications to serve, assuming of course that your sex life is legal, and that you’re not raping maids as Dominique Strauss-Kahn is accused of doing. But the law is not the only relevant measuring stick. Ethics count too, or at least they should. Clinton’s actions vis a vis Flowers were unethical. So are Weiner’s Facebook Follies and Twitter Titillations. Call me naive if you like, but I do want ethical people to serve us in government.
So do I care that Anthony Weiner was sexting? No. But do I care that he was cheating on his wife and lying about it? Absolutely. If a politician’s practically newlywed wife can’t trust him on the most fundamental aspect of their marriage, then how the hell can I trust him? And when his shenanigans come to light, readily and repeatedly lying to the citizens he serves only makes it worse.
Oh, and let’s be clear here. He didn’t just lie to all of us about it for days on end. He and his lackeys went so far as to repeatedly slander Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who got the definitive goods on Weiner. Weiner apologized to Breitbart at his weepy press conference yesterday, 
but only after journalists pressed him on it.
Of course it’s more hypocritical to some degree when socially conservative politicians who rail against homosexuality or promiscuity get caught in an act of sexual indiscretion. It also makes them easier targets, and they deserve whatever they get. But none of that lets a sad sack like Weiner off the hook. He’s at best a coward and at worst a Machiavellian prick. Pun intended. If Liberals and Democrats get to revel in, criticize, and judge Larry Craig fishing for hand jobs in an airport bathroom, then turnaround is fair play when Weiner goes behind his wife’s back and ships pix of his junk to anonymous women less than half his age. They’re both manipulative, cowardly liars, and neither one of us is worthy of serving us.
P.S. Something about that piece of human garbage, John Edwards.