I would like to believe that Dick Cheney had instructed his right-wing pals at the CIA to dose all Democratic leaders considered genuine threats with Viagra" - maybe in their morning coffee. But that is just my fantasy. It started with Clinton, nabbed in his cloakroom with an intern. We Liberals thought, "How could he do this to our agenda? How could he be so foolish?" Then Eliot Spitzer, the NYS Governor who was about to take down the crooks on Wall Street, got caught with prostitutes. John Edwards, the only presidential candidate who swore to outlaw lobbying and decimate K Street, returning power to actual voters, was found to have a mistress and a love child. Now Anthony Weiner, who was soon to be a mayoral candidate in New York City and the most vocal Liberal in the House of Representatives, is revealed to be flirting (or worse) on the internet with 20-something female fans.
Why are they doing this to themselves? To us? They were not set up, they were just foolish. They were also hounded, probed, followed, spied on. That much is true. They all have powerful enemies in the military industrial congressional complex, and they know it- which means they should have known better than to risk career-ending scandals. Psychologists are all over the airwaves, explaining that high testosterone comes with ambition and competitiveness, that powerful men in all fields exhibit the same sexual behavior, yadadaydada. But our elected officials are holding our futures in their jockey shorts. And that is a huge distinction.
Somebody said, I do not remember who, that politics was Hollywood for ugly people. Maybe the pols want hordes of adoring fans, the kind that actors have , wanting them. As Rachel Maddow would say, "bullpucky'. We deserve better. Americans, and especially we worker bees who have so little representation in government, deserve politicians who can at least subjugate their personal desires to the requirements of the office. I do not want to see Weiner lose his seat in Congress. He has been solidly on our side, and we are unlikely to find a replacement who could match him for zeal. I want to see him learn from this humiliation and go on to serve us better. But I am also weary of sex scandals in Congress, as most Americans are. Is this not a great opportunity for Americans to rise up and demand publicly-funded elections? So that we can elect honest men and women who really want to spend their time in public service serving us?
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