Saturday, September 30, 2006
Reading Between The Lines in Politics
Today Floriday Congressman Mark Foley resigned from his post after messages he sent to a teenaged male page were made public. Apparently his messages imply that he may have had a thing for teenage boys and may have crossed the line. What's amazing though is not that a government official has been found to be a pedophile (there have already been several people removed from office for that), but rather how abruptly everything has happened, at least to the public eye. He appears to have resigned almost immediately, without any complaints that his messages were "misconstrued" or "taken out of context". This didn't take several days to percolate through the press, with allegations coming out one day, then several days of back and forth statements, including strong denials, then finally after a few weeks a resignation with a vow to defend his reputation. Instead, there was no news about this in the press until today, when he suddenly resigned.
It turns out that his messages were originally "discovered" last winter, and he was thereafter warned to be "especially mindful" of his conduct with pages. And now, almost a year later, he suddenly resigns. Even more telling, nobody is coming to his defense. Both the House Speaker, Dennis Hastert, and the House Majority Whip, Roy Blunt, have publicly stated that the resignation was the right thing for Foley to do.
This tells me that Foley's "inclinations" were probably not a well-kept secret, and that there were already rumblings through Congress before Foley was caught red-handed with his messages. That's probably why this whole thing has been so hush-hush and it's all come to a head so quickly. The GOP realized that Foley had this sexual habit and needed to take care of it quickly and discreetly, so they forced Foley to resign through back channel talk. Thus, hardly anyone in Congress is surprised or shocked, no one's saying that "he never seemed like he could harm a child", etc. etc. Instead Congressmen are saying that Foley did the right thing, that he needed to leave, etc. I think the whole thing was well-planned and executed.
Oh yeah, and for those who keep claiming that politicians' personal lives shouldn't be used to judge their abilities as leaders, this is only one example of many showing how wrong that attitude is. A person's beliefs, desires, inclinations are absolutely relevant. If someone is going to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on stupid wars, send thousands of Americans to their deaths for stupid wars, and pass laws that restrict the freedoms of all Americans for stupid wars, then yeah, I care about who they are, what they think, and what they do in their spare time. I can't screw over millions of people with the decisions I make on a day-to-day basis, so nobody should be allowed to judge my personal life. But the minute I decide to have a job where my actions affect millions of lives, then I relinquish my immunity from people's judgments.
It turns out that his messages were originally "discovered" last winter, and he was thereafter warned to be "especially mindful" of his conduct with pages. And now, almost a year later, he suddenly resigns. Even more telling, nobody is coming to his defense. Both the House Speaker, Dennis Hastert, and the House Majority Whip, Roy Blunt, have publicly stated that the resignation was the right thing for Foley to do.
This tells me that Foley's "inclinations" were probably not a well-kept secret, and that there were already rumblings through Congress before Foley was caught red-handed with his messages. That's probably why this whole thing has been so hush-hush and it's all come to a head so quickly. The GOP realized that Foley had this sexual habit and needed to take care of it quickly and discreetly, so they forced Foley to resign through back channel talk. Thus, hardly anyone in Congress is surprised or shocked, no one's saying that "he never seemed like he could harm a child", etc. etc. Instead Congressmen are saying that Foley did the right thing, that he needed to leave, etc. I think the whole thing was well-planned and executed.
Oh yeah, and for those who keep claiming that politicians' personal lives shouldn't be used to judge their abilities as leaders, this is only one example of many showing how wrong that attitude is. A person's beliefs, desires, inclinations are absolutely relevant. If someone is going to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on stupid wars, send thousands of Americans to their deaths for stupid wars, and pass laws that restrict the freedoms of all Americans for stupid wars, then yeah, I care about who they are, what they think, and what they do in their spare time. I can't screw over millions of people with the decisions I make on a day-to-day basis, so nobody should be allowed to judge my personal life. But the minute I decide to have a job where my actions affect millions of lives, then I relinquish my immunity from people's judgments.
# posted by Chris @ 1:31 AM 
