The Anthony Weiner coverage is getting absurd. Rachel Maddow last night constructed an elaborate chart of sex scandals, moving the pictures of politicians to various points on the graph depending on where they fit, in her opinion, on the “creepy” scale and the “prosecutable” scale. Everyone from Mark Foley and Mark Sanford to John Edwards and John Ensign appeared—their heads manipulated by a giant hand attached to a long stick. The segment must have gone on for 5 minutes. And at the end, Maddow reached no conclusion. Seriously.
Some of the talking heads insisted that Republicans were more likely to be caught in sex scandals than Democrats, but I see no evidence for this. Some insisted that Republicans were less likely to resign amidst sex scandals. Again, by my count not true. Maddow suggested neither. So she was left with this giant graph, asking such pressing questions of the audience as, to paraphrase, “If Weiner is prosecuted for some of this behavior, would you be less likely to support him?”
She sort of hinted at the idea that it’s worse for Republicans who crusade on social issues to be caught in these sort of shenanigans, because Republicans are then being hypocrites. I heard this argument a number of times in the past 24 hours, but I don’t put much stock in it. Anthony Weiner--like John Edwards, Jim McGreevey, Eliot Spitzer, and Bill Clinton before their scandals were revealed--probably would have described himself as a good husband on the campaign trail. These men tended to pose for pictures with their cute children and adoring wives. They presented themselves to the American people as the kind of men who, say, are in favor of marital fidelity and would think poorly of sending lewd photos to young women they’ve never met or paying other young women for sex or…well, you get the picture. Hypocrisy is not just a matter of saying one thing and doing another. You can lead people to believe you are one type of person with all sorts of behavior and then turn out to be another. (Some wording in this paragraph has been changed. An editing error changed it from the original)
Pundits and politicians like to make a big distinction between what our representatives do in their personal lives and their public lives—I love how Weiner told people that he used his private e-mail account; does anyone care?—but the American people don’t make such a big distinction. Some of us vote strictly for people that we think will be the best commander in chief or the best reformer of health care, but most of us mix that with the question of who we would have a beer with, who we want our children to emulate, and who seems to have a happy marriage and family.