"And among them they're four fathers.
"Among them, they have 11 children.
"And not one of them ..."
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From the newsletter for Howie Kurtz's CNN Reliable Sources at 10am ET Sunday:
Foley Frenzy
With the Mark Foley sex scandal dominating the headlines this week, we'll talk to top journalists about the coverage. Why are the media so obsessed with this story and were journalists too quick in predicting House Speaker Dennis Hastert's resignation?
I don't think anyone has summed up the answer to Kurtz's questions any better than did Mark Shields last night on PBS's Newshour:
MARK SHIELDS: It's an unmitigated disaster for the Republican Party. And the reason for that is, unlike sex scandals in the past involving pages -- Gary Studds, the Democrat in Massachusetts in 1983, and Dan Crane, a Republican at the same time, both of whom were censured by the House -- in neither of those cases was the leadership of the party even remotely aware -- Bob Michel on the Republican side or Tip O'Neill on the Democratic side -- of what was going on and what these activities were.
What we have here is the leadership involved. It's a party problem; it isn't just a single, individual problem. And I think -- I've been out this week. And what struck me, Ray, is people are responding to this at a gut, personal level.
You have Denny Hastert, the speaker of the House; you have John Shimkus, the Republican congressman from Illinois who's chairman of the Page Committee; Rodney Alexander, who sponsored the first page, who knew him, who worked in his office; and Tom Reynolds, the Republican campaign chairman from New York.
Then, in his next breath, Mark Shields added this devastating observation:
And among them they're four fathers. Among them, they have 11 children. And not one of them ever responded to this report of a 52-year-old man making overtures, direct sexual overtures to pages, to teenage pages, under the care and protection of the House of Representatives the way a parent would.
The discussion continued -- with Shields adding one more devastating observation at the end:
RAY SUAREZ: Because I guess the real question is, for all those people who find it off-putting, reprehensible, does it change anybody's vote? Are there voters who were going to vote one way and, because they feel badly about this, they're going to vote another? Or does it just make already convinced people on either side even more convinced...
MARK SHIELDS: I think it does two things. I think it reaches a tipping point for certain people who had skepticism or doubts about the war, the president, the stewardship of the Republican Party, Tom DeLay, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Bob Ney, the other scandals. I think this just kind of says, "Well, wait a minute. It is so rotten to the core."
I think, at the same time, the most intense, and energetic, and enthusiastic supporters of the Republican Party have been the religious conservatives. They're the ones, the foot soldiers. They've done the hard work. This is a body blow to them; this is demoralizing and dispiriting to them. It's going to be tough for them, "Gee, we're really -- you know, we're the good guys in this."
When you look at it and you just go around and talk to people, you do find this intense alarm. This country is filled with people whose kids are on IM all hours of the night. You have no idea what's going on, what they're saying.
Damage control
RAY SUAREZ: Well, the efforts at getting a handle on this, the efforts at beginning the assessment, the damage control, how are the Republican leadership doing?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, like I say, so far, I'm sort of with Mark on the seriousness of it. So far, there's no evidence of it, if you look at the key races. As I say, there's no movement.
Nonetheless, I do think, when you look at it and you just go around and talk to people, you do find this intense alarm. This country is filled with people -- including myself -- whose kids are on IM all hours of the night. You have no idea what's going on, what they're saying.
I often say to candidates, "You know, if you go out in the country and you say, 'I will outlaw IMing after 10 p.m., you will win. I don't care what else you stand for; you will get parents supporting you." Because people, they've built this shell for themselves, their home and their family, but things are coming in outside the shell -- IM, cable TV, all this other stuff -- that they're really worried about.
And so the party, in the long run, that can speak to this concern -- as Bill Clinton did quite well -- the party that can do that will have a long-term effect. So I'm not sure, you know, what Hastert did or didn't do. That's not the key issue. The key issue is Foley and the act, and what it says about the party.
Is it a party that's lost its moral bearings? Is this a party that's at the end of its reign? You know, I covered British politics at the end of the Conservative Party's reign after more than a decade. At the end, they had scandals coming out of everywhere. And it was a sense they've just run their course.
So to me, like with Mark, this really feels like something that's going to shift opinion, but so far it hasn't shown up.
MARK SHIELDS: Let me just say I agree with David. I disagree with him on one central point, and that is how Hastert and the other handled it is crucial. It's crucial because it resonates with institutions in our society, beginning with the Catholic bishops, including the United Way, including Hewlett-Packard and other companies.
When there's an allegation of serious wrongdoing, the initial impulse is to protect and preserve the power of the institution, not to remedy the injustice or the disservice, in this case, to children. I mean, they were more interested in preserving their own power, it appears, than they were in protecting children under their own charge. I mean, that's a very serious charge.
[...]
"And among them they're four fathers.
"Among them, they have 11 children.
"And not one of them ever responded to this report of a 52-year-old man making overtures, direct sexual overtures to pages, to teenage pages, under the care and protection of the House of Representatives the way a parent would."
Mark Shields says it all. Especially for me, as a parent of a beautiful young woman, about whom I've heard the most disgusting sexist remarks that have made me feel more and more protective of her.
Before all this, every parent would have been thrilled if his/her child were selected to be a page. I know I would have. But now?
An afterthought: In the 1960s, I was a page in the Washington state legislature. It was thrilling for me since I was already a political junkie, and I greatly admired the Lincolnesque, statesman-like legislator who selected me.
Then there was the afternoon that I was riding the Senate elevator, and an old fat senator grabbed my tush and felt me. Sad to say, it's what I remember most about my days as a page.
Back then -- before feminism was a movement that touched most women's lives -- it never, ever occurred to me to complain. I never even told my mother. I just lived with it. But it bothered me so much for so long. It tainted my view of politicians and politics. And that shouldn't have been the case.
The pages "hit on" by Mark Foley suffered even more indignities than I. And I know it will eat at them for a long time to come. That is so wrong.
And those four fathers should have protected them. But they didn't care enough about those children in whose care their parents had entrusted them. Shame on them all.