I don't really have a cat in this fight. I live in another state. I enjoy Anthony Weiner's foreceful rhetoric on behalf of causes I agree with, but I have worried that they are not constructive for anything more than boosting our side's sometime sagging morale.
I can understant why his colleagues in my party's caucus would like for him to disappear.
But it would be a bad thing for him to resign for an assortment of reasons.
1. It will in no way appease the rightest hate machine. Quite the contrary. It will be said with some evidence that the only sexual impulses the Dems punish are heterosexual ones. It will draw greater focus on the claims against Barney Frank several years ago, and the "standing ovation" given to Gerry Studds. The general and I think willful mischaracterization of sexual harassment by the right will also add weight to the characterization that the women of the House are man-haters. It was up to Speaker Pelosi to, I think rightly, call for an investigation of his claim that no public property was involved with anything beyond lying to reporters on federal property. This, unfortunately, will fuel that man-hating argument no matter how unfounded it is. (A party that could claim Obama has raised taxes, that Hillary had her one-time law partner killed and that Billy Carter tilted US foreign policy toward Moamar Qaddafi will misrepresent just about anything.) It is important that resignation only be justified by its merits or in-district politics rather than the politics of the House dem caucus.
2. U.S. Reps are directly responsible to their constituents, more so than anyone else in Washington. His district has the opportunity in a year to dump him. It is their call. He is not a just-relected senator who wrote his his diary that he could no longer play bridge with a particular woman because her breasts distracted him from paying attention to her bid. He is not a cabinet member who was discovered to have sold mineral rights on federal lands to key lobbyists. He is not a Supreme Court Justice. More than anywhere else in Washington, the democratic republican process needs to be allowed to play out for House members except in clear cases that merit resignation or sanction.
The merit case can be broken down to two questions. Does the tawdry sexual stuff merit quitting? Does the lying about it for 10 days merit quitting?
3. The sex stuff boils down, I think, to this. Guy when he was single found it fun to have online relationships with "six" women of age but significantly younger than him. Some pictures and IMs were exchanged. His courtship and marriage did not end this pracice. You want to conclude that this was masturbation fodder? Fine, conclude that too. In the spectrum of sexual misdeeds, this is pretty dumb. I might feel differently if he met any of the women. I might feel differently if there was some hypocrisy involved, for instance if he associated himself with policing the Internet or had at some point been a prosecutor. But even in the latter case, I don't see a parallel with former Gov. and state AG. Spitzer. Paying hookers is against the law. Flirting on the internet isn't. And there is nothing to suggest anything like the John Ensign matter, in which a Senator (less directly accountable to constituents because of term length) had a physical (in same room) relatinoship with an aide (federal employee) and involved other senators (l.d.a.t.c.b.o.t.l.) to raise money (illegal fundraising?) to pay off the spouse (somewhere in spectrum from bribery to extortion). Nor pretty much any other "scandal" short of that Lee guy quitting over a Craig's list picture.
4. Lee shouldn't have quit, and his quitting had more to do with viability within a party tyat is pretty much in denial about most things sexual.
5. The lying. What are we talking about here? There are two issues, and one is pretty indirect. I'l get to it in item 6. The main issue: What is the level of offense that Weiner lied for 10 days to members of the news media about a sexual matter? We have heard that Clinton lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky was a big deal, but there was at least a suggestion of perjury there since he lied in a deposition in a civil case. I don't think it qualified as percury as I (as a layman) understand the law, but it was a different situation. Let's focus on CNN, as he lied to Dana Bash in her CNN role, I think the guy he called a jackass was working for the network, and he more definitively lied to Wolf Blitzer. Get over yourselfs, guys. You are asking a guy pretty much about flirting and at most masturbating. This isn't even up to the standards of feeling entitled to know about what goes on in his bedroom. One thing we learned, I think, during a discussion of Clinton's lie is that the Talmud excuse you to lie about sexual matters, if for no other reason to prevent embarassing the woman in question. In modern terms, my first wife knew two or three women I found attractive, was fine with knowing that, but I sure as hell wasn't going to tell her if I ever fantacized about one of them while sexually engaged with her. I don't propose to tell anyone else either. Ask me if I was thinking about [ female vocalist's name redacted ] while having sex either with her or my second wife, and I'm not even going to go the "none of your business" route. I'm going to lie to you. If I was, and I'm not saying I was. This is junenile stuff on both sides. But the bigger point: I could pick what I'd call a lie out of just about any interview Wolf does. Most of them are allowed to slide because of the club rules. I'd even argue that any question Wolf asks that involves accepting on face value something Wolf knows not to be true is also a lie. The other part of this, 10 days. Woop de doo. Ten days. Only an assistant principal in charge of discipline should think 10 days is any time at all. It only seemed to last an eternity because of the play it was given. That isn't Weiner's problem. Seventy five years between the tsar tumbling and democratic elections in Russia is a blip. One election cycle in which some distinctly red or blue districts go the other direction because of an outside issue is a blip. Ten days is a stan from a droplet from a blip.
6. The one thing that remains is whether Weiner's claim of being hacked and the association publication of the first picture had with Andrew Breitbart harmed Breitbart. This is more serious. I loathe Breitbart, but I think he was wronged. Did this rise to the level of defamation? That isn't as clear. Among other things, those of us who don't like him learned during the week following the first photo's publication that, a) his sources are even sleazier, and b), he was willing to briefly pull back from the clear stalking that had been going on of the young women in question. He got the vindation of apology in a timely fashion. And frankly came out of the whole thing in better shape than he went in. This isn't cut and dried enough to violate going with item 2, that the constituents get to decide.
7, and this might be an overriding 7. I am sick to death of a culture that somehow elevates sins of the libido to have greater consequences than the others among the Seven Deadlies. I'm hurt more by politicians' greed, by the media's sloth, by the GOP's anger, by the marketing world's encouragement of gluttony and envy, than I am by a politician's lechery. (I leave out pride because pride, traditionally, is considered the gateway sin for the other six.) This is a big deal mostly because commercial television knows it can arrouse a viewer's interest with the mention of sex. We hear, from I'm sure a well researched report on teen abuse of prescription and OTC drugs, not bout making meth from Claritin-D or pocketing mom or dad's Valium or selling one's ADD meds. CNN focused on calling a mashup of extasy and Viagra "sextasy." Celebrity stories on Paris Hilton seem to always touch on the video her boyfriend or someone sold. Lyndie England became the symbol for the abuses of Abu Ghraib because the higher-ranking MP she allowed to impregnate her also took pictures of her sexually humiliating POWs. Clinton is impeached for lying about an affair in a civil suit about another affair, but nothing was done other than the voters choosing not to reelect the elder Bush when the facts about Iran-Contra emerged. This is wrong, and although I don't think it is going to be reversed, Weiner's case would be a good place to begin to reverse. it.