It's interesting to see all the different reasons given for supporting/bewailing Wiener's resignation. A lot of people are coming down on the pretty obvious double standard of the Republican party, what with the Repub leadership calling on Wiener to resign without having done so with, for instance, Vitter.
Others say that Wiener crossed a moral line and ought to resign, no matter what Republicans do in like circumstances, and that Dems ought to hold to a higher moral standard than the Repubs hold themselves to. Some people are saying the lying about it was what pissed them off. Well, there are cases to be made for these positions. But I think that morality is sometimes a dangerous basis for measuring fitness for public life. Follow me over the squiggle to see why.
I'm uncomfortable with some of the "higher moral standard" arguments I'm seeing here. There are a couple of reasons why. For one thing, that sort of rhetoric originated (this incarnation of it, at any rate) with the far right. Remember the "Moral Majority"? This is their kind of rhetoric. The country has been immersed in this sort of rhetoric since the '80s, so much so that it has wormed its way into the thinking of some of even the most liberal and progressive people around. We’ve come to accept as reasonable the idea that our politicians ought to be, not just models of public moral behavior, but models of private moral behavior, as well.
This is reasonable, to a certain point. I would prefer that my elected Representative not beat his wife, his kid, or his dog, or even random strangers on the street. But there comes a point where it’s just none of my damned business what he does in private, as long as he obeys the law. Beating your spouse, kid, dog, or random strangers is illegal, and I have little tolerance for that. But Wiener’s shenanigans weren’t illegal; they were silly, foolish, and likely hurtful to his wife. He deserves to be the butt of jokes for years to come. He deserves to have his wife kick him out of the house, if she feels it necessary. He didn’t, in my opinion, deserve to be forced to resign his seat. Why? Because his failing was a private one, not a public one. Because I believe that a person with deep, personal flaws can still adequately represent his constituents in public life. Because I suspect that everybody has deep, personal flaws, and if we start pointing fingers at others, we're going to get them pointed back at us.
Intrusion into other people's private lives isn't a progressive value; it's a conservative value. Despite all their talk about "freedom" and "liberty" and "Big gubb'mint takin' away our rights", the social conservative politicians’ actions have been, as we have seen since the last election at both the state and federal levels, to require greater government intrusion into people's private lives. And, if you'll notice, they tend to use "morality" arguments to publicly justify that intrusion. I won't go in to their private justifications - that's a whole 'nother kettle of diaries. Morality arguments in politics are a rhetorical tool used to shut the other side down by casting them as the Other. The Other is never merely wrong, the Other is evil, and deserves to be cast out from the company of right-thinking folks. Applying morality arguments to Wiener’s jackassery plays directly into the hands of Republicans. As a Democrat, I like to avoid doing that whenever possible.
This lead to the second reason I'm uncomfortable with morality arguments: It encourages bitch-slap politics. It was Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall that coined the phrase "Bitch-slap Politics". He was referring to the way Republicans dealt with Democrats during the Kerry campaign, attacking him because he wouldn't adequately defend himself. It was effective. It was so effective, that Republicans are still using bitch-slap politics today. They've widened their scope beyond national security issues to, well, everything. They do it by attacking liberal ideas and ideals through organized and coordinated verbal assaults, dismissive rhetoric, and eliminationist language. And, for the most part, Dems fall for it every time. We've come to expect the bitch-slap, and, like an abused spouse, we've been conditioned to think we deserve it. We've even convinced ourselves that not hitting back shows that we occupy the moral high ground. But, sometimes, fighting fire with fire is the right thing to do.
Maybe hitting back isn’t a good idea every time; such decisions require finesse and a connection to non-Beltway reality, something the Dem leadership sometimes lacks. But not hitting back isn’t getting us anywhere. Republicans used the bitch-slap in their demands that Wiener resign, that other politicians give back the money they got from his PAC, that he be stripped of his committee seats. And they did it with a straight face. The Dem leadership, for their own personal or strategic reasons, bought into the Republican framing of Wiener’s actions, and lost a useful attack dog. They accepted the bitch-slap, and conformed to the Republican double standard that says what the gods get away with, the cows don’t (and guess which party is the cow!)
I don’t know about you, but I’m a little bored with that double standard; I’d like to try something different, for a change. Maybe something like calling them on their bullshit in a unified Democratic voice. (Yeah, yeah, I know: herding cats and all that. But I can dream, can’t I?) At the very least, I would like to try not accepting the next bitch-slap the Republicans deliver to us. I don’t mean by being whiney-asses about those mean ol’ Republicans pickin’ on us; I mean by believing strongly enough in our ideals that we can return a punch for each one they throw at us.
In my opinion, this whole Anthony Wiener thing has been an exaggerated, over-blown tempest in a teacup. In my opinion, the Dems did not respond well. They played into Republican provocations, and Republican expectations, and made themselves look weak. What Wiener did wasn’t illegal. Any trespasses against morality occurred to his wife, not his constituents. Personally, I don't think Wiener ought to have resigned. His constituents are apparently unfazed by all the hoo-rah, and that's really the bottom line as far as I’m concerned; YMMV. He didn't break the law (unlike Vitter), he was just a fool and a jackass and an idiot. But if those are reasons to resign, nobody would be sitting in Congress today.