Passing the Joe Buck
Nick Gillespie | October 4, 2006, 7:45am
The Cincinnati Enquirer reports on perpetually tanned Rep. John Boehner's (R-Ohio--or perhaps a planet closer to the Sun than Earth) fan dance around oversight for the Foley situation. Boehner, one may recall, is House Majority Leader, which is no small deal, especially for a guy who won that position promising reform and all that jazz. Reports the Enquirer:
Boehner told WLW that Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., told him of Foley's contact with the page earlier this year "in passing" on the House floor but that no specifics were mentioned, so "the conversation didn't raise any alarms."
Boehner said he spoke to [Speaker of the House Dennis "Coach"] Hastert about it and was told "it had been taken care of."
"In my position, it's in his corner. It's his responsibility. The clerk of the House, who runs the page program, the page board, all report to the speaker, and I believed it had been dealt with," Boehner said.
A few hours later, Boehner rebuffed the Washington Times' call for Hastert to resign in a letter to the editor, saying "no one in the leadership, including Speaker Hastert, had any knowledge of the warped and sexually explicit instant messages."
OK. So Boehner had learned of Foley's behavior, but there was no reason for alarm, and in any case, he had already told Hastert about it (because, really, there was no reason for alarm), and it's Hastert's responsibility anyway, or maybe Rodney Alexander's, not that any of the GOP leadership had ever heard about any of this anyway, right?
More, including Hastert's deep musings on Rush Limbaugh's radio show about why someone might "drop" the F-Bomb on "last day of the session before we adjourn in an election year," here.
It's not exactly clear what effect the Foley scandal will have on the midterm elections (and there's something disturbing to me about reducing an abuse of power story to a political horse-race story), but this much seems certain: The Republican leadership has really responded in a way the belies their insistence on responsibility, personal, moral, fiscal, and otherwise.
Pro Libertate | October 4, 2006, 11:24am | #
James, it's a struggle for me not to just let my contempt for these people run amok. I think it's entirely possible that they can do any number of things that I find reprehensible. In fact, some of those things they do in the light of day.
My thinking here isn't that they
wouldn't cover up something like this. Rather, it seems to me that if it were really well known in Washington (even in a small circle) that Foley was engaging in this type of behavior, the GOP leadership couldn't possibly hope to keep it under wraps or to do so without getting caught in the end. An actual failure to act with full knowledge is almost as politically damaging as a cover up, too. Therefore, it makes little sense to me to believe that the leadership really understood the scope of the problem with Foley, though I have little doubt that they had some warning.
Probably, given their stupid politician way of thinking, they thought that taking Foley aside and saying, "Come on, knock it off with the pages" was sufficient. Obviously, it was not. I also got the impression from an NPR interview with some of the pages that they pretty much kept quiet, too, which might've screwed up any attempts at an informal investigation.
joe, I don't claim to know who knew how much when. I also don't mean to suggest that these jackasses would be sure to do the right thing by the pages or by anyone else. I just think it doesn't make much sense, and I think the eagerness of some to pillory the leadership for political reasons, regardless of what actually happened, is clouding the issue. Unfortunately, the truth will never completely come out, because most assuredly these same people will do whatever is necessary to cover their asses, cover up or no.
Incidentally, I agree about the pages and the interns. No way a child of mine would be allowed to be either. I had a fellowship at the White House in 1995 (and one of my roommates was a Congressional intern, incidentally) and heard a few stories and heard about what was generally accepted up there (lots of wink, wink, nudge, nudge). These jokers that we send to D.C. are far below the general standards of moral and ethical behavior to begin with. Giving them access to young interns (I'm hoping that page abuse is much, much less common) who also seem, oddly enough, disproportionately attractive compared to the general population (wonder why?) is a Bad Idea™.
Frankly, if thirty Congressmen get tossed out over this, it doesn't bother me one bit. I despise both parties, so either one controlling one house or the other makes no difference to me. Here's a question: Will there be a general investigation by Congress and/or law enforcement agencies to ensure the safety of the kids up there? And what about the interns? Why isn't it sexual harassment to treat them the way they are treated? That's not a legal question, by the way.
