Many of us wish Bill Clinton had not not had sexual relations with Miss Lewinsky, but that episode has nothing to do with Mark Foley's solicitation of underage male Congressional pages and the apparent cover-up of his misbehavior by the Republican leadership. (And if Reynolds, the head of the NRCC, was alerted, can you believe that no one thought to tell Karl Rove?)
The contemptible misadventures of Representatives Dan Crane and Gerry Studds two decades ago will also be sanctimoniously deplored by all right-thinking people on either side of the aisle, but, again, they have nothing to do with the present case, unless you are arguing that the Congressional wrist-slap they got back in those bad old days is the appropriate action for the current Speaker and Republican majority to take in whatever page-solicitation or abuse cases have been happening on their watch and, evidently--for some disputed period of time--with their complicity. Is that what you are arguing?
George Soros may be a traitor for spending his money to oppose the Grandiose Old Perverts, but as terrible as that is it really doesn't have anything to do with Foley's--or Hastert's--misbehavior.
Dick Morris...well, if you insist on throwing Dick Morris from the back of your speeding truck, that's okay with us. That's a nice bipartisan touch.
We are apparently condemned to repeat our history (Viet Nam; Watergate), as well as spin and distort it in a desperate attempt to obfuscate present culpability and to keep the less bright voters (somebody's base) safely confused and frightened, but there's another juicy historical episode back a little further than Clinton, Crane, and Studds that is worth pausing to remember and, depending on what kind of person you are, to feel nauseated by, or savor (or both).
Harry Daugherty, after failing many times to win various public offices in Ohio, became the campaign manager for an amiable mediocrity (wouldn't even an amiable mediocrity be an improvement?) named Warren Gamaliel Harding. Daugherty positioned the very dark horse Harding to come out of the proverbial smoke-filled room at Chicago's Blackstone Hotel as the compromise candidate of the Republican national convention in 1920. Harding's only qualification to be President was that he looked presidential (and wouldn't even that be an improvement?), but, perhaps because women were voting for the first time, that was enough. (He did voice his support for Women's Suffrage, though, as a Senator more assiduous about poker and golf than government business, he missed the vote on the amendment. On the other hand, he did vote for Prohibition, but he kept the White House well furnished with bootleg liquor. Republican hypocrisy is part of the history we're condemned to repeat with dreary frequency.)
In a famous "front-porch" campaign, with lots of Hollywood and tycoon support, the conservative, laissez-faire Harding bloviated (one of his favorite words--how appropriate Bill O'Reilly has embraced it) his way to a landslide over the progressive Democratic Cox-FDR ticket to become our 29th President. Many have believed him to be clearly the worst President we ever had and have been truly surprised to see that distinction so easily smirked away from him.
Harding appointed many of his friends, his "Ohio gang," to important positions in his administration. Harry Daugherty, whose clever machinations had made possible his victory, became his Attorney General.
When Daugherty moved to Washington to take up his duties, he brought with him a boyhood friend and former haberdasher named Jess Smith. The two men set up house together on H Street, a soon-to-be-notorious spot which Daugherty called "the love nest." In The Ohio Gang, a very entertaining account of this quintessential American Republican story, Charles L. Mee, Jr. reports on the nature of the Daugherty-Smith relationship:
"If Jess lingered too long in [Ohio], Harry would begin to send telegrams asking him to come back, saying that he missed Jess and needed him. Harry had trouble sleeping without Jess in the same room--just as Jess had trouble sleeping unless someone were in the same room with him."
The love nest on H Street was a center of power in the Harding administration, where the movers and shakers met to do the government's business, both licit and il. Jess, who didn't have any particular political experience or talent, was apparently in charge of the bootlegging bribery department. In May, 1923, when the rumors about Jess had reached even the President's ear and this particular nexus of Republican family values was about to implode, Jess heard that he was going to be dumped and sent back to Ohio. Instead, he bought a pistol, went home (he and Daugherty were now living at the Wardman Park Hotel), thoughtfully put his head in an iron waste-basket, and blew his brains out.
Harding was famous for mangling the language, a propensity exacerbated by his insistence on writing his own speeches. He meant to say "normality" for instance, when he first spoke of a "return to normalcy," but he liked the sound of his own word better. (What difference does that make, really? A simple, arrogant, ignorant mispronunciation is nothing to go nukyaler about.) When Harding died, E. E. Cummings observed that "The only man, woman, or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead." But what this poor, amiable, beleaguered, overmatched, foolish fellow had to say about the great ordeal of his time in office is as clear and concise as it is heartfelt. One can imagine other beleaguered, overmatched, language-mangling, foolish Presidents gnashing their teeth and saying the same thing:
"My God, this is a hell of a job! I have no trouble with my enemies, but my damn friends, my God-damned friends... they're the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!"
What has this got to do with anything? Is this little bit of history more or less relevant than Clinton, Crane, and Studds? Is our breaking news about to break in this direction?
We report, you decide.
(Those interested in further research into the Republican greed, sex, and corruption scandals of a more innocent era will enjoy Mee's book. Also, Nicholas von Hoffman has a wonderful unproduced play, Wurr'n, which brings all this vividly to life and should be seen by voters before the next Presidential election. I wish that traitor Soros would stop turning on the light in the tenement kitchen of the Republican House, so they all have to scurry and duck for cover just when they need to be presenting a much different aspect to the voters; why doesn't he produce a good smart funny political play instead?)