Foley and Studds

How should the until-recently-forgotten Gerry Studds scandal affect how we address the not-soon-forgotten Mark Foley scandal?

Gerry Studds was a long-time member of Congress from Massachusetts when it was disclosed in 1983 that he had had sex a decade earlier with a 17-year old male page. A back-bench Republican named Newt Gingrich raised a stink, demanding that the two members be tossed from the House for their behavior. But Newt was a lonely voice, and with Illinois Republican Rep. Dan Crane (who had three years earlier had sex with a 17-year old female page), Studds was censured by the Democratically-controlled House. He went on to be re-elected five more times. (Crane was not so fortunate, losing his re-election bid.)

Which brings us back to Mark Foley. Exactly what he did with which pages remains unclear, but he got out the scandal's first blossom. The Republican leadership and its allies, thrashing about (think: drowning man) for a line of defense to extricate themselves from Foley, have resurrected Studds as a way to drag the Democrats down into the moral muck.

From Saturday's New York Times:

Talk radio hosts, working off a list of talking points distributed by Republican Party officials, recounted how two decades ago, House Democrats stood behind Representative Gerry E. Studds, Democrat of Massachusetts, after he engaged in sex with a male page.

What's missing is the "therefore." As in: "20 years ago Gerry Studds got off and then got off, therefore" ...what? Is the argument that because Studds (and, oh yeah, Crane) got a slap on the wrist two decades ago the same should happen to Foley, or by proxy any leaders who may have been negligent regarding his predations? Or is it that because 20 years ago the House was soft on perversion, the same should hold true this time? (The censure vote, by the way, was 421-3 for both Crane and Studds.)

For the record, the House was wrong 23 years ago. And what that has to do with whatever mistakes were made in this scandal remains yet another mystery.

UPDATE: For more on this, I commend you to RJ Eskow's excellent post.