Let me indulge in a little role-playing here. I’m Fred McMurray (aka Steve Douglas). I have three sons—Mike, Robbie, and Chip. They’re a handful.
Last spring I had to go to the East Coast on business and Uncle Charlie had to do some community service, so Mike was left in charge of the house and his brothers. He turned the place into a casino with Robbie as a blackjack dealer and Chip as a croupier. The police got wind of the operation, busted it, and I had to suspend the boys’ allowances to settle all the claims and fines.
Then one summer night Robbie took the VW microbus out with a bunch of friends and due to his recklessness rolled it on the Coast Highway, sending two of his pals to emergency, one into a year-long rehab, and our insurance premiums through the roof. As a dutiful dad with Hollywood writers and directors available to show me how to handle these things, I took Robbie’s driving privileges away for a year.
And in the fall Chip, the little devil, was supposed be starting roller-skating classes after school. Come to find out, he was skipping the classes and using the money I gave him for his lessons to buy airplane glue. As soon as I found out about it, I had Uncle Charley take down the boy’s pants and put the belt to his bottom. Spare the rod and you spoil the child, I say.
And now a year has come and gone. Mike said he was sorry about the casino thing and that he had learned his lesson. Robbie said he was a new man since the car crash and asked for a second chance. And Chip begged to go back to roller skating class because he knew how important it was to me. So I gave Mike the keys to the house and I gave Robbie the keys to the car and I gave Chip back the key to his skates. And before you know it, Mike was running a craps game down in the basement, Robbie rolled the new bus and killed his girlfriend, and Chip was sniffing glue again.
Every parent comes to the point where they realize their kids are either responsive to discipline or they’re not. If they are, then you know you’re well on your way to raising a reasonably responsible adult. If they are unresponsive, then you know—or should know—that the road ahead is going to be full of trouble or therapy. In either case, the hard lessons will remain to be learned.
And thus it is when the kids grow up, and they become, say, politicians. Let’s say that instead of Mike, Robbie, and Chip, we’re talking about Gary (Hart), Bill (Clinton), and Anthony (Weiner). Strip the sex out of their various misbehaviors, and we’re talking about the exact same dynamic—a risk taken, a trust betrayed, a second chance abused.
I go all the way back to Gary Hart in 1988 because that seems to mark the beginning of time when seemingly smart, attractive candidates started to get their cocks caught in sex scandals. Up until that point, Hart prototypes like the FDR and JFK pretty much operated with immunity. Only bumblers like Wilbur Mills (aka Chairman of the Powerful House Ways and Means Committee) ever got caught. I also go back to Hart because every time he appears in public my mom and I have the same debate as to whether he should’ve been president. She has remained a stalwart supporter ever since his dalliance with Donna Rice on the Monkey Business cost him his frontrunner status for the Democratic nomination and quite likely the presidency. I say that for all his abilities--which were and are considerable--he was an arrogant fool and deserved to get derailed on his way to the White House. Every time we get into this Mom and Son debate, I walk away wondering: Is Mom really more liberal than moi?
And here’s where that question takes me—acceptance of a candidate’s sexual peccadilloes really is not a litmus test of one’s liberalism. It’s simply a measure of how much you support a particular candidate. If he’s your guy (and until we get all the dirt on Niki Haley, this is not a distaff issue), you want the discussion to be about sex because it’s a win-win for you. You get to show off how tolerant and enlightened you are on the subject of sex and you get to expose what a priss your opponent is. If the subject of the scandal is not your guy, you don’t want the debate to be about sex because (a) you don’t want to be exposed as a priss and (b) you really believe the issue is something bigger, or at least less embarrassing. As the Clinton impeachment brigade would proclaim over and over again, It’s not about the sex; it’s about the lie.
Although I’m loath to throw in my lot with a bunch of craven hypocrites like Newt Gingrich, Mark Sanford, Bob Livingston, Larry Craig, Pete Domenici, Strom Thurmond they were closer to right. It wasn’t about the sex. Though it wasn’t much about the lie either--a charge which only serves to heighten the hypocrisy factor and really, really should be out of bounds for any politician to level at another.
The wrong with all these guys was no different than the wrong done by the Douglas boys. It was a betrayal of trust, but not the first trust…the second trust. The first screw-up by the boys…from Chip to Anthony…deserves a Mulligan. We are all children of the New Testament in that we have evolved to the point where we believe that everyone deserves a second chance. If the operative metaphor of the Old Testament is the story of Genesis where it’s one strike and you’re out for Adam and Eve, then the operative metaphor for the New Testament is the crucifixion, which, if I recall my Catechism correctly, is a downpayment on second chances for everybody.
Except for the fundamentalists, most of us get the importance, the reasonableness, the fairness, the humanity of giving second chances. It is a sign of our moral sophistication. It is hard to imagine running a family, a classroom, or a community without generous application of second chances.
The dilemma comes when the recipient of the second chance blows it. That’s where the real problem is for the political supporters of recidivistic bad boys. The sex is a distraction. The offending proclivity could just as easily be for drink or gambling, and the core issue would still be the same. He fucked up, was forgiven, and fucked up again, and in doing so basically said, Fuck you. That’s a troubling profile whether it’s your kid or your candidate.