Still playing games like toddlers

My e-mail in the Foley case is fascinating. It has become a picture of how we do politics in America. As details keep dribbling out of more officials who knew of questionable, inappropriate e-mails, who confronted the Florida congressman about his conduct without endangering his seat, the defenses become more elaborate and impassioned. They break down into three categories.

The first come from the part-time moralists. Call this the Coulter category. These are the highfalutin, God-fearing Christians who would be the first to be shocked and outraged were it a Democrat who behaved like this, but have no trouble dismissing the reprehensible conduct of one of their own as just some emails, and maybe even a prank. As Ann Coulter put it this week, describing it as a "scandalette": "You had one gay guy sending inappropriate instant messages. As far as we know now, there wasn't any inappropriate touching, and Foley adamantly denies it. Pretty minor scandal compared to the Democrat sex scandals." Earlier, she decried the "hysterical overreaction" by both Republicans and the media to Foley: "They think we should be wiretapping a congressman for asking a kid what he wants for his birthday." Now imagine what she would be saying if Foley were a Democrat.

The second and equally predictable response is to blame the media for telling us. Now there might be a powerful case to be made that the media did NOT do its job by sitting on this story when it should have been reporting it; that if "everyone" on Capitol Hill, or at least enough people, knew what was going on, a reporter could find out, and indeed several news organizations did know. But there are no clear rules for the media in this nether-nether world of politicians and their sex lives, and for closeted gay politicians, the rules are even more complicated. Should the press be outing gay politicians? Does it matter if their lifestyle seems to be at odds with their talking points and voting records? The desire to protect the privacy of gay politicians may have led some reporters to confuse this story, which is about abuse of power, with an outing story they did not want to do.

That, of course, is not the concern of the complainers. They want to know why it came out so close to the elections, as if it should not have come out at all.

The third and ultimately most pernicious response is also the most common. It's what your toddler would say if he fell down from the tree you had repeatedly told him not to climb. "Gerry did it." Twenty-three years ago, Massachusetts Representative Gerry Studds was censured for having sex with a male underage page and subsequently reelected. And then there's Mel Reynolds, the Illinois Representative whom Bill Clinton pardoned in 2001 after he had been convicted both of campaign finance violations and having sex with a 16-year-old girl who was volunteering with his campaign.

So on television, and in e-mails, I am inundated with reminders of the stories of Gerry and Mel, not to mention the tale of Barney Frank, whose male lover was not underage, but he fixed parking tickets for him, for what that's worth.

To which I have a simple answer: So?

What Gerry did was wrong. What Mel did was wrong. I have no idea why Bill Clinton pardoned him. I can't defend Bill Clinton's pardons. Who could? Can't we ever call a spade a spade in politics?

Do you believe in right and wrong, or tit for tat?

Is morality in politics a standard we apply across the board, or just another partisan weapon to be wielded when convenient and forgotten when not?

There is a reason Americans are increasingly cynical about politics and politicians, and this is a big part of it. Even on such a basic and fundamental issue as protecting our kids from abuse of power, we're still playing games like toddlers do.

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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