Moral Hazards
As I sit here listening to two congressmen on Inside Politics drone on about how we must restore civility to politics (now that the GOP controls all branches of government) I'm experiencing one of those rare times when I truly understand why people become Republicans. It's because they have political instincts and we don't. If you are a political animal that is a very compelling trait.
Here is a pretty good example of how the right blogosphere is treating the Manchurian Beefcake story --- from Jonah Goldberg :
Until Jordan quit on Friday, the lefty bloggers were dancing around the victory fire chanting in triumph over bagging this Jeff Gannon guy from Talon News. I'm extending this metaphor too far, I'm sure, but their celebration makes me wonder how so many brave warriors can eat their fill off the carcass of a chipmunk. I confess that at first I thought this sounded like a real story. But it's turned out to be more than a little sad.
Paraphrasing a comment I read somewhere yesterday (apologies to the author) "pay no attention to the naked gay conservative male prostitute sitting in the middle of the family values white house living room." Goldberg affects a jocular dismissiveness for a reason. He knows what a real story is and he knows how they work. And he is trivializing this one because it is actually quite dangerous.
Meanwhile, on the left we have much handwringing by commenters over this not being a "gay" story and how we should concentrate on the national security angle and how it's really about access etc, etc. We too are ignoring the naked, gay conservative prostitute in the midde of the family values white house living room. And this is where they get us.
Perhaps it would be instructive to take another little trip down memory lane. Jonah knows very well what a real story is because he was up to his ears in one of the biggest political sex scandals in history. From Michael Isifkoff's award winning MSM articles on the Lewinsky affair:
There was another guest at Jonah Goldberg's house in the Adams Morgan section of Washington that day. For some months, Newsweek's Isikoff had been in touch with Tripp – "hounding" her, Goldberg claims. Aware that Isikoff knew of rumors that Clinton was having an affair with a former White House staffer, Goldberg suggested to Tripp that she play the tapes for Isikoff. Uncomfortable with the whole taping process, Isikoff declined to listen and left Goldberg's house.
In their many phone conversations that fall, Lewinsky complained to Tripp that she was being neglected by the president... By the fall of 1997, Lewinsky was complaining that Clinton's ardor for her seemed to be cooling. He wasn't calling her much, and he rarely returned her increasingly frantic calls. Lewinsky was restless and bored at the Defense Department.
Isikoff listened later, needless to say. So did the entire country. That little meeting at Jonah's house led to the impeachment of the President of the United States. They came this close to forcing him from office. Goldberg and the entire GOP establishment knew without doubt that they had a story and they were not afraid to lead the media to it by the nose. And just look at what an oozing chunk of soap opera tabloid offal it was.
Fast forward seven short years. We have a man whose biggest cheers on the campaign trail in 2000 were when he would solemnly swear that he would "bring honor and integrity back to the White House" --- and everybody knew very well that he was talking about fellatio in the oval office. After his recent reelection in 2004, stories abounded about how the issues of moral values, the impact of evangelical Christians and, most importantly, the movement to allow gays to marry had tipped the balance in what was a very close election. Now we find out that a conservative gay male prostitute was given highly unusual access to that same family values white house. There isn't a story there?
I hear endless braying about how the Democrats have to "fight back." And yet... we just don't seem to to have the heart to play the raw political game they play.
A Republican's political instincts would tell them instantly that this Manchurian Beefcake story presents an amazingly fertile opportunity to take the Bush White House off message in a way that they clearly despise, sow dissension within the GOP coalition, mitigate a growing moral hazard and most of all, make Republicans around the country examine once again whether their attitudes about gays are really what they think they are.
Number one, it is always a good thing to knock a white house off its message. To do it when the press secretary himself is involved, or seems to be, is even better. In shark infested political waters life doesn't get any better than making phony family values hucksters endlessly repeat phrases like "we didn't know he was a prostitute." First rule --- make them talk about stuff they don't want to talk about. It's very difficult to get them started, but if you get the media lemmings running in the right direction they'll do it.
Second, didn't the religious right just threaten Bush with witholding its support if he backed down on gay marriage? And didn't the president then dutifully put it in the SOTU? Clearly, after Bush declared his support for civil unions and backed off the FMA after the election, the Christian Right is a little bit nervous about his bona fides on the issue. When Kerry and Edwards mentioned that Mary Cheney was a lesbian, a widely known fact, they were attacked in the most bizarre campaign kabuki in memory because the Republicans know that there is a huge chasm in their party developing on this issue. Lynn and Dick are like a lot of Republicans out there --- they have gay family members. And only the most hard core authoritarians like Alan Keyes are willing to disown them for it. (Listen to Lynn Cheney twist herself into a pretzel and then get angry when she's pressed on it here.)
This is an issue that threatens the GOP.The cosmopolitan conservatives and libertarians don't have a problem with gays and yet The Christian Right is building a homophobic crusade. A lot of people in the middle don't know what to think. A party with political instincts would exploit that. It's not a new concept I'm advocating here. It's called "divide and conquor." The Right blogosphere sounds like a bunch of San Francisco ACLU liberals when the issue of Gannon comes up and the smart thing for the left to do is ask the Christian right if they agree with their fellow "conservatives." (I believe that Aravosis has already discussed this.)
It wouldn't be nice and wingnuts will call us hypocrites. (It's a good thing hypocrisy was retired from the political dialog somewhere around the time Virtues "Czar" Big Bill Bennett was laying it all on red, Dave Drier was "dating" Doro Bush and Limbaugh was popping a fistfull of hillbilly heroin or we might have something to worry about.) When the wingnuts complain about how we hate gays, just say "No I don't. And clearly, neither do you. But James Dobson does. Let's go have a chat with him, ok?"
It might just force some of these chickenshit libertarians and GOP urbanites to show their true colors and get some GOP parents and siblings of gay people to face up to what they are doing. Can anyone believe that there is no value in showing the country that many of the highest level Republicans in the Bush Administration are actually quite tolerant of gays? Doesn't that move our agenda forward?
I don't believe that we advance the cause of gay rights by allowing the right to have it both ways, which they clearly do. We have a tittilating tabloid story, replete with nude pictures and prostitution, that illustrates the fact that they are merely pandering to the religious right on this issue. It would be too bad if we are too squeamish to pursue it because that is exactly what the other side is counting on.
Finally, the biggest reason to pursue this story is because we are creating a terrible moral hazard if we don't. The Republicans have no incentive to stop the politics of personal destruction if we don't hold them to their own standards and they continue to be rewarded. Pitchers, batters and Republicans understand this instinctively. So should we.
When I read things like this, I just despair. Folks we can put on a better show than this, we really can.
Update: And if anybody wants to know why this really, really matters beyond partisan politics and jockeying for power, I think Rude Pundit gets it right.
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