It's a Small World

Jeff's post below got me thinking about the mindset that has infected the idea of public service.

What do Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have in common? Well, other than the fact that they're both Republicans whom the fates decreed would share the date of August 27, 2007, as turning points in their lives, it would seem not a lot. But it turns out they do.

Senator Craig discovered that his attempt to make his disorderly conduct arrest in Minneapolis go away by paying a fine and not hiring a lawyer was a huge mistake. (Lesson #1 in D.C. is that you don't order a sandwich without hiring a lawyer.) It worked for a while; the arrest happened almost two months ago and he paid up three weeks ago. But he had to know that this wasn't going to stay under wraps forever, and now he has to face the wrath of the right wing he's been so loyal to, and the scorn and schadenfreude of the rest of us who have added yet another proponent of "family values" to the list of those you wouldn't want to bump into in a public restroom. His clumsy attempt to cover it up was even more embarrassing than his klutzy attempt to hook up in a bathroom stall. Wide stance indeed.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales thought that his attempts to politicize the Justice Department by his own design or at the impetus of the White House would also go unnoticed. After all, the theory goes, the goal of the Justice Department is to ensure that there is peace and security throughout the country, and the only way to make sure of that is to secure a permanent Republican majority. After all, they are the party of the Rule of Law, a Republican president is never wrong, and anyone who isn't with them is a potential terrorist, even those who believe in such quaint things as the Geneva Convention and the Bill of Rights. So naturally Mr. Gonzales took steps to guarantee that majority: appoint right-minded lawyers with the right voting records and resumes and purge anyone who showed a sign of weakness or evenhandness when dealing with Democrats. But these things must be done delicately, and Mr. Gonzales's ineptitude and, to be charitable, his forgetfulness made it impossible for even the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to trust him.

I frankly don't care if Senator Craig is homosexual. That's his business and no one should be demonized because of their sexual orientation. That's not the issue. The issue is that he has consistently voted against the interests and well-being of LGBT citizens:

* Voted YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. (Jun 2006)
* Voted NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes. (Jun 2002)
* Voted NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. (Jun 2000)
* Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage. (Sep 1996)
* Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation. (Sep 1996)

That displays either a callous lack of feeling toward people with whom he shares a vested interest or it's a hypocritical attempt to ensure his longevity as a politician. Either way, it's a rotten way to serve the people who elected him. And if he is tortured by his homosexual orientation, he needs to deal with that in private and seek help in other ways than by inflicting his guilt trip on the laws of the country...or hanging around public toilets.

The overriding impression is that neither of these men seemed to be aware of their surroundings. Larry Craig may not be a household name, but he's still a senator and he had to know that trying to hook up with some guy in a public toilet was a tremendous risk. (Though, perhaps, for him that's part of the thrill. Some people get revved up by the idea of that sort of thing.) And Mr. Gonzales had to know that someone was going to say something about firing eight of your own appointees less than two years into their terms. Even if you buy the argument that there were "performance issues," what does that say about the hiring process to begin with? And if he didn't know -- or didn't care -- that his performance in testimony was going to be checked and re-checked, then what does it say about his ability to enforce the laws or even show up to work with his shoes on the right feet? It also shows a complete selfishness in advancing the cause of public service by driving good people out of the Justice Department and giving a bad name to the rest who work there with no thought to the politics involved and who only want to do their job.

Both of these men got what they deserved because they betrayed the trust we bestowed on them. One did it for purely personal reasons; the other did it for purely political reasons, yet neither of them thought about the consequences of their actions, or if they did, they didn't care. It does prove the theory that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, but we the people are the ones who got screwed.

Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.