Roy Maynard: Early Returns

I'm going to walk a very fine line here. I want to examine the political scandal surrounding U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, without taking a position on his guilt or innocence, or whether he's gay, or even whether being gay is right or wrong.

Instead, I want to look at the structure of the scandal, and thereby answer a question that I'm hearing over and over again, particularly on talk radio: Why the double standard?

Why is the Democratic Party - the party that celebrates Barney Frank and Bill Clinton - decrying Craig after his alleged encounter in that Minneapolis airport? And why did members of the Republican Party call for his resignation, if he's one of their most conservative members?

I can answer that. Craig's political career ended with his resignation on Saturday because he committed the one sin we can all agree on: hypocrisy.

We live in a relativistic age. Almost everything is open for debate and interpretation. Morality, in particular, is a moving target.

Most people are increasingly uncomfortable using the words "right" and "wrong." One person's "wrong" might not be his neighbor's "wrong." We no longer share a single point of reference for those terms.

So darts directed toward Craig are blunted. Instead of saying what he's accused of doing is wrong, we use words like "trust" and "dishonesty."

For example, the Idaho Statesman's editorial calling for his resignation is very carefully worded:

"We cannot abide an elected official who didn't disclose a lewd conduct arrest until the story broke 77 days later - a lie by omission and a violation of the public trust."

So it's not the lewd conduct that's the problem, according to the Statesman. It was the lie by omission and the violation of the public trust. That way, the newspaper doesn't have to take a position on whether some conduct is, in fact, lewd.

The newspaper continues, "We cannot afford, as a state with but four congressional representatives, to have a senator who merely provides fodder for bloggers and late-night talk show hosts."

In other words, he should step down not because he's bad, but because he is embarrassing. It's not about his behavior; it's about how his behavior makes some people feel.

The paper's final statement is the corker: "Worse still, Craig's credibility has eroded within the power structure in Washington, D.C."

So he's no longer useful. That's even worse than embarrassing and untrustworthy.

Do not blame just the liberal media for dogged relativism. Even Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain couldn't bring himself to call Craig's actions a sin.

"My opinion is that when you plead guilty to a crime, you shouldn't serve (in Congress)," McCain said last week. "That's not a moral stand. That's not a holier-than-thou. It's just a factual situation."

I agree. It's not a moral stand. A moral stand would require a fixed moral reference point; that sort of thing is terribly out of fashion at the moment.

But hypocrisy is something else altogether. It's the last surviving sin, because it requires no fixed moral reference point. We don't have to say "what you did was wrong," and thereby imply that some things are wrong.

Instead, we can say "what you did was wrong, according to your own standards." We don't have to judge someone's actions; we can let them judge themselves.

That's the stand columnist Susan Estrich took on Thursday.

"Then there's the matter of lying," she wrote. "Sen. Craig jumped all over former President Clinton as being 'bad, nasty and naughty' for having a consensual affair in his office with an adult woman and then lying about it."

Matthew Arnold said that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. It's also the last remaining sin we can agree on. That's why Craig's career is at an end.


Early Returns is the political observations column of staff writer Roy Maynard, who can be reached at 903-596-6291 or at roymaynardtmt@gmail.com.

Roy Maynard
()