Todd is correct on this one -- Vitter comes across as a whiny-ass titty baby, while his wife fares much better, reminding the public that every marriage goes through rough patches, and reminding the media of the effect of this relentless circus on the couple's children -- both very legitimate points, were it not for the fact that Vitter himself has not been above using his children as political props:
It's one thing to take your children on the campaign trail, or even to show them in a campaign ad. It's quite another one to make them the primary focus of an ad campaign. Once you choose to put them on national television as vocal, featured campaign shills, you've lost the ability to shield them from political fallout. And once you position yourself as a "family values" candidate or representative, "protecting" your marriage from Teh Gayz and demanding that another philanderer resign his office, you've lost that ability to "protect your children." It's Wendy Vitter's choice to forgive her husband and move on. But if she wants to be angry at someone for the pain all this has caused her children, she might look at the overgrown child standing next to her at this press conference yesterday, who is clearly not at all sorry for what he did, just very, very sorry he got caught.
Last Friday, E.J. Dionne called for a moratorium on outing Republican hypocrites:
For liberals, there's something satisfying in demonstrating that the sex lives of certain right-wing moral crusaders turn out to be less than exemplary. It's certainly an outrage when straight politicians who deplore homosexuality as an affront to the sanctity of marriage and the family take a less than sacred view of their own responsibilities.
But if we are to get out of this habit of destroying the distinctions between public and private lives, liberals need to give the conservative hypocrites a break.
We should acknowledge that the outing process is erratic and leaves many falls from grace safely shielded from public view. We should also admit that we are tougher on the moral flaws of politicians who belong to a party other than our own.
The essential point, however, is that believing in a wall between the public and the private makes you a traditionalist, not a libertine. The traditionalist embraces a strict moral code but sees it as best enforced in the personal realm. We should judge public figures by how they meet their public responsibilities, and leave it to spouses, pastors, children and friends to praise or punish their private behavior.
Dionne has a point about this focus on private behavior being a distraction from the work of the nation. And besides, philandering politicians are nothing new, and there SHOULD be a wall between the public and the private -- for everyone. But that very wall is the reason why Mr. Dionne and I part company at that point. Because politicians like David Vitter, who would stick their noses into the bedrooms of other American citizens, have lost the right to have the media's nose kept out of their own. This is a man who voted against education and contraceptives to reduce teen pregnancy. This is a man who voted yes on banning family planning funding in the U.S. and abroad. This is a man who voted to fund only those health providers that refuse to even mention abortion as an option. This is a man who voted to amend the Constitution to BAN gay marriage and who voted to ban gay adoptions in the District of Columbia. This is a man who thinks his so-called "faith" gives him the right to control the personal behavior of every American citizen, and would use the power of his office to do what he can to codify government intrusion into the private lives of Americans into law. A man who would take away my right to privacy has no privacy right of his own.
In the 1990's, a bunch of Republicans decided to attempt to undo the result of an election by expanding an inquiry into a 25-year-old land deal into a sex scandal and impeach a president for lying about an extramarital liaison, thus trivializing the Constitutional remedy of impeachment for all eternity. Today we have Congressional Democrats, faced with a completely lawless Administration, unable to use that remedy because of that very trivialization. Yes, Mr. Dionne, there should be a wall between the public and the private. But it was so-called "family values" conservatives who tore down that wall, and no matter how much we might want to put it back up again, we can't. Because if we do, the minute it is to the political advantage of men like David Vitter to tear it down again, they'll do it.
"Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud, hatch out." -- Robert Graves, Claudius the God.
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