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October 04, 2006

Scandals that Matter

Ann Althouse seems a little peeved that the media frenzy over Mark Foley's undue attention to Congressional pages is taking media air away from Bob Woodward's new book (which, I should note, nobody asked me to review; I'm crushed), State of Denial. Ann considers Iraq a much more substantive area for debate, and while I think she is correct in that, I'm not as sure that she may be wrong in this case.

As Kevin Drum pointed out when State of Denial first came out, the importance of the book isn't really what it says. Does anyone believe that it's any different from other Woodward tomes: people who talked to Woodward come off well, while people who didn't become the villains of the piece. What makes the book important is it shows that people are turning on the Bush administration (the first two Woodward books about Iraq were much more complementary) as the enterprise proves to be a disaster. I would be as leery of trusting the accuracy of this book as I would the earlier works.

On the other hand, the Foley situation may be illustrative of a serious problem. As more details come out, it is becoming clear this was no recent development in Foley's career. He has apparently been speaking inappropriately with pages for quite some time now. The pages all seemed to know about it; the knowledge was passed on between classes. Yet the House leadership, when notified that a page had received an email from Foley that he considered inappropriate, took no more action than to tell Foley to not contact that page any more. While I would not suggest that the Republicans should have immediately begun a complete investigation of Foley, it seems to me that the fact they didn't even do a little cursory digging suggests a serious flaw in their leadership style; whether it's simply an inability to consider the possibility that there might have been more to the story (as we now know there was) or the more sinister question of if they were unwilling to risk their majority on the issue, that is a failure of leadership. This is hardly the first time this has happened under Speaker Hastert and the other Congressional Republicans.

In other words, the real issue here isn't Foley. It's the demonstrated poor judgement and leadership offered by the Republicans. These are men and women who ask us to trust them with the keys to the country. The Foley incident is an indicator of a larger trend: the current crop or Republicans has no claim on the title of superior (or even adequate) leadership over the past four years. Given that fact, it is hardly unreasonable to suggest that perhaps it is time for a change, in the House if nowhere else.