Election Year Issues: Interns and Pages and...

We are coming up on an election, and of all the factors that might inform voters about the integrity and trustworthiness of either party, what are we hearing most about from the media and the water-cooler crowd and the Starbucks sippers? Representative Mark Foley’s horrific and hypocritical behavior. It speaks ill of him. It speaks ill of Hastert and the rest who knew early on and— not having learned the fate of cover-ups from Watergate—covered it up. To quote the original Reagan Republican, “There you go again …!”

Yes, my liberal-inclined self cannot help enjoying the sweet irony of the fact that this Republican sex scandal is near-perfect payback for the Lewinsky onslaught upon the Clinton presidency. Poetic justice and all that. But any abuse of power over employees is outrageous and illegal, regardless of the presence of sexual content and regardless of the less-powerful participant’s willingness. We cannot assume willing participation by the far less powerful person, even if the subordinate believes (at the time) that he or she invited or welcomes the superior’s attentions. In any workplace, these issues must be reported and followed by legal action. Psychological issues of the perpetrator and subsequent rehab therapy notwithstanding, if you do the crime, you should do the time. While Clinton did no jail time for his offenses against a number of women, his "Hillary time" must have been hard time, indeed. But that was then, and this is ...