(Jon Margolis writes political columns for VTDigger.)
[O]n further review, as they say in the National Football League, Sen. Patrick Leahy says he shouldn’t have urged Sen. Al Franken to resign after all.
“I have stood for due process,” said Vermont’s senior senator, without fully explaining why he did not stand there in the matter of his Minnesota colleague, accused by several women of pawing or pinching them, and by one of an unwelcome kiss.
Leahy didn’t have to explain why. The reason is obvious: The country is in the midst of one of its moralistic paroxysms, and Vermont has not been spared.
Otherwise the state’s other senator, Bernie Sanders, would not have suggested that President Donald Trump resign because he had “boasted about his assault of women.”
But in that now-infamous “Access Hollywood” tape to which Sanders referred, Trump said, “You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful – I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
To claim that “they let you do it” and “you can do anything” is not to confess having actually done anything. Trump boasted only that because he was a star, women allowed him these liberties, not that he had taken them. Voicing a crude, tasteless declaration more than a decade ago is no reason for an elected official to resign.
There are very few good reasons for elected officials to resign. In a representative democracy, voters ought to assume they are going to be stuck with whomever they elect for the duration of his or her term. This clamoring for them to resign when they are accused of wrongdoing subverts representative democracy, a system in which the right time to reverse the results of the last election is the next election.
An elected official convicted of a crime should quit. So, perhaps, should one who has become so abhorrent to the electorate (which Franken, according to Minnesota polls, has not) that he or she can no longer be effective. Otherwise, they should stay in office. Neither they nor the voters should be casually relieved of their obligations.
To no small extent, the fervor that inspired this foolishness is justified. Since The New York Times revealed the abuses by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein in October, the country has undergone a transformation both useful and necessary. Thousands of women (and a few men) have spoken out against mistreatment they have remained silent about for years. It was time for them to speak.
But it is never time for intellectual sloppiness or for ignoring the past. When the first allegations of sexual predation on teenagers by Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore were made, GOP leaders in Washington said that if the allegations were true, Moore should withdraw as a candidate.
Whereupon a high-minded chorus assailed them for the “if true” qualification, as if all accusations of sexual misconduct had to be true.
Hence moralistic paroxysm, a recurring American affliction. In the 1950s, Sen. Joe McCarthy and his friends were convinced that all accusations about communism had to be true. Several lives were ruined. In the 1980s, journalists, juries and assorted certified professionals concluded that all accusations about sexual abuse of children by their day care providers had to be true. Innocent people spent years in prison. In the 1690s, so convinced were the good citizens of Salem, Massachusetts, that all accusations of witchcraft had to be true that they executed 20 of their neighbors.
Not all accusations are true. Not all are even accusations, a fact apparently forgotten by too many journalists who have been swept up in the prevailing narrative. Thus it was widely reported that Moore had been accused of some kind of sexual misconduct with several teenagers.
The correct number is two. Moore stands credibly accused of molesting a 14-year-old girl and assaulting a 16-year-old. Such acts are crimes, so “accused” is the appropriate word. But Moore is also “accused” of dating, which is not a crime.
Yes, in his early 30s he dated a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old. This may seem perverse in some circles, but apparently not in Gadsden, Alabama, and environs at the time. Both women have said their mothers approved of Moore squiring them about town. There is no suggestion that townspeople were shocked at seeing him and the young women sitting in restaurants or walking down the sidewalks, which they did openly. This is not the kind of activity of which a person is normally “accused.”
The point here is not to defend Moore, but to warn against the exaggeration and oversimplification that often accompany these journalistic feeding frenzies. The frenzy discourages clear thinking. It abhors distinctions, which are especially important to maintain when too many are making connections that are too casual. Not every romantic overture is a sexual assault.
That’s something to bear in mind as Vermont legislators prepare to repair their policies on sexual harassment. The current policies (each house has its own) seem intended to discourage even the most justified complaint and protect even the guiltiest officeholder. Under certain circumstances, for instance, the public might never know the name of a senator who had been found – by a committee of his or her peers — to have sexually harassed someone.
That’s absurd. But it may not be so absurd to withhold the name of the accused until and unless he or she has been judged to have misbehaved. This is, after all, politics, in which some folks play dirty, even in Vermont. A juicy accusation, no matter how false, can destroy a political career, and only a naïf would think that no one in this state would try to bribe, coerce or blackmail a young woman to come forth with a tale of inappropriate behavior by a senator from the other party, even had he been nothing but a perfect gentleman in her presence.
A possibility not to be ignored amidst the moralistic paroxysm.
