In 1980, Congressman Bob Bauman, a conservative Republican from Maryland was caught having oral sex with a 16 year old boy. As I recall, the club where he outed himself in D.C. was called something far less ambiguous than Bauman’s sexuality, like “Man’s World.” Bauman did find certitude on the House floor where he regularly excoriated homosexuals. He was a notably vigorous scourge of everything gay, perhaps an odd kind of self-flagellation. But at the time, the gap between his animated histrionics and the reality of his life imprinted the story in my memory. I was twenty-eight years old, newly come to Washington, D.C. for law school and working on Capitol Hill. I hadn’t yet seen how the “personal is political” could play out not in the best sense but in the worst.
We’ve had many Baumanesque moments brought to us by Republicans unable to square their honest desires with their dishonest rhetoric. Most recently, Congressman Mark Foley, Senator David Vitter and the Reverend Ted Haggard joined the list, and this week Senator Larry Craig’s tawdry restroom antics managed to grab the media’s center ring from Michael Vick. Vick was only cruel and stupid when he broke the federal law on dog fighting. Craig was cruel to those he loved and those he represented by coating his life in lies, and stupid in his reckless actions, but he was something more.
Craig embodies the self-righteous hypocrite, so filled with hubris he tried to bluster his way out of his arrest by showing his card to police and proclaiming something like, “I’m a U.S. Senator, what do you think of that?” Craig is drunk and drugged on hypocrisy, proclaiming his innocence of being gay, blaming his political enemies for his downfall, swinging wildly at the phantom enemy that he could easily see if he looked in the mirror. Acting as if you believe something that your life belies is a recipe for misery, the much deserved reward of hypocrisy. But Craig’s suffering is little comfort to our hopes for honesty and integrity in our public servants. For that we’ll have to cling to the slender hope that Groundhog Day for Hypocrites will just go away.
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I agree with your comments on Senator Craig. The lack of integrity between his public and private life provides yet another example of why trust in our leaders is lacking.
I wonder, however, why you reserved your criticism for the missteps of Republican leaders.
Surely there are Democratic examples of hubris and hypocrisy – Bill Clinton’s “I didn’t have sexual relations with that woman” comments and Presidential candidate John Edwards’ inconsistencies on a variety of campaign issues come to mind.
Is this post simply a matter of timing, or is there another agenda?
Also, the last time I checked the Rev. Ted Haggard was never elected to public office. Granted, he belongs in the “Hypocrits Hall of Fame,” but including him with a group of elected officials feels a little like partisan piling on rather than honest critique of our leaders.
Ms. Gerber, you have a strong message. Please don’t allow your credibility as an objective commentator on leadership to be damaged by perceptions of partisanship.
Randy Pennington
Author, On My Honor, I Will: Leading with Integrity in Changing Times and Results Rule! Build a Culture that Blows the Comnpetition Away
http://www.penningtongroup.com