THE “WE” VS. “THEE” SCANDAL

By Edwin Cooney

The fate of Idaho Senator Larry Craig has been inevitable given the socio/political climate under which we‘re living -- and given who he is.

Shortly after noon on Monday, June 11th, 2007, the 62-year-old third term Conservative Republican Senator visited a Minneapolis-St. Paul men’s room at the airport. Entering one of the stalls, Senator Craig placed his luggage in front of him so that it blocked the space in the front of the stall. He peered through the space to his right where police Sergeant David Karsnia was seated on a commode in the adjoining stall.

Sergeant Karsnia had been assigned to perform a sting operation because of complaints about homosexual solicitation activities which had recently been occurring in area public bathrooms.

Senator Craig, of course, did not know that the gentleman in the stall just to his right was a policeman. Nor did Sergeant Karsnia have any idea who had taken the stall just to his left. However, the occupant of that stall proceeded to place his right hand, palm up, through the space connecting the two stalls moving it back and forth several times. Next, he placed his right foot against Sergeant Karsnia’s left foot and proceeded to make a toe tapping motion. This series of actions, according to those who know these things, are exactly the signals used by those seeking homosexual engagements. Sergeant Karsnia, in accordance with procedure, flashed his police badge and motioned with his left hand toward the bathroom exit. Senator Craig got up from the commode and, without flushing the toilet, rolled his luggage along with him to leave the men’s room. Sergeant Karsnia informed Senator Craig that he had received his set of signals and asked the Senator to accompany him to the airport security operations center. Senator Craig refused the request. The Sergeant then informed Senator Craig that he was under arrest and that Karsnia didn’t want to make a scene.

Ushering his quarry to the police security operations section of the airport, the former occupant of the men’s room stall just to the sergeant’s left, did a bit of his own credentials flashing. Protesting his innocence, Mr. Craig said to the sergeant “I’m a United States Senator. What do you think about that?” Only then did Sergeant Karsnia learn that he had just landed one of the 100 biggest of a particular brand of “fish” in the United States of America.

About forty-five minutes after having been taken into custody, Senator Craig was cited and released. On Wednesday, August 1st -- seven weeks and two days later -- Senator Craig pled guilty to a disorderly conduct charge, a misdemeanor. He paid $575 of a $1,000 fine and was released on one year of unsupervised probation.

Nearly four weeks passed by before Senator Craig’s arrest, guilty plea and fine were even announced. It appears that Senator Craig didn’t inform his staff or his colleagues of what had occurred. (When he told his wife Suzanne about the incident would be interesting to know, but rightfully is a private matter.)

The date was Monday, August 27th when the June 11th incident and the August 1st guilty plea were made public.

By Wednesday, the 29th of August, GOP Senate leaders Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, John Kyl of Arizona, and John Ensign of Nevada had met and stripped Senator Craig of all his chairmanships and special assignments thus lowering him to the rank of a freshman senator. They also submitted his case to the Senate ethics committee for investigation. Such an investigation would of course be public and could reflect poorly on the senator.

Thus, on Saturday morning, September 1st , asserting that he always had and always would do what was best for Idaho, Senator Larry Craig announced his resignation from the U.S. Senate effective September 30th. At his side were his wife Suzanne and his daughter Shea along with Governor and Mrs. Otter and Congressman Bill Sali.

Three days later, a spokesman for Senator Craig announced that the Senator had decided to try and have his guilty plea withdrawn -- and that if he could do it before September 30th, he might not resign after all. Additionally, the Senator, a member of the political party that seeks public favor in part by demonizing lawyers, has hired two or three very high-powered attorneys. One of those attorneys represented Michael Vick, the professional football player recently convicted of participating in an illegal and brutal dog fighting, gambling and abuse operation.

It is notable that the GOP leadership is now insisting that having made the decision to resign his Senate seat, Larry Craig should keep his word. His continuing presence in the Senate would keep the touchy issue of possible Conservative homosexual vulnerability before the public’s attention at a time when the GOP is on the political defensive as it prepares for the 2008 national election campaign.

Of course, no political party can function as successfully as it otherwise might when the values and morality of its leading officeholders are in doubt. There are many who believe that because it didn’t adequately chastise its senior Massachusetts Senator, the Democratic Party has suffered even more than Senator Edward M. Kennedy from the Chappaquiddick tragedy of 1969. However, Senator Craig insists that his personal values and actions are in complete compliance with the dictates of Conservative Republicanism. His problem, he insists, is that his actions in the St. Paul, Minnesota airport were misconstrued by officer Karsnia and that he pled guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct only because he thought that would be the most efficient way to rid himself of the outrageous and certainly nettlesome incident.

Almost as intriguing is the fact that Senator Craig was advised recently by his fellow Republican Senator Arlen Specter, a man of lifelong prosecutorial experience, that the case against him was sufficiently weak that he could have easily challenged it. It apparently never occurred to Senator Craig, a Conservative Republican, that Senator Specter, a Liberal Republican, might well have provided him invaluable assistance before it was too late (so much for traditional Senate collegiality!)

There is, of course, nothing new about scandal in America. Our system of government was very young indeed when:

In 1795, the corrupt Georgia legislature—which would be replaced in its entirety by angry voters that fall—sold land in the Yazoo River valley to four land speculation companies for its own enrichment;
In 1797, former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton publicly confessed to having purchased sexual favors from Maria Reynolds through her husband James Reynolds using private rather than public funds;
In July 1804, sitting Vice President Aaron Burr shot the same Alexander Hamilton to death in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey.

...So much for the absolute purity of “our founding Fathers.”.

Neither Conservatives, Liberals, Republicans nor Democrats are absent from history’s roll call of moral villains. For every Bill Clinton, there’s a Warren Harding. For every Ted Kennedy, there’s an Alan Simpson. (Former Senator Simpson openly admits to a youthful indiscretion that apparently cost a life.)

The dilemma currently facing Senator Craig and his GOP colleagues is the light in which they have placed homosexual activity. Hence, many gay men and lesbian women find themselves in sympathy with Senator Craig’s vulnerability even though he insists that “I’m not gay.”

Whether or not Senator Craig is gay, his interpreted action, in a public place, is a violation of the law in Minnesota and most everywhere else. Even if he had been soliciting heterosexual favors, he would have been vulnerable to arrest and conviction. Violation of just laws is rightfully punishable whether a person is powerful or meek. Such punishment is particularly essential when it involves the politically influential because of their potential vulnerability to blackmail.

In recent years, in part as a response to Roe v. Wade but also in response to the civil rights status that Liberal Democrats have granted to gays and lesbians, Conservatives (especially the “Moral Majority”) have made gayness and lesbianism immoral and hence a political -- if not societal -- crime.

By so doing, they assign the Republican Party a role it can’t possibly sustain—that of moral watchdog over the sins of the American people. The sad truth is that Conservatives, no more and no less than Liberals, are subject to personal temptation and thus vulnerable to inevitable political and even moral judgment.

Idaho Senator Larry Craig may or may not be gay (although an Idaho friend of mine -- a proud Conservative Republican -- tells me that there has been speculation for a long time as to the Senator’s sexual orientation). However, the June 11th St. Paul incident has resulted in Senator Craig’s biggest political crime. His personal or “me needs” have embarrassed the powerful “we”, his righteous colleagues.

Hence, even if Senator Craig gets his guilty plea invalidated—which I’m told is an exceedingly remote possibility—his GOP sponsored political career is over. So, you might ask, how much does this matter?

On the surface, probably not much, but over the long run the “knee jerk” reaction of Senator Craig’s Conservative colleagues is continuing an unhealthy trend.

That trend by resourceful, powerful and self righteous ideologues is the socio/political punishment of people for their strictly personal activities whether or not they victimize anyone. Hence, even the morally pure have impure colleagues. Even more humbling is the reality that they have impure sons, brothers, cousins and fathers -- oh, no -- and wives and mothers as well. As everyone knows, such associations can be destructively embarrassing when so allowed to be!!!

In the realm of criminal behavior by a public official, Senator Larry Craig has barely hit a single. My guess is that in five years only the most obsessed political junkie outside of Idaho will even recall his name. However, the political “We” will still be judging the political “Thee” and setting themselves up for their own future political and historic obscurity.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY