Former Governor Andrew Cuomo

Wouldn't you know it? By the time I finally get the opportunity to discuss the curious case of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, he's already submitted his resignation! 

When New York State Attorney General Letitia James issued her report on Cuomo's dealing with women, she found that not only had he touched, hugged, harassed and intimidated them on a regular basis, he created a toxic work environment in his office.  He also faces criminal investigations of his actions, especially with he how he handled COVID cases among elderly patients by sending them to nursing homes, which would have been part of an impeachment trial had Cuomo not resigned.  

Cuomo tried to preempt the Attorney General's report about his sexual-harassment charges against him with a carefully worded explanation of his behavior on a video that included pictures of him touching, hugging, and glad-handling people of both sexes to demonstrate that he's just a physical guy.  But he downplayed the more egregious charges against him and angered his accusers even more.  Like Gary Hart in 1987 - who was accused of far less serious womanizing -  he gave a statement that was more of an excuse than an explanation and satisfied no one.  Similarly, his resignation speech, while starting off with a Hart-like statement of a defiance, devolved into a professing of his innocence and a declaration of his responsibility to set aside to put the interests of the state first.  It was so eerily reminiscent of Richard Nixon's presidential resignation speech - which took place 47 years ago this past Sunday  - that if Nixon were alive today, he'd have sent a message to Cuomo telling him what a great job he did in announcing his resignation.  

What a waste.  And Andrew Cuomo did so much for New York State - building infrastructure, protecting voting rights, getting the state through extreme weather - just as Nixon did so much for the country - the Environmental Protection Agency, Amtrak, Title IX . . ..  Ah, but as we read in Matthew 16:26, "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?"

New York Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul becomes the state's governor on August 24.

Carry Me Back To Scandal

Since I last commented on the blackface/KKK robe scandal involving a picture in Virginia Democratic governor Ralph Northam's 1984 medical school yearbook entry and Northam's subsequent admission that he wore blackface when he dressed as Michael Jackson in a dance contest (but he denies having been in that yearbook photo), the state's other two top elected Democrats have gotten involved in scandals.  First came accusations of sexual assault against Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, who is black, from two different women, then Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, who volunteered without goading from the press that he word blackface in 1980 when performing rap songs in college - he was a rap fan in his youth - then apologized for it and said he wished he'd never done it.

All three Democrats have been facing pressure to resign because of the party's zero-tolerance policy against racism and sexual assault.  Herring even called for Northam's resignation before he admitted to doing the same thing Northam did, which takes a lot of gall.  And if all of them resign their posts, the Republican Speaker of the House of Delegates becomes governor.  The Republicans control both houses of the Virginia legislature.

Okay, let's take these three cases individually.  First, Fairfax.  He's in the hottest of hot water because wearing blackface is merely tasteless and stupid, but sexual assault is a crime.  He's in a no-win situation because, first of all, in the Me Too era, denying charges of sexual assault essentially means you're calling the accuser a liar - and at this point, women who bring such accusations forward are tired of being dismissed as liars.  Besides, Fairfax has two women accusing him of the same thing - how probable is it that neither one is telling the truth?  Impeachment proceedings against him were started in the Virginia House of Delegates - by a Democrat - but rescinded so as not to interfere with the state budget process. This issue is not going away.  Expect Fairfax to fall.

Mark Herring is the easiest case to call.  He's not going anywhere; despite his hypocrisy in calling for Northam's resignation over wearing blackface in light of a blackface moment of his own, he told the truth about his past and had made no effort to conceal it.  The fact that he wore blackface while imitating a rapper, of course, isn't going to be taken well, and in fact the director of a New York hip-hop museum - that's right, there's actually a museum devoted to America's greatest entertainment folly - chastened Herring for what he did and demanded that Herring make contribution to the museum as part of his penance.   

I'm not going to comment any further on Herring's case. Suffice to say that Herring will be forgiven and allowed to move on.

Not so Ralph Northam.  He has tried to turn his scandal into what is being called a "teachable moment" - he says he's learning about the hurt he caused and why "blacking up" to dress as Michael Jackson was so hurtful, and he says he is devoting the rest of his single term - Virginia governors are only limited to one term - to fighting racism in Virginia.  As usual, Northam's comments have been met with skepticism and incredulity.  Many black leaders in Virginia say he can atone for his sins by supporting historically black colleges and addressing black economic opportunity and the scholastic achievement gap all he wants, but the fact that he's revealed himself to be just another clueless cracker has led many Virginia blacks to conclude to quit the governorship and go atone in private.  Paradoxically, many black leaders still support Northam, noting the strides he's already made for black Virginians in his first year in office and pointing out that, like Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas morning, he's not the man he was.  Also, 58 percent of black Virginia voters surveyed want him to remain in the governor's office.

None of that matters.  Northam survives because of Fairfax's scandal, as the Republican Senate pro tempore would be acting lieutenant governor if Fairfax were forced out of office and any person Northam appointed to the post would have to run in special election in November 2019 to complete the lieutenant-gubernatorial term. So it would further confuse the already muddied line of succession.  But if the lieutenant governor specially elected this November is a Democrat, then it's only a matter of time before Northam is forced out, Democrats being safe in the knowledge that a Republican wouldn't succeed him.  If the Democrats were suddenly willing to put principles over politics and sacrifice the governorship, the lieutenant governorship, and attorney general's office tomorrow, though, Northam would be out by Tuesday.  I will give Northam credit for this much; he's hung on longer than I expected him to.

The simple lesson is that, if you're a white guy who loves black music and you want to emulate your idols, don't wear blackface.  And if you want to dress like Michael Jackson . . .

. . . you'll be pleased to know that it can be done without wearing blackface.

See?

"Let's Let The People Decide!"

I can't let 2017 go without one more kick at the carcass that is Gary Hart's long-dead political career.  Yeah, I know his presidential campaign was three decades ago, and yeah, I know Martin O'Malley is one of his protégés, but who cares? I don't want to believe that Hart's 1987 sex scandal, which ended his presidential ambitions,  altered the course of American history all by itself and led us down the path to Donald John Trump, but I do concede that he at least may be responsible for the Bushes and the Clintons, which is damning enough.

I recalled Hart's 1988 presidential bid in a post this past May, but I only touched briefly on his attempt at a comeback after his May 1987 downfall.  That's why I'm back today.

It was thirty years ago this past Friday that Gary Hart re-entered the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination campaign, having decided that none of the other six candidates for the nomination were discussing the ideas he himself had campaigned on - namely, his ideas on national security, education and the economy.  "Let's let the people decide!"  he said, implying that the media had pushed him out  over his sex scandal without giving the voters a chance to make up their minds about him.  Hart (above, from December 1987) returned to the campaign after having dropped out seven months earlier . . . and having also forfeited his numerous advantages from when he was the next President of the United States - like resources and supporters.   

"This will not be like any campaign you have ever seen because I am going directly to the people," he said, announcing that he was "back in the race" at a courthouse in New Hampshire, site of the nation's first presidential primary.  "I don't have a national headquarters or staff.  I don't have any money.  I don't have pollsters or consultants or media advisers or political endorsements.  But I have something even better.  I have the power of ideas, and I can govern this country."

He also had something else - the reputation for being a jerk.

As I have argued here and elsewhere, Hart wasn't undone by his sex scandal.  He was undone by his arrogance, his aloofness and his duplicity, all of which came out when he tried to handle the affair.  He immediately became the front-runner again after he got back in the campaign, but this was due more to name recognition than to the idea that anyone would be sane enough at that point to actually support him.  His smugness was evident from the way he got back in, seemingly disparaging the other Democratic presidential candidates of 1988 for not sharing his vision and his policy proposals.  His opponents, who had expressed sympathy for the way the media hounded him out of the campaign, were now universally condemning him.  Missouri congressman Richard Gephardt declared that he found it hard to believe that Hart thought he had a monopoly on new ideas.  Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, the eventual 1988 Democratic presidential nominee, said that the issue wasn't who had the most creative ideas but who was best temperamentally suited to lead the nation.  Bruce Babbitt, later President Clinton's Secretary of the Interior, said that he didn't need Hart to teach him the most important thing about running for President - to tell the truth.  (Babbitt, a former Arizona governor, truthfully told the voters that the only way to erase the budget deficit was to raise taxes through the roof and cut spending to the bone; he was the only 1988 Democratic presidential candidate to drop out before Hart once the primary and caucus voting started.)  Jesse Jackson said that Gary Hart had "a superiority complex without the superiority."  Illinois senator Paul Simon joked about it with singer Paul Simon (of course) on "Saturday Night Live."  But the classic response came from Tennessee senator and future Vice President Al Gore - "Give me a break."

And Hart didn't help himself when he said earlier in 1987, "Only half of me wants to be President . . .. The other half wants to go write novels in Ireland. But the 50 percent that wants to be President is better than 100 percent of the others."

Hart started campaigning immediately once he got back in and tried to talk about his "new ideas," but once the novelty of his re-entry into the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination campaign wore off, the press lost interest in talking to him.  And while it was unfair to shut out his ideas over a cruise to Bimini with a second-rate model, it was all for the better, because when he did engage with the press over his reputation for womanizing, he only drew more comparisons to Richard Nixon, having already been compared to the former President for his deviousness and his hostility toward the press.  In January 1988, in an attempt to put the womanizing issue behind him, Hart, who had admitted the preceding summer that he'd been unfaithful to his wife earlier in their marriage, said in an interview, "I wouldn't be the first President to commit adultery, but I would be the first President who's ever confessed [to it]."  Thus, Hart downplayed his own guilt by citing others similarly guilty - just like Richard Nixon would have done.  In that same interview, he added, "One could argue - I wouldn't - that Ronald Reagan walked away from a marriage."  Thus, Hart pointed out something unpleasant about someone else while evading the credit for pointing it out - just like Richard Nixon would have done.

And there was a reason he had no money.  He still had $1.3 million in outstanding debts from his 1984 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination against Walter Mondale, and when he filed for federal matching funds after he got back in the 1988 campaign, many observers thought it was a way to get some dough to pay off his 1984 debt. It didn't help that $101,000 from his abortive start for the 1988 campaign was tied up in a lawsuit filed by campaign creditors from . . . 1984.

Wonder whom he would have appointed to be Secretary of the Treasury?

William Greider of Rolling Stone, in a 1988 column explaining why a Democrat would win that year's presidential election, pretty much got Hart right even as his prediction for that November turned out to be dead wrong.  "Gary Hart is everyone's favorite subject of conversation - until the talk turns serious," Greider wrote.  "He has a Nixonian shiftiness in his eyes, but Hart lacks the true venom of Nixon's twisted soul.  Hart got the full benefit of a media blitz during the primaries of 1984, but he blew his magic moment.  This time, I expect an early fade, once voters face the real question about his presidential character in the privacy of the booth.  Hart can depart with a semblance of honor, claiming vindication from the votes he will get.  Or he can make things even more sordid and painful for the party by sulkily clinging to a doomed venture.  I expect him to do the right thing when the time comes, partly in the mistaken notion that he can still become somebody's Secretary of State.  Forget it, Gary; it's over."

Hart had already burned his bridges in May 1987, when he let down his supporters by letting his campaign get derailed by an avoidable personal issue and blaming everyone but himself for it.  While he apologized privately for the scandal to his closest aides - including Martin O'Malley, who rejoined Hart when the former Colorado senator re-entered the presidential campaign - he failed to apologize publicly to the masses of people who'd gotten behind him, and while he remained a mentor to numerous Democratic politicians, he lost millions of admirers he would never get back.  I, for one, had washed my hands of Hart by December 1987; I was already supporting Dukakis, and I was in no mood to switch back to a quitter who was now trying to get attention to remain "relevant."

Just like Richard Nixon did so many times after 1974.

Hart stayed in the campaign through the first thee months of 1988, coming in last in both Iowa and New Hampshire; it was clear that the voters in 1987 had not loved him in December as they did in May.  By the time of the Super Tuesday primaries in March, he'd been promoting his policies more than running for the Presidency.  As Greider had accurately predicted, he dropped out a second time, conceding that the people had pretty much decided.  And when a Democrat finally won the White House in 1992, Hart's reputation was so damaged that it's easy to see why Bill Clinton chose Warren Christopher to be his first Secretary of State.

Hart, to be fair, redeemed himself in the field of foreign policy.  He remained a popular foreign-affairs expert on news talk shows in the nineties and two thousand zeroes, and he helped bring peace to Northern Ireland, which had endured a long sectarian war.  He served President Barack Obama twice - first as Vice Chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, then as Obama's special envoy to Northern Ireland.  And, to be honest, the current rash of harassment scandals makes Hart's boat ride to Bimini look quaint by comparison.  But his greatest claim to fame is still as the man who went from being the forty-first President of the United States to being a joke on late-night television . . . until late-night comics found someone else to joke about.  And he never overcame his reputation as a jerk; a ladyfriend of mine actually crossed paths with him in Los Angeles back in the 1980s and told me that she thought of him as a pompous sort who really fancied himself - the very definition of a jerk.  And when one woman was asked by Newsweek what Hart's wife should have done after he cheated on her, the woman replied, "I'd have told her to leave the jerk."

The jerk.

And that's not the end of it.  Coming in 2018 - The Front Runner, a Jason Reitman movie about the Hart scandal based on Matt Bai's 2014 book on the subject, starring Hugh Jackman as Gary Hart.

It's a comedy.

Moore, Moore, Moore

How do you like him?  How do you like him?

Yecch!  I don't!

I already endorsed Doug Jones, the opponent of the Alabama U.S. Senate Republican nominee, saying that Roy Moore was f--kin' nuts.  But he's also f--kin' sick.  It seems he had a sexual encounter with a 52-year-old woman . . . when she was fourteen.  Moore is 70.   

Senate Republicans were already resigned to Moore's election to the Senate, as the last time a Democrat was elected to the Senate from that state was 1992, and that Democratic senator, Richard Shelby, became a Republican two years after (and remains in office today).  They don't like Moore, but they need his vote to pass tax reform, which I promise I will comment on if these breaking stories and scandals ever stop happening.  But with women turning away from the GOP in droves and Moore becoming the latest poster boy for the party's outright misogyny and indecency, the last thing the congressional Republican caucuses on either side of the Capitol want is an association with a pedophile.  And to think this is the same Roy Moore who was the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, insisted in posting the Ten Commandments in front of the state Supreme Court building.

Alabama voters, many of whom are evangelicals, plan to vote for him anyway, because they don't believe the accusations. Which would be fine if there were a reason to give Moore the benefit of the doubt.  But there isn't.  Three other women have accused Moore of sexual impropriety, and there are thirty corroborators between them.  And the 52-year woman who made the first accusation, Leigh Corfman, has voted Republican regularly in recent presidential elections, undermining the argument that this is a coordinated Democratic smear campaign.   If you believe Moore's denials, you obviously believe Bill Cosby's denials of improper behavior with 59 different women (and you are, just as obviously, an idiot).           

Senate Republicans say that Moore should step down if these accusations are true, and that may sound like chickening out, but they've actually gone farther than many of Moore's supporters in Alabama, one of whom, a state legislator, said that Corfman, not Moore, should be prosecuted - for defamation, presumably.  But one Republican - Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon who knows a thing or two about decency per his religious upbringing, has looked at the evidence and come right and said that he believes Corfman.  Romney said that Moore must step aside - no ifs, ands or buts about it.

Too bad he doesn't currently hold office.

But John McCain does.  The senator from Arizona echoed Romney's sentiments. "The allegations against Roy Moore are deeply disturbing and disqualifying," McCain said.  "He should immediately step aside and allow the people of Alabama to elect a candidate they can be proud of."

Be that as it may, Moore will probably win the December 12 special election, because he can't be replaced on the ballot, he won't step down anyway, and a vote for Doug Jones is considered an even greater sin.  But Moore, who would be up for a full six-year-term in 2020, may not last that long.  Senate Republicans may soon come to the realization that Moore can't remain in office if he in fact does become Alabama's next U.S. Senator and, ultimately, expel him.

How soon would that be?  Right after tax reform gets passed.

Donald Trump - no stranger to sexual-harassment allegations - will probably be removed from office soon.

How soon?  See my answer to the previous question.  

Ironies Of the Gary Hart Scandal

Things have a way of turning out ironically, and Gary Hart's aborted 1988 presidential campaign, the first attempt at which ended thirty years ago today with Hart's bitter rant against the media, is proof positive of that. Among the highlights:

• Hart's association with a woman not his wife was revealed after reporters from the Miami Herald tracked Hart down at his Washington townhouse, staked him out, entrapped him, and painted him into a corner.  The next day, E.J. Dionne's profile of Hart in the New York Times Sunday magazine appeared with the following title: "Gary Hart: The Elusive Front-Runner."
• Dionne's article included a quote from the candidate daring reporters to follow him around.  Not only had the Miami Herald decided to do so before the quote appeared in print, Dionne almost edited it out.  
• Hart traveled to the Bahamian island of Bimini on the yacht Monkey Business with his friend William Broadhurst, who acquired the yacht for the trip, and their two female companions.  It turns out that the provocatively named yacht wasn't Broadhurst's boat; he only leased it so he could pick up his own boat, which was anchored in Bimini.
• Hart - best known for a fleeting presidential bid - lives in Evergreen, Colorado.  His house is in a ravine called "Troublesome Gulch." 
• When Hart made his first public appearance after the sex scandal broke, as mentioned in my post from three days before, he denied any impropriety with the hope that he had ended the controversy.  Two days later, with the press still making him feel the heat, he turned to a campaign aide and said, "This isn't going to end, is it?"
• Hart denied that anything improper happened on the Monkey Business; a year later, it was seized by the Coast Guard in an unrelated drug bust. 
• When he quit his first presidential bid on May 8, 1987, he said he had planned to make a short statement announcing his withdrawal but then said that he thought to himself, "Hell, no!"  His supporters in the room cheered . . . for all the wrong reasons.  
• In his withdrawal statement of May 8, 1987, Hart declared, "I'm not a beaten man, but I am an angry and defiant man."  Yeah?  Then why was he quitting?  (As noted before on this blog, I have since referred to his May 8, 1987 withdrawal statement as his "Anger and Defiance" speech.)
• I was in college in the spring of 1987, and my final assignment for the writing course I was taking at the time was to write an article based on a pre-determined premise.  I originally chose to write a piece explaining why Gary Hart would be the forty-first President of the United States, but it didn't hold muster with my professor, and I ultimately wrote about something else. The due date for this assignment - which I was supposed to send on spec to a magazine - was . . . May 8, 1987.
• Hart's "Anger and Defiance" speech not only drew comparisons to Richard Nixon's Last Press Conference of 1962, it led to comparisons of Hart's personality to Nixon's, revealing many similarities (both were loners, both were secretive, both viewed the press with suspicion). Hart had been George McGovern's presidential campaign manager in 1972.  No prizes for guessing who McGovern's opponent was.     
• Hart had declared his 1988 presidential candidacy on April 13, 1987 - Thomas Jefferson's birthday anniversary, celebrated as Jefferson Day by Democrats, though, if that was an intentional historic reference, no one got it.  When he withdrew a month later, he paraphrased Jefferson in expressing fear that America would get the government it deserved.  Most reporters in the room felt Hart got what he deserved.  
• Hart's attempt to seem Kennedyesque seemed contrived to many people, but after his sex-scandal downfall, then-"Saturday Night Live" cast member Dennis Miller said, "You know, for a moment there, he almost did remind me of Jack Kennedy!"
• Hart had only 3 percent of the vote in polls ahead of the 1984 Iowa presidential caucuses . . . because no one knew who he was.  (He won 16 percent.)  He received 3 percent of the vote in the 1988 Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses after re-entering the 1988 presidential campaign . . . because everyone knew who he was.  (He withdrew from the 1988 campaign a second time a few days after.) 

Ah, irony . . .

Hart Failure

"I was a [Gary] Hart supporter.  I'm a Hart supporter because he f**ks.  Do you know what I mean?" - Jack Nicholson

"Life is a comedy . . . written by a sadistic comedy writer." - Woody Allen

*

It's been three decades since Gary Hart, former Democratic U.S. Senator from Colorado, went from being the soon-to-be forty-first President of the United States to being an political outcast.  We all know what happened; he took a boat ride to Bimini with a woman not his wife and two other people in late March 1987, and the revelation came out after the Miami Herald staked him out in his Washington townhouse in early May 1987 and found the woman in question - and the two other people from the Bimini cruise - in there with him.  Considered a savior of the then (and now) moribund Democratic Party when he announced his candidacy for the party's 1988 presidential nomination, Hart went from messiah to pariah a week after the sex scandal broke.  Many people believe that being caught with another woman caused his downfall, while others point to the bitter withdrawal speech he made when he ended his candidacy less than a month after declaring it.  I, on the other hand, think that Hart sealed his fate when he addressed a convention of newspaper publishers at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York thirty years ago today.

Hart's speech before the convention had been previously scheduled, and he'd planned to take advantage of such an influential audience to flesh out his policy proposals - those "new ideas" we'd kept hearing so much about.  Hart had also hoped to get in solid with the press, who never seemed to like him all that much.  But the Miami Herald's reporting on his dalliance with another woman while his wife was back in Colorado irked him, as it interfered with his ability to get his message out.  It also happened to call his judgment into question, as Hart had long before been accused of being a womanizer.  So on Tuesday, May 5, 1987, Hart, in his first public appearance since the scandal broke, preceded his prepared speech by denying that he'd spent the night with the woman in question (I don't mention her name when I bring up the Hart sex scandal, as I prefer to protect the innocent), explaining that she had in fact left his townhouse through a back door, and lashing out at the reporters of the Miami Herald for staking out his townhouse and reporting that he had spent the night with another woman.  Hart was careful to single out the Herald's reporters while lauding the commendable work the rest of the press did, saying he had no problem with the media overall.   But the notoriously private Hart was visibly peeved when he said that the Miami Herald's story was "written by reporters who, by their own admission, undertook a spotty surveillance, who reached inaccurate conclusions based on incomplete facts, and who, after publishing a false story, now concede they may have gotten it wrong."

Then Hart (above, at the newspaper publishers' convention) addressed the story itself, saying in a carefully worded statement that, while he made a mistake by "putting myself in circumstances that could be misconstrued. . .. That goes without saying" (gee, ya think?), he "absolutely did not" do anything immoral.  So satisfied, Hart then made it clear that he wanted to move on and went into his prepared speech.

Hart, in fact, had made two mistakes - both of them fatal.  First, though he was careful to attack only the Miami Herald reporters who had staked out his townhouse and not the press in general, he failed to realize, as Matt Bai explained in his book about the Hart scandal, "All the Truth Is Out," that reporters show solidarity with any reporters attacked by a politician.  As Bai wrote, reporters are like NATO member countries - they consider an attack on one of them to be an attack on all.

Hart's second mistake, a mistake Bai failed to grasp, was the tone of finality he used in his denial of having done anything "immoral."  By emphatically denying charges of impropriety and then making it clear that he didn't want to talk about it before going to his speech, Hart was telling reporters that he considered the matter closed and was putting it behind him.  Wrong, wrong, dead wrong!  When a public figure does something ethically dubious, be it in public life or private life,  it is up to the news media to report the indiscretion and let people make up their own minds as to whether or not it's something that should cause concern.  It is not for the public figure in question to dismiss the indiscretion out of hand and move on to other topics.  In those immediate moments before he gave his speech, Gary Hart showed arrogance, contempt for the press, and a desire to shape a narrative to his own benefit.  Yes, the issue of whether or not Hart was a womanizer was silly and meaningless.  But it wasn't what he did or didn't do that sank him; it's how he handled the issue.     

Hart should have known he dug the hole he was in even deeper when Richard Capen, the publisher of the Miami Herald, offered a rebuttal in the question-and-answer session that followed Hart's speech.  "He's an announced candidate for President of the United States, and he's a man who knows full well that womanizing had been an issue in his past," Capen said.  "We stand by the essential correctness of our story." Capen conceded that it was possible that someone could have left Hart's house through a back door, but he added that, ''clearly, at minimum, there was an appearance of impropriety."

So what did Capen think of Hart's policy proposals?  He didn't.  No one in the room thought anything of them.  Because after Hart told the press how to do its job, no one really cared what Hart was proposing.  Indeed, the question-and-answer session part of his appearance was devoted to questions about the sex issue and his Washington townhouse, not about taxes or spending, and Hart's answers were evasive and furtive.  (It was at this point that Hart addressed the Bimini trip and dismissed it by saying it was made "in open daylight," with no effort to conceal it.)  News reports on Hart's appearance at the convention didn't even mention the policy speech - not even the New York Times' report.     

Oh yeah, after Hart left that convention with his tail between his legs, the reporters who were there to cover it learned the name of the yacht Hart and his traveling companions used for their Bimini cruise - the Monkey Business.

Awk-ward!

And Hart's carefully worded denial of wrongdoing turned out not to be so carefully worded.  He only set himself up for a gotcha question the next day from Paul Taylor of the Washington Post at a campaign appearance in New Hampshire.  Hart had said he did nothing immoral.  This led Taylor to ask Hart if he thought adultery was immoral.  Hart said yes.  Then came the follow-up question from Taylor that changed American political journalism: "Have you ever committed adultery?"

"Uh," Hart sheepishly replied, "I do not have to answer that question."

And then came more reports of Hart's womanizing, questions of his judgment and lack of common sense - including a column from pundit William Raspberry, who said that Hart's lack of common sense overruled his keen intelligence - and finally, his withdrawal from the Democratic presidential campaign (pictured below) with a nine-minute statement that excoriated the press and left no doubt of his arrogance and his superiority complex, as he sought to "shift the blame for his downfall," as humor writer Paul Slansky put it, "from his own rampant libido to those who reported on it."  His lashing out at the press for not covering his candidacy fairly and his self-absolution of all blame for his rapid fall so deeply echoed Richard Nixon's famous "Last Press Conference" of 1962 that Nixon himself wrote Hart to tell him that he "handled a difficult situation uncommonly well."

Awk-ward!

No one outside Hart's family agreed with Nixon's assessment.  Even pundits who were appalled at the Miami Herald's journalistic conduct and its exploitation of tabloid-ready subject matter like a sex scandal didn't agree with Nixon's assessment.     

Hart, by the way, replied to Nixon, explaining that the gist of his withdrawal statement was his desire that Americans ''focus national attention away from what is temporal, sensational, and irrelevant to the real challenges confronting our nation and our world.'' 

"In other words," the New York Times later opined, "what's really important are the issues, but the media is focused on irrelevancies, like Gary Hart's veracity and character."

The flaws in Hart's character came out in how he handled the adversity of the sex scandal.  He thought he could control the narrative and move away from an embarrassing topic in the conversation, and he just couldn't handle the fact that he had no control at all over what the media were going to report about him . . . and when he wanted to proceed with his presidential campaign on his own terms, the media would . . . not . . . let him.  Life sucks when you can't make the world bend to your will, doesn't it?  Ask Donald Trump.

Hart's attitude not only destroyed his own political career (though he did return to the 1988 Democratic presidential campaign in December 1987 for, as it turned out, three months), it all but crippled the Democrats.  Left in 1988 with no viable presidential candidates with anything resembling national standing, the party crossed its fingers and ended up nominating for President Michael Dukakis, an honorable man who turned out not to be ready for prime time when he went against Republican presidential nominee George Bush, then the most beatable Republican nominee for President since Barry Goldwater.  Hart has since become a minor figure in history, an unknown cipher to the young people who were born in the late eighties and early nineties and who backed Bernie Sanders in 2016.  However, there is a whole generation of Americans who remember Hart as the guy who f**ked.

And on that fateful Tuesday at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, he f**ked . . . in public.  

The Big Ws

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has even more reason to feel like the cat that swallowed the canary, as the state Supreme Court has overruled Judge Maryann Sumi's decision barring implementation of the state's new anti-labor law. The law stripping collective bargaining rights from most public workers had been blocked from implementation by Judge Sumi on the grounds that adequate notice of a Wisconsin Assembly conference meeting to isolate the provisions of the law from a larger budget bill and make it separate legislation had not been given - thus violating the state's open meetings law. Peter Barca, the Assembly Minority Leader, had been present at that meeting, where he protested against the lack of adequate notice given - even as the Republicans present created the separate bill and walked out as if Barca wasn't there.

In a 4-3 decision, the Court ruled that enough adequate notice had been given of the hastily called meeting under the circumstances. The Court added that Sumi had overstepped her authority by having "usurped the legislative power which the Wisconsin Constitution grants exclusively to the legislature."

The ruling had been aimed not at the merits of the bill but at the way it had been drafted and passed. With the process now having been upheld by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Walker can now look forward to . . . a challenge to the bill on the merits in federal court. This is probably going to a high court that rules for more than just one state.

Meanwhile, the coup de grace has just been delivered to Anthony Weiner. A nightclub dancer former pornographic priestess - oops, I mean actress, goo goo g'joob - named Ginger Lee has come forward and told the media that she and Weiner had corresponded after she wrote something commendatory of the New York congressman on her blog. Wow, that's astonishing! Exotic dancers write blogs?

Ginger Lee - not to be confused with Ginger Grant, who defeated Ginger Lee in the Miss Appomattox beauty pageant - said that Weiner connected with her online, and that she and Weiner exchanged e-mails between March and June 2011. Ms. Lee then said that Weiner told her to lie about it if she were asked by the media. She added for good measure that Weiner would direct the conversation to sexual matters but that she, professional exotic entertainer that she is, refused to reciprocate.

That did it. Weiner must have been dreading the inevitable moment of shame. I mean, of course, when his wife Huma Abedin got home from a State Department trip - she works for Hillary Clinton - and he had to confront her. But aside from that, he has to take another inevitable step. He is announcing his resignation.

Scott Walker can breathe a sigh of relief that the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled on the collective bargaining repeal law just before people were ready to pay attention to his state again, with the Weiner story about to fade away. But he'd better get used to Wisconsin workers literally making a federal case out of it.

Ensign Strikes His Colors

John Ensign, the junior and juvenile Republican senator from Nevada, has announced that he will not seek re-election to the U.S. Senate in 2012, and it wasn't so surprising. Ensign, who had an affair with Cindy Hampton, one of his fundraising aides, is under investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee. The committee hopes to determine whether Ensign violated Senate rules by giving Cindy Hampton's husband and Ensign's ex-friend Doug Hampton lobbying work and then encouraging him to connect lobbying clients with the senator's office. Ensign's parents, meanwhile, gave money to the Hamptons - $96,000, which Ensign's lawyer described as a gift. This was all apparently done in the effort to keep news of the affair from leaking. Doug Hampton himself may be under investigation for similarly violating lobbying rules by steering clients to Ensign per the senator's suggestions. Hampton has suggested that the investigation of Ensign by the Senate - the Justice Department has determined that no criminal charges against the senator are necessary - is costing the government money and time, and Ensign should just resign his seat right now.

Wait: Ensign's parents got mixed up in all this?

Anyway, it's a big mess. Meanwhile, Republican Representative Dean Heller has become the favorite for the 2012 Republican nomination for Ensign's seat; his fellow congressional delegate Shelley Berkley is the favorite for the Democratic nomination. While Heller may have the edge as the national momentum is still with the Republicans, the growth of Nevada's Hispanic population - and Harry Reid's unexpectedly impressive performance in winning a fifth term over Republican challenger Sharron Angle - could help tilt this seat to the Democrats despite Ensign's retirement.

And Sharron Angle may be back for another crack at a Senate seat. Remember, Ensign almost beat Reid in 1998, then picked up Nevada's other Senate seat - vacated by Richard Bryan - in 2000. So there's a precedent here.

Regarding Ensign, Margaret Carlson of Bloomberg News suggests that the senator might have survived the sex scandal the way Louisiana Republican senator David Vitter survived his own prostitution scandal - by confessing publicly and apologizing. Carlson pointed out that it wasn't the crime that brought down Ensign, but the cover-up. After Watergate, you'd think people (people other than Vitter, anyway) would figure that out.

The Worse You Do . . .

David Letterman's admission last week to sleeping with women on his staff to thwart a blackmailer was both shockingly embarrassing and embarrassingly shocking. He not only demonstrated that he's a philanderer, but kind of a creepy one as well. But then Letterman always had a reckless side, as evidence by his tickets for speeding on the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut. (I've traveled on that road; trust me, it's pretty dangerous to go past the speed limit there!)

But get this. Letterman's actually getting moral support from his audience, and his ratings are up.

Meanwhile, President Obama hasn't gotten a climate change bill through the Senate, the economy is still reeling from last year's Wall Street crash, and if Obama signs a health care reform bill, it will more likely than not lack a public option. That said, his approval rating went up six points from last month, to 56 percent.

These two stories correspond to what I call the Bay of Pigs rule, named for the failed 1961 U.S.-backed counter-coup against Fidel Castro by Cuban exiles. The rule states that one's standing among others increases proportionally to how many times one screws up. President John F. Kennedy, remember, approved the Bay of Pigs invasion. After it failed spectacularly, he admitted the U.S's role in the Bay of Pigs operation and accepted full responsibility, and his poll ratings went up to 83 percent.

"Jesus," he was quoted as saying. "The worse you do, the better they like you."