Secret Agent Men Behaving Badly

The Secret Service prostitution scandal that has emerged from President Obama's trip to Colombia last weekend has had the unexpected effect of making Obama and Sarah Palin upset over the same thing, and twelve Secret Service agents and twelve members of the military have been implicated. It's rather sobering to think that such a scandal might have gone undetected if a single agent had actually paid the woman rendering now-formerly secret services of her own, and the macho culture of the Secret Service might never have been brought to light.

Republicans, though, have shed more heat than light on the subject, trying to tie Obama to the scandal himself and implicating him by noting a failure of leadership from the Oval Office, even though Obama - busy with the economy and the deteriorating situation in Syria - can hardly be blamed for negligence. The President's opponents, though, are already revving up the spin. And it doesn't just concern the Secret Service. Faux-Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut has demanded a White House internal review to look for possible staff links to the scandal, even though a review had already been completed and found nothing.

Some of Obama's supporters have offered their own advice, but it doesn't seem any more plausible than Republican accusations of a lack of responsibility. Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) suggested to Chris Matthews on his MSNBC show that the Secret Service should recruit more female and minority agents to dilute the agency's current culture. I can understand how more female agents would lower the testosterone level, but how would ethnic and racial diversity change anything? I'm not against recruiting more Hispanic and/or nonwhite Secret Service agents, but how is a minority male agent any less macho than a white male agent? Chris Matthews asked Maloney a similar question. Of course, he never got a straight answer. 

I think it would be best if House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King (R-NY), whom I credit for having been nonpartisan on this issue (so far), went ahead and did their investigations and let the chips fall where they may. The implicated agents will be dealt with, including the agent who posted a picture of himself guarding Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential campaign with the double entendre caption of "checking her out." And the fact that anyone would find Palin attractive and brag about being in a position to "check her out" suggests that this agent not only needs disciplinary action . . . he needs psychiatric help.