La Collins writes about “A Catered Affair,” and says that with New York awash in sex scandals, she’s been thinking that this stuff is not as much fun as it used to be. After a while, you’d rather get back to discussing highway construction. Mr. Egan’s column is titled “Donner Party Democrats,” and he says the modern Democrats press on, tearing into each other, crawling to get to the summit. They are now ravenous with hunger, and it is starting to show. Here’s La Collins:
Back in 1881, when U.S. Senator Thomas Platt of New York was visiting Albany, word went around the State Capitol that he had rented a hotel room for a tryst. According to The Albany Argus, Platt’s political enemies quickly got hold of the adjoining room, brought in “a stepladder, some whiskey, some crackers and cheese and cigars” and spent the next several hours taking turns peering over the transom.
Lately, with New York awash in sex scandals, I’ve been thinking that this stuff is not as much fun as it used to be. After a while, you’d really rather get back to discussing highway construction.
Sure, the Eliot Spitzer thing had its moments. But Spitzer had hardly gotten out the door when his successor, David Paterson, was confessing adultery to the New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez. The swearing-in party was still going while Paterson was coming clean.
The next day, Paterson called his first press conference as governor, in which he re-acknowledged his sexual sins with his wife, Michelle, by his side. That part was really disheartening. I thought that during the recent Spitzer unpleasantness we all came together as a nation and agreed that there should be no more bringing of wives to humiliating sex press conferences.
The fact that Paterson had a history of fooling around was not exactly a shocker. Albany is a place that specializes in illicit sex. The fabled Bear Mountain Compact is the old New York City legislators’ rule that anything that happens after you cross the Bear Mountain Bridge on your way upstate doesn’t count. Many other American statehouses have the same atmosphere of sexual misbehavior and overall ethical sloppiness, although New York does deserve credit for giving it a cute name.
This is what happens when a bunch of guys go to a place where their families can’t keep tabs on them. Of course, there are women in Albany — about a quarter of the lawmakers, although very few with any significant power. But the political culture, incubated over several centuries, is about guys on a road trip. The best argument for electing more women to State Legislatures might be that they put a damper on the fun.
If Paterson had called a press conference and told the state that he had slept around, been careless about the way he spent the money people had donated to his campaign and, in general, had been too familiar with a sleazoid lifestyle that frequently spills over into patronage jobs, bad legislation and pay-for-play government, we could have had the first good-news sex scandal in American political history.
But instead, he played the cuckolded victim of his wife’s infidelity. “I was jealous over Michelle” he said at the press conference.
“I’m not trying to blame anyone,” he added as he tried to blame her. “I’m not trying to say I was upset, so you can’t blame me. I was just pointing out that this happens to people.”
This is not only really, really unacceptable, it’s also unrealistic, given the fact that Paterson acknowledged that there had been “a number of women.” Everybody knows there’s only one revenge affair to a customer.
It took approximately five minutes for reporters to figure out that one of Paterson’s ex-girlfriends was a $150,000 employee in the governor’s office of — yes! — intergovernmental affairs. This poor woman not only had no warning, she had apparently been happily engaged in putting stickers on other people’s office doors, announcing who was in and who was out.
Please, future disgraced politicians, let’s get the rules straight:
1) No wife at the humiliating press conference.
2) No blaming the affairs on wife, especially if she’s standing beside you in total contradiction of Rule No. 1.
3) All former mistresses deserve advance notice, especially if they are soon going to be asked to explain their qualifications for the $150,000 job.
This is, of course, not over. We’ve come a long way since the days of Senator Platt, when The New York Tribune responded to The Argus’s scoop by informing its readers that there was “a scandalous story affecting the private character of a prominent politician,” and adding only that “full particulars were telegraphed to this paper, which we declined to print.”
This week all sorts of additional Paterson revelations have popped up in the local news media, like a credit card bill for a motel room charged to “constituent services” and mysterious payments to a woman who worked for his office in a mysterious capacity. Then there was Paterson’s memorable description of his attempt to rekindle his marriage with “exciting new things,” like hooking up with Michelle at a neighborhood Days Inn. Coming soon: anniversary dinner at Burger King.
Lucky for Paterson, most of the state still feels that he is way better than what we’re likely to wind up with if we go rummaging through the line of succession looking for someone who never committed adultery. Perhaps at some point all these people we’ve elected will be able to turn their attention to, say, governing.
But if any further sex revelations are necessary, history suggests that it would be a good idea to serve some snacks.
Here’s Mr. Egan:
When they set out, it all looked so bright — away to the West, to the Denver convention, nothing but blue skies ahead. They had a continent to cross, a nation to convince, and they vowed to do it in a way that had never been done before.
They moved briskly across the plains of the Bush presidency. There was the scarecrow president who didn’t know the price of fuel or the ways of war. Flapping in the wind, he pointed one way, while 70 percent of the country wanted to go the other.
On to the arid side of the prairie, they passed one sunbaked skeleton after another — Larry Craig and his wide stance, Scooter Libby and his breach of trust, and a man from the Arabian Horse Association, Brownie. Each had the stench of yesterday on them.
Along the way, they moved by Mitt the Muddler, who couldn’t decide which way to go, and Rudy the Robo, muttering, “9/11, 9/11, 9/11.” Dining on squirrel was a guitar-plucking Huckabee, who at least knew how to keep folks entertained around the campfire.
These refugees from the other party had their nutty preacher, Pat Robertson, who blamed fellow Americans for the big attack. It was their fault, he said: the civil libertarians, the gays, the feminists brought this mass murder upon themselves.
Uphill now, through the high plains, and still the Dems held together. They would not be like that tragic Donner Party of 1846, feuding and scrapping. It would all be over before the snows were gone.
They shared their rations and steeled their will, convinced that one way or the other they would make history: a black man or a woman would lead them. They were Democrats doing the impossible: moving in one line, together.
Deep in the treeless expanse of the West, they came upon one of the stragglers from the other party: John McCain. Once, he had been a maverick. Now he looked old and worn and lost. His own party had left him for dead, he explained. Called him amnesty man.
He seemed harmless enough, saying he knew nothing about the economy, confused about who was fighting whom in a distant part of the world. They didn’t give him a second thought.
And then, as the snow piled high deep into March, the Dems turned on each other. One of their leaders had been hanging around the camp of another preacher man, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. — a nutball like Robertson, blaming America for bringing on the horrid attack. What is it with these men of God? Should have left them home.
The Dems grew raggedy, worn, desperate. Whereas the first Donner Party was bogged down in the snow of the high Sierra, these Dems could not get out of the Rockies. One faction wanted to declare it over, based on greater popular support. The other one wanted simply to stick around long enough, waiting for the rival to self-destruct.
Their former leader, Clinton the Elder, was kept on a leash — nothing but cards at night. He said he’d seen far worse in his time. “Will there be more animosity as this thing goes on? Yes.” That didn’t help.
Looking for leadership, they turned to a quiet man in the rear, a doctor from Vermont: Howard Dean. Do something, Doc! Scream! But he cowered, mumbling about do-overs and going back to Michigan or Florida.
At their lowest ebb, they looked back and again saw the straggler, McCain. He was stronger, walking with renewed vigor despite his age.
He was joined by a grizzled old cuss named Cheney. One strange hombre, Cheney had shot a man in the face. He’d forgotten that his country was a democracy. When he was told that two-thirds of the nation wanted to heed the founders’ advice and avoid prolonged foreign conflicts, he spit on the ground, and said, “So?”
His party was united. What had been hatred for McCain was now hatred for the other party’s preacher. They could direct all their historic resentments, their bound-up frustrations, against this preacher, the Rev. Wright. So long as they hissed and booed at his picture every night, they stayed together, saying the nastiest of things.
The original Donner Party made history for one reason: by eating their dead. Cannibalism — it was all they could do to stay alive.
These modern Dems press on, tearing into each other, crawling to get to the summit, still five months away, in the mile-high city. They are now ravenous with hunger, and it is starting to show.
