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Congressman Weiner's inappropriate tweet

I've long since stopped trying to keep up with this thread, so if someone else posted this, sorry:

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AlBell said:
Reminds me of Obama's Libya fiasco too. Where's the JREF lefties outrage?
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Over on threads devoted to that topic. At least personally, I expressed a great deal of outrage over the decision to join the civil war in Libya.

But at least that decision wasn't sold over a gigantic lie.

If you lie about extramarital affairs, you get impeached or otherwise driven out of office. If you lie in order to get us into a costly war, you don't.
 
Upchurch said:
I've long since stopped trying to keep up with this thread, so if someone else posted this, sorry:

[qimg]http://i.imgur.com/En18W.jpg[/qimg]
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I'm pretty sure it was the blatantly obvious lies about his penis that resulted in him resigning. If he'd fessed up to it on day one there would have been little scandal and almost no continual news story. Give the media something juicy to investigate and they will go after it. And every time they find some new little detail there will be a new story that keeps the scandal in the headlines a little longer.

Ultimately, that's why Vitter was able to remain in office. Even though he was a hypocrite, he fessed up to it and didn't lie to try to protect himself.
 
Newtons Bit said:
I'm pretty sure it was the blatantly obvious lies about his penis that resulted in him resigning. If he'd fessed up to it on day one there would have been little scandal and almost no continual news story. Give the media something juicy to investigate and they will go after it. And every time they find some new little detail there will be a new story that keeps the scandal in the headlines a little longer.
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I could not disagree with this more. There was no possible course of action Weiner could have taken that would have kept the media away.

I agree he handled it poorly, but I just don't see how a confession would have changed anything. Breitbart still roots around looking for more pictures, Chris Matthews and the other vapid Washington media personalities (who are doing god-knows-what with their private time) still wring their hands and worry about the children, and this ultimately results with a man being shamed out of office for stupid private choices.

Here's another issue I was thinking about: multiple people have said that it's Weiner's judgment, not the specifics of the act, that make people doubt his competence as a legislator. In other words, poor choices in his sex life lead to the conclusion that he would make poor choices as a Congressman.

Does that work in the other direction? Because, say, John Kerry showed poor judgment in granting Bush the authority to begin bombing Iraq, can we conclude that he is some type of sexual deviant? Do bad choices as a legislator lead to the inevitable conclusion that this person makes bad personal choices?

I'm curious why we feel comfortable going in one direction but not the other.
 
I was surprised that he resigned. It might be true that he harmed the chances of electing Democrats a bit, but what kind of pressure and incentives could the Democratic party leadership have put in place to get him to resign?

Looking at this with my particular moral compass what he did was less of a transgression than the routine infidelity that many legislators seem to engage in. Weiner's biggest transgression seems to be to have managed to have become the butt of national humor. Perhaps he should consider a name change if he runs for congress again and wants to keep sending out pictures of his stuff.

My theory: Democratic leadership came to him and told him that he would lose all committee leadership positions and party involvement. In addition they might have threatened him with ethics probe that could have resulted in loss of his pension. It is still a little difficult to see how this worked since I don't think ethics inquiry would have actually found enough to lead to removal from office or loss of his pension. Maybe he just resigned because he was tired of the public ridicule?
 
TraneWreck said:
Here's another issue I was thinking about: multiple people have said that it's Weiner's judgment, not the specifics of the act, that make people doubt his competence as a legislator. In other words, poor choices in his sex life lead to the conclusion that he would make poor choices as a Congressman.

Does that work in the other direction? Because, say, John Kerry showed poor judgment in granting Bush the authority to begin bombing Iraq, can we conclude that he is some type of sexual deviant? Do bad choices as a legislator lead to the inevitable conclusion that this person makes bad personal choices?
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If someone can't make good judgements, I don't think that can be isolated to one particular aspect of their life. Obviously that doesn't mean that therefore they must be a deviant or that they can't have other productive or valuable contributions.

Weiner made poor judgements in tweeting the pictures and lying about it afterwards. I'd prefer that my representative not display such poor judgement regardless of other contributions as there are plenty of other candidates willing to step up without such blatant examples of poor judgement.
 
Neally said:
If someone can't make good judgements, I don't think that can be isolated to one particular aspect of their life. Obviously that doesn't mean that therefore they must be a deviant or that they can't have other productive or valuable contributions.
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Again, though, you would never conclude from someone's bad judgment on the floor of Congress that they are reckless in their sex lives. In one direction, the separation is perfectly obvious.

If your mechanic shows poor judgment in replacing a belt, do you think, "this guy must do weird sexual stuff on the internet?" I certainly don't. Somehow we're able to separate private and professional judgment when going in that direction, but once someone has made a poor decision in their private lives, we make the wild conclusion that this is an inherent personal characteristic that will be voiced over and over.

It seems to me that these issues about "judgment" and "lying to the public" (again, I would expect someone confronted with embarassing, irrelevant personal information to deny it) are post hoc rationalizations for our society's creepy voyeurism.

I've handled a number of family law issues, divorces and the related fall out. I can tell you for a fact that if everyone's personal lives were made public, the "Wiener Standard" would basically rule out 90% of the population from holding office. People make bad personal decisions CONSTANTLY. These people still manage to be highly competent and highly successful in their professional lives. There really is no connection between the two.

George Bush is clearly someone who has terrible professional judgment. His mistakes are long and notable. What does that allow us to conclude about his private life? If Dubya wanted to coach his grandkid's soccer team, would we have to bar him? After all, he handled Hurricane Katrina poorly, so it's likely that he can't be trusted around children. He's a "poor decision maker."
 
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Neally said:
Weiner made poor judgements in tweeting the pictures and lying about it afterwards. I'd prefer that my representative not display such poor judgement regardless of other contributions as there are plenty of other candidates willing to step up without such blatant examples of poor judgement.
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Does it really matter much since many votes are along party lines and have little or anything to do the representatives judgement.
 
TraneWreck said:
I can tell you for a fact that if everyone's personal lives were made public, the "Wiener Standard" would basically rule out 90% of the population from holding office. People make bad personal decisions CONSTANTLY. These people still manage to be highly competent and highly successful in their professional lives. There really is no connection between the two.
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I suspect you are becoming jaded by seeing too many people in bad situations. I do not believe 90% of people would fail the wiener standard. I do believe almost every one makes bad personal decisions from time to time not constantly. And many people never make personal decisions as poorly as Weiner did.
 
Well, it's the upstanding thing to do, after being caught with your pants down in lies.

I figure the lies were his biggest cock-up. I mean, isn't honesty the best way to get ahead? I bet he'll remember that tip in the future.

I mean, on its own, who cares about sending doogan pics to chicks over the net provided they're of age? It's sleazy, sure, and very sleazy for a member of Congress...

I guess the whole package just ruined him.






Penis.
 
Cobalt said:
I mean, on its own, who cares about sending doogan pics to chicks over the net provided they're of age? It's sleazy, sure, and very sleazy for a member of Congress...
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Why is more sleazy for a member of congress?
 
eeyore1954 said:
I suspect you are becoming jaded by seeing too many people in bad situations. I do not believe 90% of people would fail the wiener standard. I do believe almost every one makes bad personal decisions from time to time not constantly. And many people never make personal decisions as poorly as Weiner did.
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Think about your most embarrassing moment. Maybe it happened in high school or college or after a particularly tough break up, but consider the lowest point of your sexual history.

Now that's made public. Everyone scrutinizes it, passes judgment on it, and debates it endlessly--are you still eligible for Congress under this precedent?

I know I wouldn't be.
 
eeyore1954 said:
Does it really matter much since many votes are along party lines and have little or anything to do the representatives judgement.
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True but it still applies to candidates within the same party. Dems would want to vote for a Dem without Weiners history of bad judgement, everything else being equal. Same for GOP. Then when it comes down to two candidates in the final election and the independents weigh in, the judgement issue could easily be the deciding factor.
 
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