No Moral Shortcuts. Not Even For Politicians

In 1969, my father became obsessed with the Chappaquiddick case. Short version: U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy and a passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, drove off a bridge on Martha’s Vineyard and landed upside-down in a pond. Kennedy walked back to a party he had attended and told two friends. Eventually, he went back to his hotel and got up the next morning as if nothing had happened. The car, with Kopechne’s body in it, was discovered that morning by a fisherman and his son.

A few years later, my father became transfixed by the Watergate hearings. Short version: There is no short version. A so-called third-rate burglary opened a portal into the pervasively corrupt and power-abusing Nixon administration. Ultimately, 48 people were found guilty of various crimes, not including Richard Nixon, who resigned before he could be impeached.

In the Chappaquiddick case, my father started ordering maps and pacing off distances. I’m not sure why. He thought it was somehow worse than the generally stipulated version, which was bad enough.

My dear, crazy father, gone from me now for a million years, might have favored the cause of Christine Blasey Ford, the professor who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her when he was 17 and she

15.

But the greater truth is that my Dad (a Goldwater Republican until about 1974) was so repulsed by the twin lobsters of Watergate and Chappaquiddick that he gave up on the idea that politicians could be moral beings.

My Dad refused to be what too many of us have become: the kind of person who is more troubled by moral offenses committed by the other team. Democrats believe rape is worse when a Republican does it. Republicans believe the opposite.

Most Democrats don’t even want to know the details of Juanita Broaddrick’s claim that Bill

Clinton raped her in 1978. Short version: It’s shaky in some places but not incredible. That’s probably going to turn out to be a good description of Ford’s story, but Democrats and Republicans will find reasons to believe one and not the other.

You could argue that the Republicans have a bigger problem, starting with President Donald Trump, he of the “Access Hollywood” tape, the alleged hush money and the gratitude he should bear toward Kavanaugh for taking this week’s focus off Stormy Daniels’ claims about which video game scenery the presidential nether parts resemble.

The Republicans have not one but two congressional wrestling sex scandals on their ledger! The first was former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who was called “a serial child molester” by the judge who sentenced him in 2016. The excuse-making by prominent Republicans and Fox News commentators was spectacular. More recently, the party is struggling with claims that U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio turned a blind eye to sexual abuse by a team doctor while an assistant college wrestling coach.

And then there’s Roy Moore. Do we have to talk about Roy Moore? Or U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch’s insane defense of White House staff secretary Rob Porter, accused by two wives of physical abuse? Hatch: “… incredibly discouraging to see such a vile attack on such a decent man. Shame on any publication that would print this …” (Hatch eventually apologized to both women.)

But the Democrats own Clinton, who indubitably had sex with a 22-year-old woman while he was in the middle of a sexual harassment case lodged by a different woman. In a room of the White House, he inserted a cigar in a very wrong part of that first woman. She was exiled for almost a year, but he brought her back to the White House for the purpose of making a spot on her dress.

And neither of those women is Broaddrick. Clinton’s wife decided to keep him anyway, which was her own business until, quite recently, she tried to move him back in the White House with her. So he could represent us at solemn state funerals and stuff like that.

I don’t exempt myself. Like many of you, I’ve made excuses for politicians whose value to democracy, I thought, exceeded their moral turpitude. I helped make this moment.

I should have listened to my dad.

Colin McEnroe appears from 1 to 2 p.m. weekdays on WNPR-FM (90.5). He can be reached at Colin@wnpr.org.