Scandal Nation

Despite 15 trillion dollars of debt, we still give priority to sex scandals over economic scandals. Which may explain why we are so deep underwater. Imagine if a politician who grabbed a 100 million dollar pork project for his friends had to spend a week explaining it. That would almost certainly never happen. Not to a Democrat or even a Republican. Spending isn’t salacious. But maybe it should be.

The biggest political scandals are unrelated to a politician’s function. Sometimes sex and money do collide. As is the case with John Edwards. But mostly it’s a chance to play out an old narrative. The sleazy pol, the hypocritical media and the spouse standing by his side.

It is remarkable that we have spent more time and energy talking about whether a politician tweeted a pornographic image of himself, than the obscene 15 trillion debt that this politician, among so many others, saddled us with. But Bill Clinton’s own impulse control problems in his personal life garnered more attention, than in his legislative affairs. Paula Jones has moved on, but America is still suffering from the shortcuts and legislation of the Clinton era.

It’s not that Clinton had any right to turn the White House into his own personal whorehouse, but it was a symptom of a character flaw with much worse legislative consequences. Like bombing Yugoslavia, spending Social Security surpluses and turning Fannie Mae into a mortgage welfare outlet. The consequences of these things are very much with us. Two of them may have sent our economy into a depression and given time they will help destroy us completely.

But there’s no metric for irresponsible legislative behavior by a politician. Only irresponsible sexual behavior. A scandal about Weiner pushing a law that bans personal information about judges from being posted on the internet wouldn’t get very far. But a headline about him abusing Twitter. That’s good as gold. But which is the greater abuse here? Which one endangers the republic more?

Read More at Canada Free Press by Daniel Greenfield, Canada Free Press