Like all such scandals, the matter of Mark Foley and his lurid valentines to congressional pages is instructive for what it reveals, and not just about Foley, but about his party, its leaders and us.
Having checked in to "rehab," after it was revealed that he had written salacious e-mails and instant messages to pages, Foley shoved his lawyer out front to say he was an alcoholic, gay and had been abused by a clergyman as a boy.
What is Foley up to?
Rather than speak directly to the charge against him -- that he is a homosexual with the hots for teenage boys -- Foley's lawyer is entering a plea, in the court of public opinion, of diminished capacity.
Foley is portraying himself not as a sexual predator out to pick up boys, an unappealing figure, but a victim of compulsive forces over which he had no control and for which he cannot be held accountable.
Call it the Larry King-Oprah defense. Even as he takes "full responsibility" for his lewd and lascivious conduct, his lawyer implies he didn't know what he was doing. The e-mails and IMs were sent in an alcoholic-induced stupor -- between votes on the House floor
Will it work? Perhaps. The shamed and shunned Foley will appear increasingly as a figure of interest, and then of sympathy, in our forgiving society. Offers of six-figure book advances are probably in the mail.
What does the episode say about Speaker Hastert and the GOP? Surely, it speaks poorly of their executive decisiveness, though, thus far, it does not speak all that badly of them as human beings.
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