Men, power, reckless sex: Why? What are we missing?

I don't always read or agree with Maureen Dowd, but I do have her on my blogroll and now and then a title grabs me.  Yesterday she wrote "Your Tweetin' Heart".  Yes, I knew it was going to be about Anthony Weiner, but I read it anyway because sometimes her take on odd things like that is refreshingly different.

She talked not just about Rep. Weiner, but about what has been bothering me for so long about the men (it's been men so far)  we liberals count on to help solve the country's problems.

First there was Gary Hart, who practically begged the press to catch him with a babe on a boat and got caught. Bill Clinton fooled around with women (whose appeal caused some real head-scratching for most of us) and got caught.  Then it was John Edwards, who co-created a child with a woman who was not his wife and got caught.  Now it's Anthony Weiner, who got down and dirty in words and pictures and got caught.

(In earlier times it was FDR, JFK and Lyndon Johnson, but, while rumors flew, they didn't get caught.  And who knows how many others there were?)

They were all supposed populists -- my kind of people.  Their ability to speak up convincingly for the poor and disenfranchised is what got them where they were.  Their inability to tame their penises is what brought them down and ended any chance for us to count on their intelligence, their compassion, their flair for skewering the lies.

Dowd says:

Often powerful men crave more than love and admiration from The Good Wife. Sometimes they want risk, even danger. Sometimes they’re turned on by a power differential. They adore a fan reaction like the one from Lisa Weiss, the Vegas blackjack dealer, who flirted with Weiner on Facebook: “you are sooo awesome when you yell at those fox news” pundits, and “I bet you have so many chicks after you! you are our liberal stud.”
In her book, Elizabeth Edwards wrote that she would have bet her big house that her husband would not fall for a cheesy line like the one Rielle Hunter tossed at him: “You are so hot.”

But clichés work. As Weiner wrote to Weiss: “What are you wearing?”
Meagan Broussard, a 26-year-old college student and single mom from Texas, wrote on BigGovernment.com, conservative Andrew Breitbart’s site, that her relationship with Weiner began when she wrote on his Facebook page that one of his speeches to construction workers was “hot.”

“Within an hour,” she wrote, “we were sending messages back and forth.”

So what is it?  What happens there?  Isn't the chance at saving the country a big enough ego-driver?  What is it about power that makes it such an aphrodisiac?  These are all men who worked long and hard to get to the top.  They're men who prided themselves on their willingness and their ability to help those who can't help themselves.  Their passion for progressive causes made them heroes in the eyes of millions of people.  We trusted them to help us move mountains.  Was that too much to ask?

They're men, not Gods.  I get that.  They don't always want to be the Good Guys.  But there are easier, more dignified ways to end a career than to self-destruct with your pants down.

So I'm asking:  Why?  Why do they do it? 

Anybody?

Diogenes and Me - On the Road Again

To paraphrase the great Joan Cusack in "In and Out", as she stood in the bar in her wedding gown, looking for a marrying man, "Is everybody sleazy?"

I've spent more than 50 voting years looking for an honest politician. It's always been in my best interest to choose the honest ones, and, most of the time, the ones I've chosen have been mostly honest. But--I don't know--maybe I set my sights too high. I really, even now, expect them to behave the way they said they would.

I wanted to believe Bill Clinton when he said through his teeth, "I've never had sexual relations with that woman!" I liked Bill and I thought, as presidents go, he was good for the country.

I wanted to believe John Edwards when he said, with love in his eyes, that Elizabeth was all the woman he ever wanted. I liked John and believed with all my heart that he could help us out of this mess.

I wanted to believe that Bill Richardson was as pure as the driven White Sands, but two Pay-for-Play scandals in a row, along with a flurry of truth-checks, gives me pause. I liked Bill and had every faith that he would have served our country well.

And, more important to you, me, the state of the economy, and the plight of the world, I wanted to believe that George W. Bush would set aside his childish ways and suddenly become a grown-up. (No, I'm kidding here. I never for a scanty second thought he would.)

And now, at my age, I've been bedazzled by this new one, Barack Obama. I like Obama, and let's face it, I want to believe every darned word he ever said. I believed him, for instance, when he said he wouldn't hire lobbyists or special interest flunkies. Why wouldn't I believe him? He HATED those damned lobbyists and special interest flunkies. Didn't he?

(Let me stop and explain myself, because, except for that one lapse, I've only been talking about Democrats here. After 50 years, the Democrats are like family to me. And you know how it is with families; we tend to love them, faults and all. We look the other way when they embarrass us. We suffer silently when they disappoint us. But finally, when they just won't behave, no matter how many times we remind them that we're the good guys, we have to get together for some serious intervention.)

So that brings me to Tom Daschle. I really like Tom Daschle. I was heartbroken when he lost his bid for re-election in 2006. I wanted to believe that Mr. Daschel, soft spoken, modest--one of us-- would continue the good fight Somewhere Out There. I saw pictures of him driving a rickety old car along the streets of D.C, bless his Midwestern heart, and I thought, there's a man who knows where his bread is buttered.

So imagine my surprise when I heard he'd been taking millions from the folks we thought he was fighting against, and tooling around Washington in the back of some millionaire's Town Car. Has he never heard of taxis? Rental cars? Or, here's a thought--when he agreed to come and talk to those groups, couldn't he have asked nicely to be picked up at the airport and delivered to wherever he was going? (I've been one of those airport picker-uppers for semi-famous people. Believe me, there are people standing in line just waiting for a chance to get those VIPS in the car, where they're then held captive for what must seem like hours, subject to the most vapid conversations that consist mainly of observations about the weather. The only consolation is that the ride is free; no strings attached once you step outside of the vehicle.)

***I started this post yesterday, and I'm still waiting to hear how a single person can rack up $120,000 in taxes alone for a part-time car and driver. That's six figures--just for the taxes. I think there's some mighty 'splainin' to do, and I'm all ears. (What is a Town Car, anyway?)

I am sick of greed. I'm sick of sleaze--even legal sleaze. What influence was Daschle peddling and why was it worth many millions of dollars? Consider this: If he had really wanted to get his message across to the Health Care industry, he could have done it for a lot less than a few million dollars. He could have said it this way, in plain-spoken, midwestern English:

"Guys, the ride is over. You either tighten your belts and stop gouging us or I've got three words for you. Universal Health Care."

If he had done that, today he would be Secretary of Health and Human Services, and tomorrow he would have rolled up his sleeves and gotten to work. He would have been where we needed him to be, and somewhere down the road a Good Man could have made us proud.

Ramona