Notes on Politics: Seeing Sexual Harassment Allegations Through a Partisan Lens

Here’s my bottom line when it come to allegations that someone used his office and his power to attempt to intimidate/persuade female underlings/employees to engage in sexual conduct and/or to subject them to sexually harassing language or behavior because they’re women and you’re feeling a bit randy:

If the allegations have merit and the denials don’t hold water (because the stories/explanations vacillate all over the place or because the individual has been deemed to have evaded truth on many occasions) it doesn’t matter what party affiliation comes after their name. Party is irrelevant. I don’t care if you’re U.S. Senator Robert Packwood or President Bill Clinton or GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain. If you have indeed harassed a woman (or women) sexually in the workplace, you should be held accountable for it. If you’re a public figure, you’ve made it difficult if not impossible for the female half of your constituency to believe that you can or will respect them and their rights if you treat your female underlings/employees so shabbily.

But that’s not the approach people always take when it comes to accusations of sexual harassment involving political figures. Some people’s reactions are shaped by their partisan affiliation and they just can’t see past it. If you’re a Democrat and party is more important to you than, say, taking a stand against sexual harassment and abuse of power, you’re going to stand by your man no matter what lip service the politician and the party provide to supporting women in the workplace -- a la Bill Clinton and those groups who continued to support him in the wake of his sex scandals and his administration's trashing of Monica Lewinsky's reputation to try to discredit her. Yet these folks also wanted Sen. Packwood, who’d voted “correctly” on women’s issues, booted from the Senate because he was a Republican, and conservative Clarence Thomas' nomination not to be confirmed to the Supreme Court in light of Anita Hill's testimony.

On the flip side, conservatives who vigorously went after Clinton on issues of character after the Monica Lewinsky scandal (and the Paula Jones one and the Juanita Broaddrick one came to light) are defending GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain and calling the allegations nothing more than a sleazy smear. This sure sounds familiar.

I don’t know whether the allegations against Cain are true. I do know that the organization which he used to run handed two women who claimed he’d sexually harassed them some nice walking away money (one woman got a year’s salary, according to the New York Times). There are now rumblings about a third woman who was allegedly harassed by Cain as well.

Cain has denied the charges. (As, you might note, so did Clinton when it came to Lewinsky and as did former Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards when confronted with stories that he got a campaign consultant pregnant and persuaded another staffer to pretend to be the father of the child.) Cain has said he didn’t remember what happened. He said he didn’t really recall if a “settlement” had been paid to the women.

But then we learned that he had allegedly spoken about these allegations with campaign aides in 2004 when he ran for U.S. Senate. Clearly he didn’t really “forget” and was not unaware of a “settlement.” As one political pundit suggested, Cain’s sounding awfully Clintonian. I’m just waiting for him to say it all depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is.

Notes on Politics: 'Lost' State of Union, Political Book Takes on Rage, Egos, Race and Infidelity

Lost State of the Union Address

There was quite a bit of consternation in them there internets last week about the possibility that White House officials would schedule the State of the Union address on February 2, the date of the Lost season premiere. Appalled Lost fans started tweeting and including the hashtag #NoStateofUnionFeb2.

Once it was announced by White House press secretary Robert Gibbs that while they didn’t yet have a date picked for the annual address he could assure folks that it won’t be on February 2, one of the Lost co-creators, Damon Lindelof posted a tweet, “OBAMA BACKED DOWN!!! Groundhog Day is OURS!!!!!! (God Bless America).”

Lindelof’s colleague Carlton Cuse, joked about the hullaballoo by posting this tweet, “In exchange for moving his speech Damon [Lindelof] and I promise to answer ANY questions the President has about LOST.”

On a more serious note, the campaign finance think tank Center for Responsive Politics suggested that the contributions of “people and political action committees associated with Walt Disney” totaling in $430,000 helped Disney make their case to secure February 2 for Lost.

Political Book Portrays Elizabeth Edwards’ Temper, Hubby’s Ego

Political reporters John Heilemann and Mark Halperin have dug into the political mud fairly deeply to unearth some damning, behind-the-scenes portraits of the major 2008 presidential candidates and those folks with whom they surrounded themselves with. The results are in Heilemann and Halperin’s new book, Game Change.

Among the revelations that’ve garnered mucho publicity in the past few days is the derogatory depiction of the Edwardses excerpted in this week’s New York Magazine entitled, “Saint Elizabeth and the Ego Monster.” (John Edwards’ mistress Rielle Hunter must be raising a champagne glass.) Characterized in the most extremely negative light possible, Elizabeth Edwards was portrayed as an exceptionally difficult person with whom to get along, with campaign aides referring to themselves as “battered spouses” for having to deal with her:

“With her husband, she could be intensely affectionate or brutally dismissive. At times subtly, at times blatantly, she was forever letting John know that she regarded him as her intellectual inferior. She called her spouse a ‘hick’ in front of other people and derided his parents as rednecks. One time, when a friend asked if John had read a certain book, Elizabeth burst out laughing. ‘Oh, he doesn’t read books,’ she said. ‘I’m the one who reads books.’”

John Edwards didn’t come off well either, as he was described as a deluded ego-maniac who thought he could just breeze through the campaign while screwing around and lying about it. The book excerpt said:

“Yet it was [John] Edwards who stepped so far across the line that his career and life were reduced to rubble . . . Edwards’s story is equally, lastingly resonant: an archetypal political tragedy in which the very same qualities that fuel any presidential bid—ego, hubris, vanity, neediness, a kind of delusion—became all-consuming and self-destructive. And in which the gap between public façade and private reality simply grew too vast to bridge.”

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Sewer Madness

One has admitted to trying drugs when he was a youth, attended a church where the head pastor had spouted hate-filled rhetoric, and attended charity board meetings and a fundraiser at the home of a person -- now a professor whose associates include the mayor of Chicago -- who did horrific things 40 years ago.

One was considered a hell raiser when he was young, left his first wife after she had a car accident that left her disfigured and coping with disabilities and married a younger, richer woman, and was later caught up in a savings and loan scandal.

Another cheated on his wife with, according to media reports, several women, and tried to get out of being sent to fight in Vietnam when he was a college student.

Another used to drink too much alcohol, had a hell raiser past and had his military service in Vietnam was questioned.

The aforementioned men -- Barack Obama, John McCain, Bill Clinton and George Bush -- have flaws. We all have flaws. And histories. And lessons learned. Name a person who doesn't have some kind of story in his or her past that raises eyebrows or never made some bad decisions, and I'll show you someone who hasn't lived life or gleaned any wisdome from it. People grow and evolve and are distinctly imperfect. Expecting people, especially our elected officials, to have flawless lives is unreasonable and inadvisable (who wants someone holding office who's never learned from her mistakes?).

As we enter the last month of the presidential campaign, the sewage has starting flooding the airwaves in earnest. The U.S. and world economies are in crisis. People's confidence has been shaken as they worry about whether they'll still have their jobs by Christmas and whether they'll be able to pay for their retirement. Meanwhile, the presidential campaigns -- for two men who, under normal circumstances, are honorable people with interesting life stories -- have turned negative because negative sells and sways voters. Back when I was doing graduate work in political science in D.C., I took a course on campaign management run by veterans of several major political campaigns. When we came to the unit on campaign advertising, the message was loud and clear: Negative works.

That doesn't mean, however, that we, the voters, have to like the big nasty turn this presidential campaign has taken. Not from McCain. Not from Obama. Words and phrases like "liar," "pal around with terrorists" and "dishonorable" shouldn't be thrown into the mix at a time when the economy is tanking, our country is at war on two fronts and some of the folks at AIG who received $85 billion from the taxpayers in an attempt to help jump-start the economy, days after getting federal approval, blew $440,000 on a week-long retreat "at a luxury resort and spa," spending $150,000 on meals and $23,000 on spa services, according to ABC News. This, as ordinary New Englanders are talking about how they'll pile on blankets and sweaters this winter and not turn on the heat often because home heating oil is so expensive.

Republican California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who, because of the tightening of credit right now, is asking the federal government for an emergency loan to keep his state afloat -- has had enough. "Look at what the presidential campaign has reduced down to: They now are accusing each other of things that have nothing to do with the economy, that have nothing to do with health care, that have nothing to do with the environment, that have nothing to do with, you know, how we deal with foreign countries," Schwarzenegger said, according to the Associated Press.

Over on The View -- which is quickly devolving from smart, quirky, real gal commentary to a caricature -- Barbara Walters has been likewise pleading for civility, both in the campaign and during her own show's "Hot Topics" discussion.



McCain and Obama are better than the campaigns they're running in these last days of the presidential race. The win-at-all-costs political consultants are doing us no favors by taking their clients' campaigns and running them through the gutter in order to get to the White House. But I suppose, the campaign team that wins in the end will feel as though all the mud-slinging was worth it. For the rest of Americans who are witnessing character assassination, smears involving old scandals that have no relevance to voters' lives today or on what kind of job either man will do in office, they are the ones who lose.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: No Bailout Deal, Post-Debate Analysis, SNL Skits

No Bailout Deal

I, along with the rest of the world, thought for sure that there'd be a bailout deal approved by the House of Representatives today. Certainly John McCain and Barack Obama thought there'd be one. McCain -- who "suspended" (only not so much suspended) his presidential campaign and said he wouldn't attend last Friday's presidential debate until there was a deal in place to avert an economic catastrophe -- must be in need of a cloth to wipe that egg off his face right now in the face of the House shooting down a bailout package today in dramatic fashion. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi certainly didn't help advance the delicate negotiations by wielding a stick in the form of some highly partisan remarks on the House floor for what was supposed to be a bipartisan, castor oil-like proposal. (See an NBC video about the House talks, including an excerpt of Pelosi's actual speech -- versus the text of her remarks -- here.)

An NBC analyst said that those who voted against the measure -- which they said their constituents opposed -- are in tough re-election fights. If there's anyway to come up with a temporary stop-gap measure until after the election (if that's even possible), that might be the only way something's going to get the green light in the face of such fierce public backlash.

So the Dow plunged and Capitol Hill is in an uproar. What will this mean politics-wise? A big, fat mess, although the folks in the cable news business will likely score better ratings. Well, one thing's for sure . . . Hank Paulson is rapidly becoming a household name.

Post-Debate Analysis

I think McCain and Obama fared about even on Friday night. There were no knock-out blows. No memorable lines. No awful gaffes. But I must say, I'm already sick of hearing the words "naive" and "he doesn't understand" being worked into numerous McCain responses to questions. I kept waiting for both candidates to get all fired up or do something we'd all remember, like sigh, glance at a wristwatch, walk menacingly toward one other, or quip, "There you go again." Alas, I was disappointed, though, substantively, I felt I gained insight into the specific foreign policy positions of both candidates.

As the pundits tended to agree that the candidates fared equally well, a USA Today/Gallup poll found that 46 percent of debate-watchers thought Obama emerged the winner, while 34 percent thought McCain got the better of his Democratic counterpart. A CNN poll had similar results, with 51 percent saying Obama was the winner, 38 percent saying McCain was the winner.

SNL Skits

No ill-advised, offensive incest jokes were featured during this past weekend's Saturday Night Live, but there were several political skits that accurately hit their targets, including Tina Fey reprising her role as Sarah Palin. The News Update nailed Bill Clinton's ambivalence toward Obama's campaign, as Fey captured the wretched awkwardness of the real Palin-Katie Couric interview from last week that was, I'm sorry to say, painful to watch. Fey's finger-in-the-air bit: Priceless. (Watch the three political SNL skits here.)

Question: Do you think SNL has gone too far in parodying Palin? Think such satire will create backlash and sympathy for Palin?