The Larry Craig Mess

August 31, 2007; Page A8

So now comes Idaho's Senator Larry Craig to verify one
more time Mr. Dooley's truth that "politics ain't beanbag." Were it gentle beanbag, a long parade of troubled politicos caught in cars, tidal basins, on boat decks and inside cookie jars would have been left to God's mercy and their own demons. Even in the days of smoke-filled rooms, the boys knew there were some malefactors who had strayed to that place beyond their protective reach, which is to say, into the hands of the party faithful. Senator Larry Craig is in that place.

Senator Craig's incident inside the men's room of the
Minneapolis-St. Paul airport is, at the least, bad timing on his part. His party, it might have occurred to him, had just lost control of Congress for reasons that Republican voters chose to call "corruption." The various corruptions included Representatives Mark Foley and Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay and the K Street mob, the disgrace of earmarks and bridges to nowhere and whatever else GOP voters concluded had
fallen outside the norms of established party principle.