In the wake of the bandwagon of blame-shifting among House Republicans about the Mark Foley scandal, I guess you can’t blame Foley himself from joining the parade. Since his resignation from the House the other day, Foley has let it be known through his attorneys that he (1) is getting treatment for alcoholism, and (2) was sexually abused as a teenager by a “clergyman.”You don’t have to be terribly cynical to suspect that Foley is trying to drown his sorrows in a vast sea of popular media stereotypes and storylines. After all, if Mel Gibson could get away with claiming he drank himself into anti-semitism, why not say that seventh scotch-and-soda drove you to the computer to engage in cybersex with teenage boys? And what better way to make yourself a small part of a big group of victims than to imply you’re one of the thousands of those preyed upon by libidinous priests? (Actually, Foley hasn’t so far identified the denominational affiliation of his alleged abuser, but Foley is Catholic).If the disgraced Floridian wanted to kick it up a notch in his search for victim-status while currying favor with his erstwhile GOP colleagues, he’d let it be known that he got the idea of playing slap-and-tickle with youthful subordinates after obsessively reading and re-reading the Starr Report. Or maybe he could say he was convinced by a therapist to treat his booze-o-holia and teenage traumas by getting in touch with his Inner Liberal. At this point, the only real surprise would be a frank acceptance of responsibility by Foley or the House Republican leadership.
This year’s big media narrative has been the confirmation saga of Neera Tanden, Biden’s nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget. At New York I wrote about how over-heated the talk surrounding Tanden has become.
Okay, folks, this is getting ridiculous. When a vote in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the nomination of Neera Tanden was postponed earlier this week, you would have thought it presented an existential threat to the Biden presidency. “Scrutiny over Tanden’s selection has continued to build as the story over her uneven reception on Capitol Hill stretched through the week,” said one Washington Post story. Politico Playbook suggested that if Tanden didn’t recover, the brouhaha “has the potential to be what Biden might call a BFD.” There’sbeen all sorts of unintentionally funny speculation about whether the White House is playing some sort of “three-dimensional chess” in its handling of the confirmation, disguising a nefarious plan B or C.
Perhaps it reflects the law of supply and demand, which requires the inflation of any bit of trouble for Biden into a crisis. After all, his Cabinet nominees have been approved by the Senate with a minimum of 56 votes; the second-lowest level of support was 64 votes. One nominee who was the subject of all sorts of initial shrieking, Tom Vilsack, was confirmed with 92 Senate votes. Meanwhile, Congress is on track to approve the largest package of legislation moved by any president since at least the Reagan budget of 1981, with a lot of the work on it being conducted quietly in both chambers. Maybe if the bill hits some sort of roadblock, or if Republican fury at HHS nominee Xavier Becerra (whose confirmation has predictably become the big fundraising and mobilization vehicle for the GOP’s very loud anti-abortion constituency) reaches a certain decibel level, Tanden can get out of the spotlight for a bit.
But what’s really unfair — and beyond that, surreal — is the extent to which this confirmation is being treated as more important than all the others combined, or indeed, as a make-or-break moment for a presidency that has barely begun. It’s not. If Tanden cannot get confirmed, the Biden administration won’t miss a beat, and I am reasonably sure she will still have a distinguished future in public affairs (though perhaps one without much of a social-media presence). And if she is confirmed, we’ll all forget about the brouhaha and begin focusing on how she does the job, which she is, by all accounts, qualified to perform.
