June 16, 2011
Weiner Announces Resignation from House
Twitter enthusiast Anthony Weiner announced today that he will resign his House seat. Mr. Weiner’s announcement comes on the heals of his request for a leave of absence to seek therapy for his unusual tweeting behavior. While back home, we, the people who actually elect these characters to office, are left asking such questions as “Are these the people we want to run our healthcare?”
Mr. Weiner’s creepy interactions with porn stars, Las Vegas blackjack dealers, 17 year-olds and any attractive woman who would say “hello” to him had registered hardly a stir among his fellow Democrats. Neither had his serial lying-tour where the Congressman blamed his troubles on hackers, conservative bloggers, Photoshop manipulators, and even “pie-throwers” trying to distract Mr. Weiner from serious affairs of state. It was only when the Democrat leadership calculated that the Weiner car wreck was distracting the public from the Democrats’ plan to save America (which consists entirely of terrifying voters into believing that Paul Ryan and his fellow Republicans want to throw grandma off the cliff), that the Democrats said “enough is enough.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Representative Steve Israel all issued statements on Saturday urged Representative Weiner to resign. On Tuesday, President Obama agreed, stating (with that masterful grasp of grammar befitting a former college professor and acknowledged super-intellect), “If I was him I would resign.”
It was that pressure from his fellow Democrats that finally compelled Mr. Weiner to announce his resignation. “I had hoped to be able to continue the work that the citizens of my district elected me to do,” he said. “Unfortunately, the distraction that I have created has made that impossible.”
Indeed, Republicans embroiled in sex-related scandals have resigned almost immediately after disclosure of their misdeeds (there are a few exceptions, but a quick exit has been the general rule). Most recently, upstate New York Congressman Chris Lee resigned within hours of revelations that he had posted a weird shirtless photo on craigslist, apparently to try to get dates. Mr. Lee’s scandal now seems almost quaint next to Congressman’s Weiner’s antics.
The fact is that Mr. Weiner had resisted resigning for the simple reason that there is nothing else he can do. Like many of his fellow politicians who are adept at grand-standing and little else, Representative Weiner has never had a real job.
Upon graduating from college in 1985, Mr. Weiner began his professional career as a staffer for then Congressman Chuck Schumer. He worked for Mr. Schumer’s office from 1985 to 1991, when he successfully ran for New York City council, a position he held until 1998. In 1998, Councilman Weiner was elected to the United States House of Representatives from the heavily Democratic 9th District of New York. That’s his entire resume. Notice the lack of any employment outside of politics fairyland. He has no law or business degree to fall back on. He has no professional experience. And as far as we know, there are very few help-wanted ads reading “Wanted. Arrogant, narcissist. Experience in grand-standing, prevaricating and displaying his private parts.”
Very few employers will be willing to touch Weiner, who even before the scandal, had alienated even his fellow demagogues in Congress. Obviously, any company which requires truth-telling as a prerequisite to employment will not consider hiring Mr. Weiner. That leaves only a job as a host with MSNBC.
There’s not much else. CNN may arguably have some potential since, in an effort to boost its moribund ratings, it gave disgraced former New York governor Eliot Spitzer a prime-time show. But Mr Spitzer, with an impressive resume including gigs as a litigator at a top New York City law firm, attorney general and governor, had much more to offer. Possibly the two can do a show together; the Weiner-Spitzer show might target the Food Network crowd. But that would give top billing to the far less qualified Mr. Weiner.
Congressman Weiner’s disgrace illustrates in multi-pixels what we already know about our representatives in Washington. They are highly flawed individuals who choose to run for political office because everyone else has something better to do.
Think of the kid in high school who ran for student counsel. Is this the guy you want telling you how to run your business? Whom do you trust more to manage your healthcare — your doctor or the Congressman giving personal anatomy lesson to strangers on the Internet? To think that such professional politicians are somehow magically equipped to make decisions with profound effects on our everyday lives is a ridiculous conceit perpetuated by the politicians themselves in concert with their media acolytes.
Just what was Anthony Weiner thinking? Who would engage in this kind of behavior, let alone a member of Congress who was exposing his leadership position to potential compromise and extortion?
Mr. Weiner’s fall from grace provides abundant material for psychoanalysis, but it is clear to anyone who has observed the various rantings and ravings of the New York Congressman that he had begun to believe his press-clippings. Here was a guy of ordinary talent suddenly elevated to national prominence, adored by the liberal media, toasted by the beltway left wing intelligentsia, and courted by special interest glad-handers. Here was a guy who probably never had a date in his life, suddenly dating beautiful women. All of the adulation seems to have fed Weiner’s enormous ego, leading to his frequent House floor theatrics and, ultimately, to the Congressman’s transmittal of gross sex-laced dialogue and naked photos to his Twitter followers. With the same hubris with which Weiner thought that random online acquaintances would want to see his naked body, Weiner strutted before the media, arrogantly denying that the disgusting tweets were his.
Mr. Weiner’s personal destruction reminds us yet again of the importance of limited government. To believe that these flawed individuals should be entrusted with the most important decisions affecting our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is to ensure our own personal destruction.