Posted on 02/10/2011 9:50:39 AM PST by shortstop
I don’t know why people self-destruct.
But they often do.
I don’t know why politicians fall.
But they often do.
I don’t know why one small corner of our country – the Rochester region of upstate New York – has been the scene of two humiliating congressional sex scandals in as many years.
First it was Eric “Tickle Party” Massa, now it is Chris “Congressman Beefcake” Lee.
And after a while it reeks of ancient Rome, and a political class that, by its debauchery and venality, loses the faith and confidence of the people. Regular folks become dispirited, they become cynical, they have been burned time after time, and the essential belief in a system erodes until it can no longer be repaired.
New Yorkers have been beaten down. Officials at every level have been caught in scandal after scandal. In Rochester particularly this is true. There was the governor and the comptroller and the airport guy and the water-authority people and the state senator and the congressman and the police chief and the police chief’s son, two more bad cops and another state senator and now another congressman.
And who do you look up to?
Who do you believe in?
Who has the virtue to lead?
It was sickening last evening as the word spread. A disappointing, despairing punch in the gut that probably had little to do with pictures and a personal ad. It was a sadness and a disgust.
Sadness for the wife and son at home, two people whose lives have been shattered, who will share Chris Lee’s shame, who will be rocked by this in ways we can only imagine.
Sadness for the staffers whose jobs and careers are probably lost and gone.
Sadness for a district that was once represented by the likes of Jack Kemp and Bill Paxon.
Sadness for the people who contributed and volunteered and believed and voted.
Sadness for a country that will have one more unsettling freak show thrown against its national conscience.
And disgust for whatever evil or sickness or arrogance or impulse to self-destruction it was that had this man suicide his career, that had this man destroy his ability to serve.
There is a devil, and in the blank face of Chris Lee in the mirror you see a man who hears his voice. A man who has fallen prey to his wiles. A man who has given himself over to destruction.
I pray for Chris Lee.
I pray more for his family.
I pray ultimately for us all.
And I look back knowing that Chris Lee never should have been a congressman. He got there not on the sum of his abilities but on the size of his checkbook. Chris Lee had the good fortune to have a father who owned a very large factory.
When the family business sold a few years ago, it went for some $400 million.
When the congressional seat came open, a natural choice to fill it was a young Iraq war veteran – a bona fide hero – who was at the time a strong national voice for patriotism and veterans’ concerns. He was a grounded, conservative, Constitution-loving natural.
And the Republican county chairmen of the district pushed him aside to make way for Chris Lee’s checkbook.
Chris Lee offered to pay for his own campaign, and that’s all that mattered. That which was conceived in compromise is now compromised beyond repair.
He told her he was divorced, 39 and 6-feet tall.
He is actually married, 46 and – unless I’ve grown a couple of inches – not a bit over 5-foot-10.
I’ve interviewed him several times. He has been genial, a little diffident, and he made a point to call me Robert. I found him educated but not necessarily smart. On several issues, I found that he either didn’t really know what he was talking about, or his personal view was not what you’d expect from a Republican congressman. Last week, I asked another member of Congress about him, and was told that he left the member feeling somewhat uncomfortable, and that he was oddly aligned with both liberal and conservative caucuses in the House.
I noticed that he worked out, and that his custom-tailored, monogrammed, starched shirts were cut in such a fashion as to accentuate his chest and arms.
He also typically took off his suit coat and revealed his bulging muscles.
But I didn’t dislike him, and there was nothing about him that would make you suspicious. Mostly I was lukewarm toward him, but grateful that he was a Republican and that he brought a business perspective to the Congress. I was most grateful for the tireless work he did to secure the release of a federal agent unjustly jailed in the Virgin Islands. Law-enforcement people were touched by his efforts, and so was I.
He was not a bad congressman.
And he was probably on the fast track. Just sworn in to his second term, he had a seat on the Ways and Means Committee, with all the clout that entailed. Party insiders from the Rochester region believed that he was apt to end up in an important House leadership position fairly soon.
But that is all just tatters on the ground.
Presumably the governor will call a special election. Presumably Buffalo area politicians will try to retain control of the seat. Presumably many potential candidates will be wary of the fact that the seat may well be redistricted out of existence in the near future.
My recommendations would be David Bellavia of Batavia or Mark Assini of Gates, but Republican bosses are not prone to take my suggestions.
And all of that is merely a diversion from the question which mystifies and horrifies all of us. Namely: How could this guy do this?
What possibly could possess this congressman to use his real name and his real e-mail address and send out a picture of himself half undressed with his face fully visible? This is the personal and political equivalent of parking your pick-up truck in the middle of a railroad crossing and waiting for the CSX to come thundering through.
There is something here beyond lust and betrayal. There is a pathology, or a disease, or a howling addiction.
This is a broken man, and I feel sorry for him. Like Eric Massa before him, he is a person of unusual opportunity and useful ability, who truly had something to contribute, who has been blown apart, destroyed at his own hand at the moment of life’s greatest success.
I wish I’d known.
I would have tried to help him.
I hope someday he is able to find peace.
And I hope someday soon the people of this region and this country can have leaders worthy of high office.
No one is perfect, and we are all just humans.
But humans are better than this.
What a boneheaded moron. No match for Eliot Spitzer.
Now there's a shocker.
< /sarc>
I’m just glad he had enough decency or smarts to resign immediately. No matter how much pressure the House leadership could put on him, he didn’t have to resign if he didn’t want to. There would be no censure or investigation into Congresman Beefcakes. I’m also glad to know (from the article) that the governor does not appoint a vacancy in New York, but that there would be a special election for the open seat. It sounds like he was a self absorbed narcisiss. Hey, maybe he can get on Obama’s staff. Sounds like a pair made in heaven.
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How Americans can live with what they choose as their representatives is downright depressing.
Even more pathetic, it was a sex scandal without any sex.
When the congressional seat came open, a natural choice to fill it was a young Iraq war veteran – a bona fide hero – who was at the time a strong national voice for patriotism and veterans’ concerns. He was a grounded, conservative, Constitution-loving natural.
And the Republican county chairmen of the district pushed him aside to make way for Chris Lee’s checkbook.
Back in 2008, I was real excited when Battle of Fallujah hero, David Bellavia, decided to run for the NY 26th seat and was disappointed when the Republicans went with Chris Lee.
As it turned out, Republican county chairmen made a bad call.
We’re getting to the point where we should just pick 546 people out of the phone book to fill out Congress, the Supremes, Vice President and President.
Good thing my number is unlisted.
I have frequently supported that idea. The results would have to be better.
No Democrat would have.
Some people just have a really messed up sense of what they find to be exciting.
Thinking with the little head instead of the big one will mess you up every time.
Sounds as if his only skill was picking the right parents.
I knew it was a Republican when I heard that he had resigned.
No Democrat would have.
<><><><><
Exactly.
The GOP gives lip service to family values and the Dems don’t even do that.
The difference between Republicans and democrats. The Republican feels a sense of shame and resigns. The democrat doesn’t give a danm. All the mediabots laugh it off and say it’s nothing. The democrat has no sense of shame. The democrat rises rapidly within the ranks of the democrat party.
Yeah, notice that ‘Rat crooks like Rangel still sit in congress with no thought of doing the honorable thing and resigning.
I listened to Bob today, good man
Well, there are two sides to this coin. In past generations, the activities of those in power were just as likely to be debauched. We just didn't have a multimedia apparatus (and its accomplices within the internet like Craigslist) to make them so easily exposed.
One could argue that we have no idea whether the current crop of politicians is better or worse than those in 1961. I am not trying to insult Kemp or Paxon, but who are we to declare their relative sainthood just because nothing surfaced?
The point being: maybe Rome is actually recovering, with the lowest of our politicians revealed more rapidly and completely than in any generation before.
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