I don't mean to brag, but...

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

31 January 2012

...we know our stuff here at the US Studies Centre.

This past Saturday, the Sydney Morning Herald asked four people whether politics has "finally moved beyond the personal." The evidence of this purported cultural shift? Newt Gingrich's victory in the South Carolina Republican primary, where he won over a socially conservative electorate despite his multiple marriages and reports that he'd asked an ex-wife for an open relationship.

"Politcians tax us too much, spend our money wastefully and regulate our lives," demagogued "The Libertarian," a.k.a. the Instittute of Public Affairs's James Paterson. "So why do we spend so much time worrying about their personal lives instead of the things that really matter?" Gingrich's success, he posited, was "one piece of evidence that American voters have moved beyond the personal." Voters have moved on, even if the media hasn't.

"The Feminist," Kate Gleeson pointed out, not unreasonably, that the public is more forgiving of the male and heterosexual Gingrich's indiscretions than they might be of a woman or gay man. "The Former Politician" Cheryl Kernot used the forum to urge legislators to restrict free speech by enhancing privacy laws, and and applauded one of Gingrich's self-serving attacks on the media.

Fortunately, "The Academic" — also known as the USSC's David Smith — was on hand to straighten things out:

The triumph of Newt Gingrich in South Carolina reminds us that the politics of the personal is as strategic as any other politics.

Moral outrage is not a natural phenomenon that occurs automatically in response to revelations about politicians' personal lives. It is a political weapon to be exploited or neutralised by those who best understand how to use it. No one understands better than Gingrich how outrage works in South Carolina.

America's "Red" states (conservative, Republican-voting) have higher average rates of divorce and birth out of wedlock than the supposedly more permissive "Blue" states. While conservatives insist on strict moral rules, they know they live in a morally complicated world. Everybody knows and loves people who have "fallen" at least once. Gingrich wants to appear as someone who has sinned and repented, and deserves the forgiveness everyone sometimes needs.

Moreover, he has successfully turned himself into a victim. When CNN's John King opened a debate with a question about Marianne Gingrich's claims that Newt had asked for an open marriage, he called the accusations "tawdry" and expressed outrage that the "elite media" would try to protect Barack Obama by attacking a leading Republican this way. This earned him a standing ovation; he had masterfully implied that an attack on him by his ex-wife was an attack on all conservatives by the vindictive liberal media. During the Obama presidency, Republicans have found no emotion more satisfying than victimhood.

Quite. Gingrich is a benefactor of circumstance and cultural affinity. Let us not forget that personal indiscretions recently claimed the careers of Demcoratic Congressmen Anthony Weiner and Mark Sanford, a Republican and the former governor of South Carolina. (Sanford, you may recall, went missing in the middle of 2009 when he was supposed to be hiking the Appalachian Trail. It turns out he had skipped off to Argentina to have an affair. Until then, he was expected to be competitive in this year's presidential primaries.)

After the jump, the rest of David's response.

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If conservative Christians understand that moral rules are difficult to follow and transgressions must sometimes be forgiven, they have less tolerance for people who want to overturn the rules. This may make Gingrich a more acceptable candidate than Mitt Romney, who has a spotless family life but signed gay marriage into law as governor of Massachusetts. Brad Atkins, the leader of South Carolina's 700,000 Southern Baptists, has also claimed "Romney's Mormonism will be more of a concern than Gingrich's infidelity'', because Christians can forgive infidelity but Mormonism is a continuing affront to Christianity.

"The personal" is a lot more than sex. Gingrich's well-known past infidelities may have lost the power to hurt him, but that does not mean "character" has ceased to be an issue. Testimony from former colleagues could hurt him more than testimony from ex-wives. Grandiosity might be less forgivable than infidelity.

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Weiner's sitcom epitaph

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

5 October 2011

I'd like to tell you to watch the great NBC sitcom "Parks and Recreation" because it's a marvellous satire on American politics and government, but I don't actually think this comedy about a department in an Indiana small town's city council reveals much about the workings of civic institutions. That said, parks department director Ron Swanson is the embodiment of libertarianism's coming out in popular culture:

The show's fourth season began on NBC last month, and it did include some political satire, which, somehow, went completely over my head. The episode featured one character, Ann, receiving lewd photographs in her email. Ann's a nurse, and after she notices symptoms of mumps in the offending photograph, she finds herself subject to an avalanche of offensive snapshots from men throughout the city government eager for a free check-up.

Then I read this article about the show's writing staff: 

Schur wants to keep incorporating ideas that seem "zeitgeist-y," and they discuss how to do their own take on the Anthony Weiner scandal.

Congratulations, former Congressman Weiner. You've been immortalised the best way American pop culture knows how: As a gag on a sitcom. 

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The rise and fall — and rise? — of George Allen

By http://ussc.edu.au/people/erika-ann-jordan in Sydney, Australia

31 August 2011

Former Virginia Senator and Governor George Allen

Former Virginia Senator and Governor George Allen: Is political rehabilitation possible in the era of Wiener-gate?

While "Wiener-gate" may have captivated the world in May and July and brought down a congressman, Anthony Wiener was but the latest in a string of public officials to fall prey to the forces of new media. One of the first casualties was George Allen, a popular former governor and senator from Virginia, and one time likely Republican candidate in the 2008 presidential election. In the lead up to his Senate re-election bid in 2006, he called a staff member from the opposition campaign a racial epithet, in the infamous “macaca incident.” In addition to mainstream press reports, the video of the incident, first posted on YouTube, went viral and Allen’s poll figures nose-dived. He lost his seat and became unviable for a presidential run.

But in the era of Wiener-gate, where scandals can be played over and over again and where every word or gesture is endlessly analyzed, is it possible for a politician to make a comeback? George Allen, as the first casualty, may also be the first test case: he announced his intention to run for his old Senate seat on January 24 of this year. And, if current polls are anything to go by, it looks like he might have a shot. A PPP poll [PDF] released August 2 put him far ahead of all the Republican contenders: 68 per cent to 6 per cent for Jamie Radtke, his next closest opponent and the Tea Party candidate. A June 30 Quinnipiac University poll has him in a dead heat with Democrat, and fellow former governor, Tim Kaine: 42 per cent to 43 per cent.

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Allen has also racked up campaign contributions and endorsements.Hi s campaign recently announced that it had raised $1.1 million in the April 1 to June 30 fundraising period, with 82 per cent of second-quarter donations coming from Virginia donors. Allen’s revenue total now stands at $2.6 million. This may soon change with the recent endorsements of several key political figures. On August 15, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced his endorsement of Allen. Fellow Virginia Congressmen Morgan Griffith, Bob Goodlatte, and Robert Hurt have also recently given Allen their endorsement.

Whether George Allen wins the election or not, the amount of campaign contributions he has received and his positive polling seems to indicate that he has overcome his Waterloo. And while new media had a hand in bringing down his last election campaign, he is now using it to disseminate his message, with a page on Facebook, Twitter feeds and, ironically, YouTube videos.

Does this mean that other politicians brought down by new media can hope to rehabilitate their careers in the future? Perhaps. The electorate has a notoriously short memory and money and name recognition is usually what determines the outcome of an election. Surely there is no better way to gain name recognition than a little scandal.

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What is a sex scandal?

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

30 July 2011

With Oregon House Democrat David Wu resigning after being accused of sexually assaulting a woman, Dave Weigel notes that this is the fourth of five resignations during this Congress that resulted from "a sex scandal":

In three cases, the trigger for the resignation was not a revelation of sex. Lee and Weiner were flirting; Wu was doing something else. The commonality between Wu and Weiner is that no scandal can be survived if the words "high school girl" appear in it.

I'm inclined, however, to agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates when he says "it's probably time to stop grouping rape under the rubrick of sex scandal." I don't know whether the accusations against Wu of "unwanted sexual activity" amount to the legal standard of rape, but they're definitely in a different class to your run-of-the-mill sex scandal. I expressed doubts about the consensual nature of Anthony Weiner's communiques, but if there is a common thread between him and Congressman Wu, it's not the words "high school girl." (High schooler or not, Wu's alleged victim was an adult.) The pertinent question in both cases was one of consent, and if Wu engaged in sexual activity without it, he has no place in Congress, no matter how many years beyond high school the woman in question was.

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On Anthony Weiner

By Jonathan Bradley in Newcastle, Australia

9 June 2011

UPDATED BELOW.

Representative Anthony Weiner shirtless in a photo he sent to a woman.

Jill Filipovic has the correct take on the scandal surrounding Representative Anthony Weiner's lewd Twitter pictures:

It’s not clear to me that the women on the receiving end of the Weiner pics actually asked for them, or that there was ongoing banter before Weiner sent his sexy photos (having seen a handful of the photos, I use the term “sexy” loosely here). If these were ongoing relationships, I understand it a little more. But if they were largely unsolicited dick pics? That’s another basket of weasels.

Anthony Weiner's fellow Democrats have not offered much in the way of support for the New York Congressman, but I've seen strenuous arguments, particularly from liberals, that this is a trivial matter that should be of concern only to Weiner's wife. Feministing, for instance, echoes a Paul Waldman suggestion that media outlets begin stories on the matter by explaining why they're covering it at all. It's a far cry from the left's usual reaction to conservatives caught in sexual improprieties, be they Larry Craig, Mark Sanford, John Ensign... (...Newt Gingrich, Chris Lee, etc.). Many exhibit an unbridled sense of schadenfreude when ardent proponents of "family values" are unmasked as hypocrites, and this has a nasty habit of transforming into smugness. I'd like to know a bit more about Weiner's actions before I too strenuously defend his right to sext.

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Amanda Marcotte is right to draw a "distinction between 'men sending pictures of themselves to women who are welcoming of such pictures' and 'men who send such pictures unbidden'." If he is the former type, then Weiner should certainly be left alone. According to ABC News, Huma Abedin, the congressman's wife, is standing by her husband, which should end any speculation the rest of us may want to engage in over the marital propriety of his actions. But if this is less sexting and more an online equivalent of flashing, Weiner's actions are a lot more suspect.

Meagan Broussard, one of the women with whom Weiner exchanged pictures, first contacted the congressman by writing on his Facebook page "Hottttt." Broussard told Chris Cuomo that on her side it was "not very personal, but him, he was very personal with his own business," and that it took just "three days, four days" before their interaction became romantic. "It was nothing like a relationship," she said, but agreed with Cuomo that their interactions were flirtatious. When asked how much of the interaction consisted of "sex talk," Broussard said, "He would attempt all the time."

It's not clear whether this was two people who both knew what to expect from each other, or whether Weiner was sending off dirty pictures to women who had given no indication they would be interested in such a thing. These women have every right to their privacy, of course, but I would prefer to know more about them before I defend too strenuously actions that might well have been sleazy or even predatory. If so, the women in his district might reasonably wonder whether they can safely contact their congressman. That is not to say Weiner was sleazy or predatory, just that the context in which these pictures were sent isn't clear.

As for Andrew Breitbart, the conservative blogger who broke the story, this is a major victory. He should not, however, gain credibility from it. He is still the muckraker who, for instance, attacked Shirley Sherrod by using deceptively edited video footage. Just as the National Enquirer's coverage of the John Edwards story didn't make it a respectable media outlet, nor should Breitbart now be considered in any way a serious journalist.

UPDATE: RadarOnline has released a purported transcript of Facebook conversations between Weiner and Lisa Weiss, a woman from Las Vegas [PDF]. (Be warned, that transcript is explicit.) Weiss seems not to mind Weiner's attentions in the slightest.

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