WASHINGTON — I see that the stalwarts of Reform Politics
throughout the city of New York have been given reason for hope and
change. It is reported that former congressman Anthony D. Weiner
(pronounced as you might expect) is testing the waters for a return
to public life. He is mulling over a run for the mayor’s mansion or
perhaps a campaign for “public advocate.” I am not really sure what
a public advocate does, but Weiner has done things in public that
are very daring and so I have no doubt he could handle
the duties of a public advocate.
You will remember that he left the House of Representatives when
he was caught handling his private parts in photographs that he
sent to women he did not know and repeatedly lying about it to his
colleagues and the press. Well, now he is pondering a
return to public office. He has been out of, I guess we would call
it, the public eye for a little over a year, and as he told WNYC
recently, “I paid a very high price….” He has become a
stay-at-home dad to his six-month-old son and when he does go out
in public he wears jeans, tee shirts, and a baseball hat turned
backwards. So he is contemplating another office of public trust.
Whatever office he chooses to run for, you can count
on his running as a Reformer. He has always been very progressive
and was in fact a dreadful scold to the reactionary Republicans on
Capitol Hill until those dratted pictures turned up. CNN would not
even give him a show on the network, not even a late-night show.
CNN gave former governor Eliot Spitzer a show after his imbroglio
with a sex ring, but not Weiner.
His wife, Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Hillary Rodham
Clinton, according to the infallible New York Post, is
trying to get him to do a blockbuster interview on television to
clear the air for a return to politics. That is what her boss’s
husband, Bill Clinton, did in 2004 on “60 Minutes,” and now people
absolutely adore Bill. Properly executed, a TV interview could be
Weiner’s first step to the presidency!
The problem is finding the right interviewer we are told.
According to the Post, a “source said the couple is trying
to decide which reporter would be offered the sit-down — and
they’d prefer one who typically lobs softball questions.” May I
suggest myself? I have always been vastly interested in politicians
with Weiner’s progressive instincts. In fact, I was very much
interested in Bill Clinton, and one could argue that had not
The American Spectator taken an interest in his Arkansas
bodyguards America and the world might never have heard of Monica
and all the other ladies that Bill groped and, so the story goes,
raped. Remember Juanita Broaddrick?
At the Spectator we have followed Weiner’s progressive
politics assiduously. Remember our September 16, 2011 story
appearing about the time that the Republicans wrested the former
congressman’s seat from the Democratic Party for the first time
since 1923. Our crack investigative team found him and his wife in
posh Positano, Italy, dining along the Amalfi Coast
with a cosmopolitan crowd at the very upscale restaurant, La Spoda.
We even reported the anti-American pleasantries passed among the
rastaquoueres. I can guarantee Weiner I would lob nothing but
softball inquiries.
I am also interested in Weiner because I surmise that he played
a significant role in ending a historic episode of
Liberalism a year or so ago, the Chappaquiddick Dispensation.
Starting with Senator Edward Kennedy’s famous swim back in
1969, Liberal rogues learned that they could survive a
scandal that in earlier times would have ended the career of any
politician, simply by lying brazenly to the gullible press and to
impassive prosecutors or to anyone else who found their potential
scandal an unfortunate mishap. I identify the Chappaquiddick
Dispensation in my recent book The Death of Liberalism as
the beginning of four decades of Liberal degeneration. There were
the Clintons, Eliot Spitzer, Jean-François Kerry and his cooked-up
war stories, Jesse Jackson and his Hymietown outburst, and all the
rest of the humbugs. Then with Weiner’s fall and ex-senator John
Edwards’ unwanted notoriety I wrote that the Chappaquiddick
Dispensation had played itself out. The public had grown impatient
with louses running for high office.
In the months ahead we shall see how accurate I was.
