MAN SMART, WOMAN SMARTER
I admit I didn’t see this coming. When 63 million voters gave Donald Trump a pass on “grab ‘em by the pussy,” I thought we were entering a new dark age of sexual harassment. A year later, what we’re seeing looks more like the French Revolution. 2017 will be remembered as the time when women said, “ENOUGH!” Vive la Resistance!
Predictably, the misogynist Right is trying to orchestrate a backlash. They’re attacking the #MeToo Movement from two angles. First, they raise the specter of false accusations. Then they cite the Jezebel Spirit of every woman, against which red blooded men are apparently helpless. They assert that Mike Pence’s neo-Puritanism is the only reasonable response to those concerns. The only way that men can protect themselves against the Temptations of Eve is to avoid hiring women in the first place.
Despite the high WTF quotient of that position, it would be a mistake to underestimate the appeal of neo-Puritanism. It’s likely that (as we’ve seen with racism and fascism) there’s an undercurrent of Puritanism in this country, focused less on enforcing traditional virtues and more on supporting a traditional patriarchal worldview. Puritanism is one manifestation of patriarchy, and patriarchy always winds up blaming women for any friction between the sexes.
As Exhibit A, I offer Pastor Franklin Raddish of the Capitol Hill Independent Baptist Ministries. Raddish supports Roy Moore because “there’s a war on men.” Not only that, but “more women are sexual predators than men. Women are chasing young boys up and down the road, but we don't hear about that because it's not PC.” I haven’t seen any women chasing young boys on my block. But maybe things are different in Alabama. (Well, of course things are different in Alabama.)
With that long prologue out of the way, I’d like to share a memory from 1980, when Senator Ted Kennedy decided to challenge sitting President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination. I don’t remember the author or the publication, but I do remember having read an article with one specific comment that has stuck with me for 37 years. The author was an ardent feminist who was supporting Kennedy. She recounted a conversation with another feminist who was dismayed, and asked how any feminist could support such a notorious womanizer. He cheats on his wife! And what about Chappaquiddick? The author replied, “That’s easy. Marry Carter. Vote for Kennedy.”
Since I tend to be a pragmatist myself, I was impressed with her reasoning. (Oh by the way, for you young folks, spoiler alert: Carter won the nomination, but lost the election to Ronald Reagan.)
I would elaborate upon that unknown feminist’s remarks this way. We know that we’ve had great leaders whose sex lives have been sketchy. Thomas Jefferson fathered children with his teenage slave, Sally Hemings. FDR had a mistress. Outside of elective politics, Martin Luther King, Jr. was repeatedly unfaithful to his wife.
It’s not that their infidelity made them good leaders. It’s that the character traits required to be a good husband are different than those required to be effective as a leader of a political party or a political movement. Different roles demand different skillsets, though they aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
OK, and so what?
My guess is that we’ll soon learn that there are more sexual harassers in Congress. Maybe quite a few of them. Some of them will be Democrats. Both parties will have to decide whether to purge their bad apples or leave them in office, at least until the next election. We can be pretty sure that the Republican Party’s top priority will be to preserve its congressional majorities, even if it requires them to overlook some pretty vile behavior.
The Democratic response is less predictable, and making the right decision may be more complicated than it seems. Why? Consider all the damage Trump and the Republicans have been able to do in the ten months since his inauguration. Can we really afford to risk giving the bad guys another two, four, or even six years to work their mischief while we recruit a new generation of harassment-free candidates?
I understand the impulse to wipe the slate clean and start over, and I’m reluctantly coming around to the view that Al Franken should resign, now that a second woman has come forward to accuse him of ass-grabbing. As long as he’s in the Senate, Franken will be the poster boy for the Republican Whataboutist defense of Trump and Roy Moore. But I’ll be honest. A big part of my comfort with saying goodbye to Al Franken is because his successor would be appointed by a Democratic governor.
I still believe that if Democrats treat people like Franken (the ones who admit they’ve done wrong and are willing to take their medicine) no differently than scum like Roy Moore and Donald Trump (who deny everything and threaten their accusers), there will likely be unintended and unpleasant consequences. A year later, we may realize that we’ve taken one step forward and two steps back.