The advice gives itself: The mayoral field is weak and fractured. There’s a clamor for another choice. You’ve paid for your sins and you’ve got a $4.5 million campaign stash. Go for it.
On one level, the whispering in Anthony Weiner’s ear, which probably carries the sound of his own voice, makes perfect sense. He was once the Democratic mayoral front-runner, and could be again.
On another level, the advice is insane, a reflection of Weiner’s inflated sense of self-importance and lack of remorse. To this day, there is no sign he regrets anything other than getting caught.
Soon after the texting scandal erupted a year ago, Weiner was forced out of Congress by fellow Dems. He was an embarrassment and had no friends because he was an arrogant jerk 24/7.
But that’s not why Weiner should be disqualified from being mayor. Arrogant jerks are a dime-a-dozen in politics.
The real reason is that the Weiner case is no political stereotype. Unlike the cliché that holds the coverup is worse than the crime, that’s not true here. His “crime” was far worse than the coverup.
Weiner is a sexual pervert who engaged in repeated acts of pornography on taxpayer time and in government offices. He’s better suited for the sexual-offender registry than for City Hall.
He was sending pictures of his junk to at least half a dozen women for more than three years. He admitted he had no idea how old they were and that his raunchy habit went into overdrive soon after he got married.
The case broke when he sent a picture of an erect penis in underpants to a college student he had never met. Suspicions still linger about his contacts with a 17-year-old girl.
He took pictures of his aroused state in the gym of the House of Representatives. He may have engaged in phone sex from his House office.
“I have more than 200 messages from him and they’re all explicit in nature,” one woman told a Web site.
The coverup, by contrast, was pathetically routine. Weiner claimed his Twitter account was hacked before the avalanche of evidence forced him quickly to admit guilt.
He then talked of “getting help” as a ruse to hold on to his job, but whether he’s ever done anything beyond hiding and plotting a comeback is a mystery. For all we know, he’s up to his old tricks.
Yet suddenly, we are to take him at his word that he’s rested and ready to be mayor. Besides, he apparently can’t find another job that matches his talents. Imagine that.
The Post reports that his wife, Huma Abedin, wants him to come clean in an interview that would be the final word on the subject. They are said to be searching for a journalist who promises softball questions.
Good luck with that. In the meantime, here are a few hardball questions for New Yorkers to answer.
First, do you believe Anthony Weiner is morally fit to be in charge of 1.1 million public-school students? Could he be trusted around young women? How would he discipline teachers who engage in inappropriate relationships with students?
Second, is Weiner fit to lead the NYPD just because no prosecutor had the guts to go after him? Would a respected man or woman want to be his commissioner? Would the FBI trust him with secrets? Could he get security clearance?
And what would Weiner say to young men and women about a career in public service when they would be rejected for jobs if they had done what he did?
Even in an era where deviancy routinely is defined down, it shocks the conscience to think Weiner would be considered morally competent to lead 8.3 million New Yorkers and represent them in matters ranging from celebrations to funerals to emergencies to taxing and spending.
New York can do better. If we can’t, let’s just turn off the lights and be done with it.
Geithner’s specialty is hush $$
Say this for Tim Geithner. He has mastered the art of fooling the right people.
The treasury secretary is regarded as a Boy Wonder by the elders he worked for, who include Henry Kissinger, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. Michael Bloomberg thinks he’s brilliant.
No doubt he’s smart, but is he good? The latest evidence of how he behaved during the financial meltdown is troubling.
We already know that Geithner, as president of the New York Federal Reserve, was silent as banks under his jurisdiction ramped up their debt and engaged in financial trickery. It wasn’t until President Obama nominated him to his current job that we learned Geithner also had cheated on his income taxes.
Now come disturbing reports of his role in the Libor mess. A bank borrowing index in London, it is the basis of loan rates for most consumer borrowing in America and nine other currencies.
With Barclays Bank paying a fine of $450 million and firing its chief executive after admitting it rigged its reports to hide its borrowing costs during the crisis, Geithner should be on the hot seat. It turns out he learned of the rate manipulation in 2008, but only wrote a memo about it.
The rigging is being called a giant rip-off and used to depict the banks as even bigger crooks. But it’s a strange case where the crooks confessed to their government minders, who did nothing.
There may or may not be a crime in what the banks did. But it sure looks like Geithner is getting away with murder. Again.
Obama ‘banks’ on fooling us
Faced with the politically inconvenient name of Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, NC, where President Obama will give his convention acceptance speech and probably bash the banks, party leaders pulled a fast one.
They changed the stadium’s name to Panthers Stadium, reflecting the mascot of the football team that plays there.
Well, OK, they didn’t really change the name. They just out of nowhere dubbed it Panthers Stadium in fund-raising e-mails, Politico reports.
The change captures the essence of the Obama campaign. Pretend something is true and hope you can fool enough people into believing it.
What a blowhard!
Alec Baldwin, self-righteous liberal. The foul-mouthed bully, who also acts, wants a permit to build a 12-story wind turbine in East Hampton. It would be noisy and tower over the rural landscape, but he says he wants to save money on his electricity and call attention to renewable energy.
“I want to build something that is environmentally forward-thinking,” he tells The Wall Street Journal. “I’m not building a satellite dish so I can watch the Knicks game.”
Right, that kind of freedom would be vulgar. But if others have to suffer so Baldwin can feel less guilty about using air conditioning, that’s virtue. It’s also liberalism in a nutshell.
Too much ado over Mitt’s No. 2
The Mitt Romney veep-stakes is getting lots of buzz, but I’m not sure why. Unless Romney lifts his game, his pick for No. 2 won’t matter.