There’s something about the allure of power combined with the full blush of recent political successes that breeds what we like best about our elected officials: their marked propensity for going big and bad while blowing it in totally spectacular fashion.
And despite a very real showing of sauciness in the persons and predations of Democrats Anthony Weiner, John Edwards, Bill Clinton, et al., the past six years have been kind of staid. The fact is, when it comes to scandal drama, no one does it like the Republicans do it.
Think: South Carolina’s former governor and current congressman, Mark Sanford, and his now-you-see-me, now-you-don’t, tearful, chest-beating mea culpas and public declarations of love. Or lover boy, star of surveillance cams and outgoing representative from Louisiana Vance McAllister. Or even as far back as former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, and well, the less/more said about him dying while in flagrante delicto the better.
While it may be the gulf between words like “traditional family values” and deeds like getting your hand caught in the cookie jar that creates the extra electric buzz when Republicans go wild, it all ends up in the same place: in corridors of policymaking power transformed into thrill-a-minute sizzling hothouses.
Give us a minute or two here to consider the possibilities.
Video by Melanie Ruiz
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