Hot Tub Tom

Readers may have wondered why with ever unfolding shocking news about the Bush administration's shenanigans, I have mostly stayed away from politics in recent days.  I have been writing about books, art and other "soft" stuff while Bush-Cheney-Rove's "a scandal a day" administration comes under congressional and journalistic scrutiny.  The reason for the paucity of political posts is not that I don't care and am not angry.  I am furious, disgusted and appalled.  I am also exhausted and totally disheartened that the top players of the most corrupt administration in the history of the US will probably pay no price for their wanton law breaking except to let some fall guys fall by the wayside (Libby, Rumsfeld and perhaps now Alberto Gonzales).  The "guilty as hell" president, vice president and presidential "brain" Rove will most likely live out the rest of their term without facing the music for their misdeeds. I see no prospect of indictments or impeachment.  Had the US congress not changed hands, we wouldn't even have had any hearings on Capitol Hill. 

Impeachment has been on my mind recently for two reasons.  One is that I have never seen another president who was more deserving of the contempt of the American people as George Bush.  His scoff law and immoral tenure should have been ripe target for impeachment hearings. Yet just a few years ago, the US congress impeached  President Clinton for a tawdry personal failing which had nothing to do with how he had governed and all things considered, he had governed quite well. The second reason why I think back upon Clinton's impeachment is that some of the panting hound dogs of the Republican Party who went after his blood, have now come out and confessed their own moral lapses as a means of political rehabilitation.  Recently, Newt Gingrich went on James Dobson's radio show to plead mea culpa on having indulged in extra marital canoodling with a young congressional aide (now his third wife) at the very same time that he was lecturing the nation about Clinton's moral failings and seeking his impeachment !  Now, the other standard bearer of right wing morality and seeker of impeachment of Clinton, Tom "The Hammer" DeLay, who blames all the evils of the world on liberals, has published a memoir about his own "wild' life. Shameless as he is, DeLay has gleefully trashed his own Republican colleagues (Gingrich, Armey and even Hastert) in his book while making some sweepingly cavalier statements about his own personal lapses. Tawdry, disgusting, hypocritical and wholly unsurprising - this latest attempt at revenge and rehabilitation by a corrupt and arrogant man who had been expelled from Baylor College for "unknown" reasons and during his days in the Texas state legislature, was nicknamed "Hot Tub Tom" by a local columnist.

Cragg Hines of the Houston Chronicle reviews DeLay's book here.  See the excerpt below and you will understand why the injustice of it all is driving me nuts.

Surely confession plays some role in Tom DeLay's brand of hyper-religiosity. If so, there's faint testimony to the principle as regards politics in the former House majority leader's self-serving new book, No Retreat, No Surrender.

DeLay has a lot to be sorry for. As he says not quite half-way through the book, "In short, I had become a self-centered jerk." Fighting against almost all the external evidence, DeLay would have us believe there came a point when that wasn't the case. On that basis the book belongs in the "new fiction" display.

Overall, DeLay offers himself up for canonization in the Church of St. Ronald the Reagan as a result of suffering the slings and arrows of persecution from the devilish Democratic troika of Reps. Nancy Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel and Patrick Kennedy. Of the three, only Emanuel is anywhere near DeLay's league. ... All things being equal, you'd have to stand in awe of DeLay's chutzpah.

About the only hint that there was some error to DeLay's more than two decades in Washington — as first a plain, old U.S. House member from Sugar Land but quickly a leading Republican strategist as his party moved to its 12-year roughshod reign — is his admission of continued catting around once in the Federal City.

He's upfront about it. It's even indexed. Under "DeLay, Tom, as womanizer."

It's all pretty generic, though let's pause to delight in one fairly chaste sentence about his days as a state legislator: "I was away from home for weeks at a time, I wasn't bad looking, and I got my share of female attention." This makes it sound like he was in the French Foreign Legion instead of Austin.

That leads up to DeLay describing how, in his Austin heyday he acquired the nickname "Hot Tub Tom," which he says was coined by Beverly Carter of the Fort Bend Star, and how he deserved it. "I slept with women I wasn't married to."

I guess I would have said DeLay's position had been all that stopped when he got to Washington. Au contraire, whatever may have been his previous stand on the point.

We're still in "my usual dozen martinis during an evening of revelry" territory (which I'd guess even DeLay's worst enemy is happy he put behind him. I know I am). "There were also women," he writes elliptically.

My upbringing cautions me against doubting anyone's religious convictions, so I'll not go into my take on politically expedient turnarounds.

I'll only note that, given his railing against Bill Clinton's sexual adventures, there's at least one big section missing from the book. It would be indexed: "DeLay, Tom, as hypocrite."

Comments

[Sujatha]

With Gingrich, Delay et al. confessing to sexual peccadilloes, we'll see the religious right spinning themselves dizzy by proclaiming all the above-mentioned sins as having been forgiven,as opposed to Pres.Clinton, who, according to the Talibornagain,undoubtedly had no forgiveness whatsoever). And of course,they continue to hail their patron saint GWB, who is innocent of any crime despite the thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead as a result of his policies :(

[Ruchira Paul]

That's the whole disgusting irony. The religious right is "quick" to rehabilitate its own (except the gays) as long as a whiny public apology and forgiveness from God is sought.

Here are some more details on Gingrich and DeLay's family values.

Gingrich served his first wife with divorce papers when she was lying in the hospital bed after cancer surgery - what a paragon of compassion. His dalliance with the very young congressional aide during Clinton's impeachment hearings was common knowledge among Republican lawmakers. DeLay in fact mentions it in his "memoir." Yet they circled the wagon around him and went after Clinton with a blood thirst.

As for Tom the Hammer, his own family story is a soap opera. His relations with his parents and siblings are strained (not on talking terms), he ran around with women like a tom cat and has the temerity to declare that it was because "he is not a bad looking guy." He admits to neglecting the long suffering wife and daughter whom he put on the payroll of lobbyists probably to provide hush money. I can't believe the voters in Texas' District 22 didn't know about it. The same ones who were so outraged with Clinton's zipper problems. And all the while this guy was going around lecturing us about moral/ family / Christian values! I wouldn't be surprised that even after his "confession" if some of my neighbors will still be willing to vote for him if he ran.

[Sujatha]

What a contrast between Gingrich's treatment of his wife and John Edwards.

[jurassicpork]

Sujatha: Good catch. I'm amazed that that got past me.

Ruchira, you did it again. You earned yourself another link on my blog. This is priceless. I never knew about DeLay's F**k 'n' Tell memoir. How could he've written it? He doesn't even write his own blog, because he's even outsourced that.

[Gerald T Floyd]

I link to Cragg Hines' article in a post today on my blog. I also link to another political column that's very critical of DeLay's book.

See http://creativeadvance.blogspot.com