"It was to be announced at the Party congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises."

[mmcirvin]

I have heard it said in several places in the blogocommentosphere that the Mark Foley scandal is actually yet another boon, intentional or unintentional, for the Republicans (often Karl Rove is imagined to be off somewhere laughing), because it serves as a distraction from the recent offenses against the Constitution and the looming attack on Iran.

This analysis makes no sense to me. As far as I can tell, Republicans are trying to do what they did successfully in 2002 and 2004, which is to run on national security and terrorism. Since Bush and the deepening fiasco of the Iraq war have lost popularity, the way to get some of that post-Nine-Eleven terrorized buzz back is to dial up fear and anxiety, hype external threats such as the Iranian nuke program, and pass provocative security laws that principled Democrats can't vote for, so you can then portray the Democrats as "soft on terror". Ideally, none of this should be a secret; it should be as public as possible! The Military Commissions Act wasn't supposed to be some sort of subterfuge; it was supposed to be popular.

Much as we'd like people to care more about proper governance of the country, a distraction from these things because of a sex scandal actually derails the Republicans' grand strategy. It still might not be enough to lose them a house of Congress, but we can hope.

Distraction really is an important tool in politics—sometimes obvious examples present themselves, such as the president announcing an initiative to land people on Mars when the war is going badly—but I am usually hesitant to explain things that happen as engineered distractions because the explanation explains too much. Given any two moderately current news stories or political controversies, A and B, you can claim that A is a distraction from B or vice versa and it will sound sort of plausible.

Comments

[jwgh]

When I was talking about writing to my congressmen the other day to thank them for voting against the MCA and telecommunications bills, I made a joke saying that I should also thank them for not engaging in cybersex with sixteen-year-olds who worked for them.

It wasn't really that funny, but I thought I'd repeat it so that it would be twice as funny as before.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

John Scalzi is, of course, right when he says that if other pages are coming forth with their own stories of sexual advances from members of Congress, some of them are almost certain to be Democrats.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...as we already knew 23 years ago.

[piehead.livejournal.com]

What happened 23 years ago?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

A Congressional Page sex scandal, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Page_sex_scandal) involving two Congressmen who had had sex with 17-year-old pages some time previously. Interestingly, the straight Republican apologized and lost his next election, and the gay Democrat remained unrepentant and was repeatedly reelected.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...hmm, from old news stories I gather Studds wasn't completely unrepentant, though he seemed not to care about the age gap, just about the page's status as a subordinate. It also helped him that the whole thing had happened ten years previously.

"Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap! "

[skapusniak.livejournal.com]

(unfortunate emphasis upon 'shaft' obviously)

...

A paranoia about engineered distractions, is possibly related to the phenomenon of 'You don't appear to be concentrating on {insert my important issue here} with the fervour that I demand. You all suck!' incidents that seem break out from time in the political blogworld.

Which always confuses me because even your local heavy handed Trotkyist front-group (Peoples Front of Judea, Socialist Workers Party, Project for a New American Century, or whomever) know that what you do is jump on whatever big happening is going on at the moment and shout as loud as you can that this proves, PROVES, that we must immediately invade all countries beginning with 'Ira'the Masses must rise up in Proletarian Revolution pronto!

'Successful' politics, as far as I can see, is about using everything that's going on -- whatever it is -- to justify and gain support for whatever we decided to do anyway. Which is why everyone despises sucessful politicians as the slimy slippery eels they are, unfortunately that appears to be what gets the job done. It's also why talented politicians seem to be invincible until the moment they start falling apart, since a big part of doing this well is arranging and portraying things so that, as far as possible, *every* outcome of a given situation is a gain in advantage for their side.

If they've ended up now trying to bring about a *particular* situation because that's the only one that'll give them advantage, they actually probably started losing the political game some moves back.

Pump up something already going on into a distraction? Fine. Use whatever's going on however objectively ghastly for our side, to bury our other ghastly problems? Nice Move. Feel you need to try to actually *engineer* a distraction? Uh oh, you might be losing your grip Mr.Politician.

Re: "Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap! "

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Related to the Blanket Accusation of Collective Hypocrisy, which I have been irritated by before: "Everybody's talking about X while a conspiracy of silence reigns on far worse example Y!"

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought the news media had been conveniently distracted by a shiney new sex scandal.

It would have been too obvious for the Republicans to dig up dirt on a Democrat. I'd wager quatloos on a lot of people in the party having known what this guy was doing with the pages, and when they needed a distraction, they decided to sacrifice him for the cause.

[lots42.livejournal.com]

Um, I really don't think anyone with the IQ to tie their shoes was running around saying 'I know, we'll use rampant, hidden, supported pedophillia as a way to distract from Iraq!'.