Did you hear the good news? A senator, or was he a congressman, no, I think he was a senator, nominated a woman he loves to have a great job working for the government. He’s single and she’s his girlfriend. How exciting. But you know, some people are crying foul. They are even calling it unethical that he nominated her. Just goes to show: There are some people you will never ever please.
Of course I’m teasing when I pretend that I don’t know who it was that nominated his live-in squeeze to be U.S. attorney for Montana. It was, of course, Montana Sen. Max Baucus, the powerful head of the Senate Finance Committee. But I have a few problems with calling his nomination of attorney Melodee Hanes, a former prosecutor and child abuse expert, unethical.
First of all, she’s one of three names he put forward, and other people decide if she gets the job. If Baucus were the decider — a word that entered politicalspeak during the last administration — that would be one thing. After all, it’s not a no-bid contract. She’s not Halliburton with her former CEO sitting in the vice president’s mansion awarding billions.
Second, their relationship is out in the open. We didn’t learn about their affair because he inadvertently forgot to tell Capitol security about his upcoming trip to Argentina. If the confirmation committee wants to disqualify her because of her connections to the senator, it can.
Third, she appears to be qualified. She’s not the senator’s 28-year-old son like a certain political appointee in 2001. Seems that was OK because his daddy was Strom Thurmond — the Senate’s oldest serving senator who had been teetering on the edge of ethical since back in the day when he conducted the longest filibuster in history against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Hanes is currently working as a counselor in the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Now some would say that the mere knowledge that Hanes is the senator’s squeeze places undue pressure on the confirmation process, that no one would want to buck the senator by turning down his nominee. See, that’s where we get to the crux of the problem. And it’s just a tiny piece of the bigger problem in this country. Our problem is we’re gutless and because we’re gutless we’re gossips rather than deciders ourselves. Standing up to power, or even speaking truth to power, just isn’t our strong point — and it desperately needs to be.
And once they have us all gossiping about his private life, according to The Washington Post, Baucus nominating Hanes “could raise political problems for him while he is playing a crucial role in trying to push through Democratic health-care reform legislation in Congress.” What a ridiculous red herring that is, but again typical bait and switch for the American news appetite.
The top story every time I went online last week was Tiger Woods: Seems now they have notes on cocktail napkins and hundreds of text messages and a porn actress ready to spill the beans. Forgive me if I’m a little more concerned about the 30,000 additional men and women packing their bags and heading for Afghanistan. But standing up to that sort of unethical obscenity would require more than a nation of nosy voyeurs looking for a new object of fascination. That would require us to stop speculating on Tiger’s private putting stance and worry a little more about our imperialist standing and our inability or unwillingness to extricate our soldiers and munitions from the far-flung reaches of the world.
Want to get off the couch and turn off the TV and do something gutsy with your time this weekend? There’s a bus leaving Maine this Friday. It will take you to Lafayette Park, across from the White House. You’ll meet other people from all over the country who want to protest the escalation of U.S. imperialism. Call Laurie Dobson at 604-8988; she’s organizing the trip.
This week’s news story isn’t Max Baucus or Tiger Woods. This week’s news story is the president’s lock-step support of the last president’s wars. Quit gossiping and get going!
Pat LaMarche of Yarmouth is the author of “Left Out In America: The State of Homelessness in the United States.” She may be reached at PatLaMarche@hotmail.com.