It all came to an end under a clear blue Idaho sky, in the harsh gaze of a dozen TV cameras. Senator Larry Craig, who started the week as a revered stalwart of the conservative wing of the Republican party, ended it with his career in ruins as he announced his resignation on Saturday.
It has been one of the most bizarre sex scandals to hit the United States and its ending carried on that theme. As the unfortunate senator went through the ritual of committing political suicide, a handful of protesters waved banners. ”Senator Craig is not gay. He is a pervert,” read one. Another asked: ”Do you know what stall your senator is in?”
That largely summed up the level of debate surrounding Craig’s personal and political disaster after he was caught apparently attempting to solicit sex from a man in a Minneapolis airport toilet. The disaster for Craig was that the other party was an undercover police officer. For the married politician with a record of voting against gay rights, it was all over from the moment the news broke at the start of the week.
So, with his wife, Suzanne, beside him, Craig bowed to the inevitable on Saturday and finally said the hardest words. ”I apologise for what I have caused. I am deeply sorry,” he told a crowd of reporters in the city of Boise, Idaho. He did not repeat his declaration that he was not gay, but said: ”I have little control over what people choose to believe.”
Dramatic end
The moment brought to a dramatic end one of the strangest examples of a seemingly endless list of Republicans who have fallen from grace and tarnished the party’s self-proclaimed image as the guardian of US public morality. They include Florida congressman Mark Foley, who stalked young male congressional messengers on the internet, and Louisiana senator David Vitter, who was caught using prostitutes.
The past few days in Washington as Craig’s public and personal agony have played out have been odd, to say the least. The airwaves have been dominated by a public debate on the whys and wherefores of men seeking sexual encounters in public toilets. Expressions such as ”cottaging”, ”cruising” and ”the tearoom trade” have suddenly entered the US political lexicon. Much attention has focused on exactly what Craig was doing and if he really was seeking to procure sex when he sat down on the toilet.
The police version of events is simple. The toilet was known as a place where men came for sex. They would sit down in the stalls and use a recognisable series of foot movements and hand gestures to signal their intentions. That is, according to the police report, what Craig did.
He settled himself into the toilet, tapped his feet and moved his right foot over to touch that of the police officer in the next stall, and then slid his hand under the dividing wall. The police officer responded by showing Craig his badge. Craig was arrested. Or, as one unkind headline had it, he was ”flushed”.
Craig has steadfastly denied that he is either gay or was seeking sex. He said that the whole thing was a misunderstanding, claiming he had a ”wide stance” when sitting down and that led to him touching the police officer’s foot. His hand movements, he said, had merely been a result of reaching down to retrieve some toilet paper.
The police were unimpressed by his version. In an excruciating taped recording of Craig’s police interview, the interrogating officer eventually gets annoyed at Craig’s flat denials. ”I’m just disappointed in you, sir. I mean, people vote for you,” the officer says. Craig eventually pleaded guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct and — for a few months — thought that was the end of it.
Media frenzy
But that was before news broke about the incident earlier this week. Then things got nasty. And funny. And strange.
The American news media quickly turned their full investigative talents to the issue, with one television news programme staging a re-enactment of the scene by newsreaders to see if Craig’s version of events was credible. The issue has also become fodder for tabloids and late-night comedians.
The New York Post has dubbed Craig ”the potty pol” in its stories. But that is the least of it. Chat-show host David Letterman quipped: ”Several prominent Republicans are calling on Senator Larry Craig to resign. And a couple are asking for his phone number.” Meanwhile, Letterman’s rival, Jay Leno, added: ”His wife said she first became suspicious because every time he had to use the bathroom he would fly to Minneapolis.”
In most scandals, the target tries to ride out the storm. Denials are issued. Families stand by. Colleagues support. Sometimes it works. Often it does not. But in the Craig case there was an immediate race to disown the politician. Craig’s career was not so much shot down in flames as vaporised.
Senior Republicans pulled no punches and raced to disassociate themselves from him, including presidential hopefuls John McCain and Mitt Romney, whose White House ambitions Craig had supported. ”Frankly, it’s disgusting,” Romney said of a man who had been his friend and colleague at the start of the week. Democrats did little but stand by, probably laughing quietly.
Sympathy
The sheer ugliness of the Republican reaction has even led to expressions of sympathy from some unusual sources. Religious conservative Pat Buchanan — hardly a friend of closeted gay men — spoke out in shock. ”Rarely has a United States senator fallen so fast from grace or been so completely abandoned,” he said.
Former top Republican Tom DeLay also backed Craig and said he was being unfairly hounded. Such sentiments would perhaps have carried more weight if DeLay had not been forced to resign in 2005 amid charges of violating campaign financing laws.
It is certainly true that the Craig case has thrown a spotlight on some serious issues. The first is the idea of entrapment in law enforcement. Craig complained during his police interview that the officer had entrapped him. If he had been seeking sex, the encounter would have been entirely consensual. Some civil rights experts also point out that police do not seek to entrap heterosexual men or women into having anonymous sex in the toilets, for example, of a nightclub.
As it was, Craig had been arrested for merely touching the foot of an undercover police officer who was seeking to have his foot tapped. The incident has also shown just how anti-gay the Republican party can instinctively be, especially with a presidential nomination process under way in which religious conservatives play a prominent role.
The party has plenty of disgraced politicians who have kept their jobs. Just look at Vitter. His phone number appeared in the ”DC Madam” scandal and he confessed to using prostitutes. For several surreal weeks, Vitter — who campaigns on ”family values” — was trailed around Congress, pursued by television cameras. But he kept his job.
Or there is Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican whose home has been raided by the FBI and is the subject of a criminal investigation into bribery. Yet he remains head of a top Senate finance committee.
However, Craig’s ham-fisted attempt at toilet sex, if such it was, instantly ended his political life. ”Apparently, in the view of the Republican party, there is nothing more serious than a member attempting to engage in gay sex,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Craig now knows this, to his cost. — Guardian Unlimited Â