By Margaret Carlson
Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- There are weeks when the capital is Fantasyland, a place of events, reports, and squabbles, perfectly understood inside the Beltway and mystifying beyond.
Consider the long-awaited report by the bipartisan House Ethics Committee issued Friday in the case of Republican Representative Mark Foley. It documented inexcusable conduct by leaders of the Congress -- and then proceeded to excuse it.
By the ``weight of the evidence,'' the report concluded that House Speaker Dennis Hastert and his top aides ignored information widely known by 2003 that Foley was stalking teenage congressional pages and sending them salacious e-mails. He had shown up at the page dorm drunk one night and drove away with two pages on another.
When Foley was caught, Hastert pretended to know nothing. The record casts doubt on that, showing that Hastert had chosen to remain ``willfully ignorant'' for ``political considerations.''
The report calls the failure to stop the predatory behavior not only an ``exercise of poor judgment,'' but a ``present danger to House pages.''
But here is where the fantastic part comes: Not ``every error in judgment or failure to exercise greater oversight or diligence'' is a breach of the rules, the apologists decided.
Not every error? OK. But to the man on the street, ignoring high school boys being sexually seduced screams ``error!'' Instead, Hastert gets to claim that the report ``made clear that there was no violation of any House rules by any member or staff.''
What Rules?
More evidence that our leaders play by different rules comes as Washington's local government has decided to ban smoking in all public places, including federal buildings, as of Jan. 1. But not if Congress has its way.
About 25 members admit to smoking, among them a few big shots such as Republican Majority Leader John Boehner, a two- pack-a-day man. He frequently lights up in the historic Speaker's Lobby, the formal, high-ceilinged marble room with chandeliers just off the chamber, complete with standing ashtrays. A blue haze seeps out of the room and sends a stench into the hallway that greets tourists with kids who have come to see how a bill becomes a law.
The new Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn't smoke or like it, but she doesn't want to offend Blue Dog Democrats who do. The smokers are blunt: Why apply a law to them they will be forced to break? Now there's a lesson for the kiddies.
Mary's Baby
Then came the news last week that the vice president of the United States will soon be a grandfather again, courtesy of his daughter, Mary Cheney.
This set off a storm of criticism by those in the family values party who take the Bush-Cheney administration at its word. After all, isn't Bush in favor of writing discrimination against the Mary Cheneys of the country into the Constitution? And didn't he refuse to extend anti-discrimination laws to cover sexual orientation or hire anyone he knew to be gay?
Family values voters probably didn't notice that in the last campaign the president hired Mary Cheney, the most famous lesbian in the country save Ellen DeGeneres, or that the Bush-Cheney administration plays by its own rules.
Mary Cheney told the Primetime Live television program that she and her partner, Heather, ``already are married,'' having ``built a home together'' for 15 years. But in the eyes of the president, the Republican Party and the state of Virginia, where Mary Cheney resides, she will be living in sin and bringing an illegitimate child into the world.
You can understand why the family values base might be confused.
Uncle Same, Uncle Walt
If proof were needed that we live in a parallel universe, consider a little-publicized contract between the U.S. government and Walt Disney Co. Yes, Uncle Sam is hiring Uncle Walt to spiff up its image.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff decided America had become too unsympathetic in the wake of 9/11 and it was time to renew its ``welcoming spirit,'' with a major emphasis on making the airport experience more hospitable, or, yes, more like a theme park.
Not everyone would think of Tinkerbell and Donald Duck when faced with polls putting America at the top of the list of threats to world peace and way down on the list of good places to visit. According to Reuters, the U.S. was ranked as the least friendly to visitors in a survey of travelers from 16 nations. A travel industry study found that visitors from abroad dropped by 17 percent between 2000 and 2006. A 1 percent increase would mean $12.3 billion in revenue and 150,000 new jobs.
Mouse Ears
Better perhaps to hand off the money to Goofy than to throw millions more at consulting firms to plant articles about the land of milk and honey or Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
So why not put Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes, whose task it is to get other countries to like us, in a pair of mouse ears? Couldn't hurt.
For outsiders, here's the lesson of last week. Rules are for chumps without any power who live in the real America. Best to come here if you are a would-be pederast, a would-be pederast- enabler, a smoker, a lesbian, or have otherwise broken the rules. In the Magic Kingdom, anything goes.
(Margaret Carlson, author of ``Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House'' and former White House correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Margaret Carlson in Washington at mcarlson3@bloomberg.net .
Last Updated: December 12, 2006 00:08 EST
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