This week brought us another “will they ever learn?” moment in American politics. Eric Swalwell, a prominent Democratic House member and a front-runner in the race for California governor, had his political career blown up by allegations of degeneracy and abject stupidity.
Specifically, multiple women accused the congressman of sexual misconduct, including a former staff member who says he assaulted her more than once. All of the allegations are appalling. Some are pathetic. Some suggest criminality. Mr. Swalwell announced on Monday that he planned to resign his House seat.
I have covered Washington for way longer than is probably healthy. Over the years, I have heard the rumblings, some louder or more substantial than others, about lawmakers who — let’s just say — have an eye for young, attractive staff members.
The #MeToo movement may have put a few more rules in place. Sex with a subordinate is, in fact, against House rules. #MeToo may have even scared some people straight for a while. But, no matter where the Swalwell allegations now lead, they should prompt concern that one essential power dynamic on the Hill has not changed. Members’ sense of entitlement tends to expand the longer they stay in office and the more power or celebrity they amass, and, on occasion, that entitlement bleeds into their view and treatment of women.
Self-absorbed lawmakers fail to learn from the ruined careers of the past in part because those around them too often shrug off the whispers, red flags and glaringly bad behavior until some line gets crossed and scandal erupts. The Florida Republican Matt Gaetz reportedly used to show naked pics of women he claimed were sexual conquests to his colleagues on the House floor. Who could have suspected that darker sexual allegations would blow up his attorney general nomination? Besides everyone who came in contact with him.
The problem is less a “boys will be boys” tolerance than a sense of resignation among politicians, staff and other members of official Washington that powerful, ambitious men are built differently. And even when the accusations are less legally serious than those leveled against Mr. Swalwell, the culture of turning a blind eye is deeply corrosive.
To be clear: Mr. Swalwell has denied all wrongdoing. In a social media post Sunday, he said he was “deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past,” even as he promised to fight the “false allegations” against him. And it could turn out that all of this is, as Mr. Swalwell maintains, a plot by his political enemies. But from the reports so far, and from the whispers about him long swirling in Democratic circles, as disturbingly detailed in Politico, it’s hard to see him as a blameless victim.
Mr. Swalwell’s fellow Democrats quickly kicked him to the curb. Even before the reports of the accusations came out Friday, top members of his campaign team quit. Supporters in labor unions and in the House soon began yanking their endorsements. Under pressure from his party, Mr. Swalwell bowed out of the governor’s race Sunday — and then the House on Monday.
This was the right decision. There is no way Mr. Swalwell could have represented his constituents, much less run for higher office, while mired in this mess. And if even a fraction of the allegations are accurate, well then, good riddance.
Still, I can’t help but wonder how many Democrats in Congress or in the California party had heard the whispers or otherwise had an inkling of this problem well before the scandal exploded. Wasn’t there anyone in a position to at least stop him from strutting into a high-profile race for governor?
Mr. Swalwell is not the only House member prematurely departing as a result of accusations of sexual entitlement. In March, Representative Tony Gonzales, a Texas Republican, announced that he would not run for another term after admitting to an affair with a staff member who later died by suicide. In that instance, female Republican House members — including Anna Paulina Luna, Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace — kept the heat on Mr. Gonzales, and on their conference’s leaders, until the congressman, who originally denied the affair, felt compelled to admit it and end his re-election campaign. On Monday evening, slightly more than an hour after Mr. Swalwell announced that he would resign, Mr. Gonzales did the same.
This is not to suggest that a preponderance of lawmakers are sexual predators or cads. But inappropriate behavior toward and with subordinates is too often not a shocking secret within the halls of Congress. When a lawmaker goes down à la Swalwell, a common response I have heard among Hill denizens is chatter about which lawmakers might be the next to fall.
The private behavior of congressmen becomes a direct matter of public concern when they sexually pursue subordinates. The damaging ripples shift focus away from the people’s business and can quickly engulf the rest of their office, their colleagues, their constituents, their political party. By waiting until a scandal becomes too big to ignore, members of Congress, and other political players, risk exacerbating the destruction.
I don’t know the details of Mr. Swalwell’s admitted “mistakes in judgment,” or how the allegations against him will turn out. Nor is it clear, with all that concerned whispering, who in his party knew how much about his judgment or behavior before all of this became public.
What I do know is that #MeToo notwithstanding, too many in the congressional ecosystem continue to keep the chamber’s secrets under wraps until doing so becomes impossible — and a political liability. A few lawmakers aim to be seen as crusaders against such misbehavior even when politically inconvenient. Ms. Luna, who also pushed to have the F.B.I.’s Jeffrey Epstein files made public, has told me she feels responsible for holding members of her own team to account — and for pestering Republican leadership to do the same.
But it will take more than a few rabble-rousers to change the cost-benefit analysis that goes on in the heads of entitled lawmakers who misbehave. Only when more members and influential insiders demand better of one another as a matter of course, before things go sideways, will there be fewer political self-detonations and shattered lives.
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