Into That Good Night

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into an airport bathroom, some creepy wrinkled fingers reach under the stall partition and grab hold of your leg. That’s right people, “wide stance” Larry Craig is back. And he is going nowhere fast. This afternoon a Minnesota judge denied Senator Craig’s request to have his guilty plea vacated, ruling that the plea was entered “accurately, voluntarily and intelligently,” and was supported by the evidence. Yet, despite a promise to resign from office if the court ruled against him, Craig has vowed to continue to embarrass himself publicly in national newspaper articles and cable television sound bites.

Some people just don’t know when to go away. Perhaps he doesn’t realize how foolish he looks. Or maybe he thinks that by continuing to beat people over the head with his fuzzy logic and absurd explanations, they will eventually forget about what happened in the first place and dismiss these – and all future antics – as “just Larry being Larry.” But what Senator Craig doesn’t seem understand is that “just being Larry”, doesn’t amount to much.

It takes a special kind of person to look everyone in the eye, lie through his teeth and get away with it. And it’s pretty obvious that Larry Craig is no Bill Clinton. He’s not even O.J. Simpson. Okay, maybe that’s not entirely true. He does share O.J.'s inability to keep his mouth shut and stay out of sight. But the point is this: Larry Craig is the no-name, generic representative of a state more famous for potatoes than for people. In the grand political scheme of things he is inconsequential. But for some reason, he has deluded himself into believing he is more than the sum of those parts. He is convinced that the greater good can only be served if he takes a stand on behalf of every honest, upstanding citizen who has ever solicited gay sex in an airport bathroom, then denied doing it, then admitted to it, then denied it again when it became public.

There is something to be said for wanting to be more than you are. Everyone should strive to exceed his potential. But there’s a fine line between reaching for the stars and pulling them down on your head. Senator Craig needs to respect that line. It may be true that quitters never win and winners never quit. But people who never win and never quit, are just stupid.