The Corner

Re: Haywire

 Ramesh, I don’t think you’re going haywire. I think there seems to have been a kind of rolling piling-on effect all day, and that’s what I was referring to. But I have to disagree with your contention that Hastert should acknowledge he didn’t handle this well. As a political matter, such an acknowledgement would simply be like pouring blood into the water. As a managerial matter, he had no grounds whatever for doing anything other than what he did do — because, as I said, he wasn’t Foley’s boss and the inappropriate request for a photograph is not grounds for, say, removal from the head of a House subcommittee or caucus. We have to remember (as I’m sure you do every time you write) that he didn’t know about the Instant Messages, nor could he ever have known, as the only record of them would have to be saved by one or both of the two instant messagers in question.

John Podhoretz, a New York Post columnist for 25 years, is the editor of Commentary.
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