Are We Really Getting the Best and the Brightest With Our Current Political System?

NY Rep. Christopher Lee abruptly resigns
By ANDREW MIGA, AP

WASHINGTON — A New York congressman abruptly resigned his seat Wednesday, saying he was quitting because he regretted actions that have hurt his family and others.
The gossip website Gawker reported Wednesday that Rep. Christopher Lee, a married two-term Republican lawmaker, had sent a shirtless photo of himself to a woman he met on Craigslist.
Lee said in an e-mailed statement that his resignation was effective immediately. The statement offered no confirmation or details of a Craigslist posting.
"I regret the harm that my actions have caused my family, my staff and my constituents," Lee said. "I deeply and sincerely apologize to them all. I have made profound mistakes and I promise to work as hard as I can to seek their forgiveness."
Added Lee: "The challenges we face in Western New York and across the country are too serious for me to allow this distraction to continue, so I am announcing that I have resigned my seat in Congress effective immediately."
An anonymous woman described as a 34-year-old Maryland resident and government employee provided Gawker with e-mails she said were an exchange between her and Lee in response to an ad she placed in the "Women Seeking Men" section of Craigslist.
Gawker reported that Lee identified himself as a divorced lobbyist and sent a photo of himself posing shirtless. The woman eventually broke off the contact with Lee after becoming suspicious that he had misrepresented himself, according to Gawker.
Lee served on the House Ways and Means Committee and was active on economic revitalization issues. He has a business background stemming from his family's manufacturing business.

View attachment 134

 

Maybe MSNBC will hire him to co-host a talk show.

 

If not, maybe he can represent right wing family values at the next Republican convention. Either that or he can post his photo on craigslist and uh.....oh wait....well...maybe just in his underwear next time.

 

Stupid thing to do and now he pays the price for it, in his favour he is not making any excuses for his behaviour

 

The guy seems like a sleaze ball...good riddance. He probably needs to switch parties & instead of merely taking dumba** pictures of himself & resigning, he can learn how Clinton, Rangel, Geithner, et al have actually broken laws and risen in prominence in their party.

 

Look over there! Look over there! Not here!
The republican beat marches on.

 

I don't know how many of you have ever spent any time whatsoever at the upper echelons of business but I have had some access to various levels of business titans world throughout my life. In addition to my own experiences, my father-in-law was Vice President/President of several Fortune 500 companies in his time. I can tell you that nobody holds these guys to any moral standards that we expect from our elected officials. The cheating, the prostitutes, the affairs, are not only tolerated at that level, they are encouraged and protected. This Lee guy was undoubtedly exposed to this type of environment during his business days and couldn’t change once he was elected. Just another way big business corrupts the process of government with their moral weaknesses. Corporate America, the gift that just keeps on giving.

 

I agree with most of what you've said. But, it's not just "corporate America", it's human nature.

 

I would say that it is not Right or Left but rather anyone that comes from Corporate America that has the potential for this kind of behavior whether they get caught or not, whether they choose to participate or not, whether they simply think about it and never act. The only strip club I've ever been to in my life was as part of a business trip and I thought at the time I was going out for dinner with my fellow colleagues. I've never seen a bigger bunch of immature tongue wagging droolers who were all married men with kids. No thanks to that kind of nonsense, I'll stay in academia until I retire.

 

I suspect that attitude comes from money and power. Probably even more from the power then just the money...althought they are often related.

There was just recently a Command CMSgt in the AF (big wig) who was court martialed for some really weird stuff. Sleeping wth subordinates, trying to schedule his mistresses official trips with him, bringing his wife into it, etc. Not a rich guy in the corporate sense (a 5 figure salary, I am sure) but power? Off the scale in his realm.

Many people would like to think they would be Superman if they had great power. It seems it is more likely that one tends to end up as Dr Evil.

 

When was the last time you thought of an elected official as a public servant? I think the image of the tireless worker for the good of the people is more of a joke than a reality. It also seems that most of the "honorable" men have walked away from politics and who can really blame them? It has become nasty, personal, vicious, and ugly at the same time we are told that government IS the problem. I guess we get what we expect and deserve in our leaders when we end up having respect for a guy for pulling something like this Lee guy pulled and the best spin we can put on it is, "well, at least he resigned right away".

 

The statement that 'One gets the leaders that they deserve' certainly comes to mind.

 

I'm not going to mention the name of any current president......

 

And yet we are conditioned to see it as a Right/Left problem. It really sort of takes the focus off of the real problem and keeps us at each other's throats. If you think about it and you have either a Left or a Right bias, you probably see more sex scandals on the other side, you see more corruption on the other side, and more of everything you see as a flaw seems to be on the other side. But the truth is that neither side has a monopoly on bad or good behavior. It is really just the latest scandal that consumes us before we take our biases and trot off to the next scandal.

 

I agree with what you have said but it seems a bit disingenuous coming from you as you are probably the worst offender on this forum.

 

Contrary to your opinion, you are no less partisan than anyone else here or even more so. Is it really disingenuous to point out something that is true even if it applies to yourself? I'd call that insightful.

 

The difference is that I have never claimed to be non-partisan- I'm a proud, unapologetic conservative. In your post, you attempted to play the pragmatist (which you obviously are not) and I found it rather odd that you of all people would dress down the partisans among as you are the biggest partisan blow hard on this forum. Just sayin'.....

 

Partisan in the political sense is loyalty to a political party. Conservative is not a party. Republican is.