Arrogance, not sex, was Anthony Weiner's downfall

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) is expected to resign (Photo: Getty)

So farewell, then, Anthony Weiner.  Huma Abedin, his poor, pregnant wife, and Hillary Clinton, her boss, return to American shores and the very next day the sext-cheat congressman finally decides the game’s up and agrees to resign (he’s due to give a press conference at 2pm EDT). Do you think there might be a connection?

I suppose that yesterday’s press conference with Ginger Lee, a  former porn star and current stripper at Atlanta’s Pink Pony club, when she accused him of advising her to lie about their online assignations, did not help either.

We’ll doubtless find out what happened behind the scenes in due course but it seems that Huma and Hillary trumped calls by President Barack Obama and virtually every other senior Democrat in Washington bar Barney Frank, who had his own, er, history to contend with.

You’ve got to give Weiner some credit – he hung on much longer than most politicians would have done in the circumstances.

This began, of course, with Weiner’s monumental error in judgement (not to say taste and decency) in deciding to engage in dirty talk with virtual strangers via Twitter and Facebook, tweet pictures of his private parts in an aroused state and pursue contact with a 17-year-old schoolgirl.

Then, he fatally miscalcuated by lying about what he had done, even though anyone with even passing knowledge of technology would have realised that the online trail would eventually have led to the discover he was lying.

At the same time, Weiner goaded the media to go after him. He thought he was clever enough to outwit the  press and the blogosphere. The sheer chutzpah of his retort  “You do the questions, I do the answers, that jackass interrupts me” probably sealed his fate. He was talking to CNN’s Dana Bash and the “jackass” in question was her producer Ted Barrett. Since then, CNN has been relentless in its Weiner coverage.

Disgusting as his sexual behaviour had been, that wasn’t why he ultimately lost his job. It was the lying – or, more precisely, the arrogance behind it, that did for him.

If Weiner had immediately accepted responsibility, apologised, admitted that he’d behaved inappropriately and had a problem that he needed to be treated for and then asked for the time and space to resolve this personal issue for the sake of his family then he’d almost certainly have kept his job.

After that though, Weiner made a pretty good attempt at survival. His strategy of arguing that his wife and his constituents wanted him to remain in Congress was not bad. And the “going into therapy” thing – a standard way of dealing with a scandal – bought him some time.

Commentary from the likes of Andrew Sullivan and Peter Beinart that his behaviour amounted to “flirting” helped him, as did the old Clinton-era line that “everyone lies about sex”. Such arguments are an insult to the millions of American men who respect women and manage to maintain the sancity of their marriages.

But Weiner was about to be stripped of his commitee assignments and there was every chance his district would be re-districted out of existence next year. And who could blame his wife Huma for telling him that the game was up and she was not prepared to be humiliated any further – or tolerate her errant husband publicly misrepresenting her views about whether she wanted him to stay on Capitol Hill. According to Politico:

Weiner had repeatedly told people that Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton who returned early Wednesday from a week-long State Department trip to Africa, wanted him to fight back and was involved in his political comeback.

But multiple sources described a very different perspective on the part of Abedin, who’s pregnant with their first child. Abedin spent extensive time consulting with Doug Band, Bill Clinton’s top adviser and her best friend, and Band’s wife, sources said, as she tried to make sense of the circumstances her husband had thrust her into. Other sources used one word to described Band and his wife: “Disgusted.”