To Resign or Not To Resign

For purposes of this post, I will assume that most readers know the background concerning Larry Craig's political trouble. This past weekend, he held a press conference in his home state of Idaho to announce that he would shortly resign from public office and relinquish his Senate seat as a result of a firestorm that erupted over a disputed arrest and subsequent guilty plea in a Minneapolis airport bathroom. Yesterday, it was widely reported that Craig is now having second thoughts about this decision, and may not resign after all. In my view, Craig should stick with his first decision.

I don't know what happened in that bathroom, and frankly, I don't care that much. It's the classic he said-he said kind of thing The whole incident rests upon signals, inferences, and subtle suggestions that are subject to a great deal of interpretation and potential misunderstanding. My position about Craig's resignation is not based on either his or the officer's take on the incident. It's also not based on Craig's guilty plea. It's not entirely clear what motivated Craig to plead guilty. Maybe it's because he was guilty, but Craig now says he shouldn't have pled guilty and intends to fight the plea in court. So again, who knows.

My position about Craig is actually pretty simple. The issue is that right now, he can't be an effective voice for the people he represents. At the very least, he is a distraction (to put it nicely) rather than an advocate, and that's not what his constituents voted for. It's not fair to them to put his interests above theirs by wasting everyone's time trying to save a political career that he himself jeopardized. If he wants to try and dig out of the hole he dug for himself, he should do it on his own time. When he's a US Senator, his time is the people's time. This is my position whenever a member of Congress runs for president as well. It's perfectly legitimate for Senators to run for president - but as former Senators, not sitting Senators. John Edwards did the right thing in 2004 by resigning his Senate seat when he ran for president. People who vote for politicians deserve their full attention. When politicians get distracted either by political scandals they created or by aspirations of higher office and all the campaigning and traveling that goes with it, constituents get cheated of effective representation. While one can (rightly) argue that the current necessity of massive fundraising as an extensive requirement of the job already compromises the ability of politicians to effectively represent their citizens, cases like Craig are particularly egregious.

This is not about what did or didn't happen in an airport bathroom. It's about putting the good of the voters ahead of a desperate campaign to hold onto a political title. If Craig wants to clear his name, I wish him all the best. But he should step down and do it as a private citizen, and allow the people of Idaho to have a Senator who is focused on representing them.