What did McGreevey prove?(resignation of New Jersey Governor, James McGreevey)

NEW YORK, AUGUST 13

IN the matter of the resignation of Governor McGreevey, the impulse is to say: Let it alone--it is a private act. But that is the thoughtless, even cowardly way of disposing of the event, because it is tied in so many ways to public questions that need thought and exploration.

Perhaps preeminent of the questions being raised: Would he have had to resign if his affair had been with a woman rather than with another man? What looms in memory, of course, is Bill Clinton. But the augustness of his office had the effect of sheltering him. And the people who were central in the movement to depose him concentrated not on the sexual affair, but on the means taken to conceal it.

And of course the affair was heterosexual. Moreover, Ms. Lewinsky was at no time put in a high-level position in the administration. Several of the governor's critics emphasized the abuse of office in the naming of the lover to a high post in the homeland-security program. Add to this that the lover, as a foreign citizen, couldn't be processed by the normal security routine, which left New Jersey in the piquant situation of being the employer of a homeland-security agent who was not himself permitted to be briefed on security matters.

Perhaps most would agree that the crowning difficulty was that the lover suddenly demanded $5 million. That was either blackmail or extortion, and it put the governor in the unenviable position of having to do something to emasculate the lover. The classic means of doing this is to reveal yourself what the blackmailer holds over you, leaving him without any weapons at all, and as legitimate quarry of those in charge of enforcing the anti-blackmail laws. That responsibility is with the executive branch, headed up by the governor, raising the complication of a governor enforcing laws against a blackmailer whose target is the governor. So McGreevey was in a tight situation. But what is it that finally moved him to act?

If he is to be believed, what moved him to resign was his infidelity. The words sounded like a thunderclap over Mt. Sinai. But that is what he said, that he was ...