It's the corruption, stupid.(Scan)

It is easy to feel sorry for Jim McGreevey. In a stunning speech broadcast live nationwide on August 12, the governor of New Jersey came out as a "gay American," admitted to having pursued a homosexual affair, and announced his resignation, effective November 15. In six minutes, a man's entire life came crashing down around him in the culmination of a weeks-long unraveling that left his familial, political, and civic lives devastated.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of McGreevey's admission is how simple the process was. This was not what Americans have come to expect from politics, and it was received well. According to a Star-Ledger/Eagleton-Rutgers poll conducted immediately after the dramatic coming-and-going-out, McGreevey's approval rating actually rose two points, to 45 percent. Since then, an attempt by New Jersey Republicans to force an immediate resignation--which would result in a special election in November--has stalled.

You can chalk that up in part to the Northeastern state's tolerance for homosexuality; a more red state might find itself at odds with McGreevey's assertion that, "It makes little difference that as governor I am gay." Yet the real story is that New Jersey, having finally looked at the baby elephant in the room, is suddenly ignoring its gigantic mother--the almost comically corrupt nature of McGreevey, his administration, and the state Democratic Party behind him.

McGreevey is a man who hired an Israeli citizen with drastically insufficient credentials (including the inability to obtain a security clearance) to be his homeland security chief, apparently with the sole motive of a sexual liaison. The staffer, Golan Cipel, was then re-assigned to a post which had no apparent job description but which served nicely to keep him close to the governor. Amid ongoing speculation about his relationship to McGreevey, he finally resigned.

McGreevey is a man who ran on the pledge to reform "Trenton politics"--widely considered among the most corrupt in the nation--and then pushed to have Charles Kushner, the ...