Pinheads

There are plenty of stories still floating around Washington about J Edgar Hoover, founder and first Director of the FBI, not all of them having to do with certain peculiarities in his private life. His public life was colorful enough by itself.

Hoover once led an entourage to Quantico, to review a new class of agents-in-training. After silently watching them go through the motions, he turned to one of his aides and said: "Get rid of the pinhead." Now, Hoover was not a guy accustomed to having to explain himself, and his lieutenants didn't get where they were by pushing their luck with him. So they quickly came up with what they believed to be the Director's wishes. They went through all the lockers of the agents-in-training, until they found the guy with the smallest hat size.

You know the rest.

If there's one thing you learn after a few years in this town, it's that having power means enjoying the license that comes with it. Whether you are a member of Congress (thus exempt from many of the laws you pass for others to follow, and able to vote yourself a pay raise in the midst of a budget deficit), or the head of a rinky-dink Government agency of a few hundred employees, or a mid-level supervisor within that agency, or even the head waiter at one of Washington's finest restaurants which is frequented by that mid-level supervisor -- all the way down the food chain, rank has its privileges, or at least the illusion thereof.

Perhaps the biggest surprise about the revelations of Congressman Mark Foley's inappropriate conduct with underage interns, is that so many people inside the Beltway -- not to mention the pundits who follow their every move -- are surprised. Did they really think this guy wouldn't place himself above the law? And why wouldn't the Democratic leadership take undue advantage of the situation with the onset of mid-term elections, by calling for Speaker Dennis Hastert's resignation? Which party wouldn't pull that ace out of their collective sleeve? The Dems didn't set anybody up; the Republican leadership handed themselves to the gang across the aisle on a silver platter.

After all, when it comes right down to it, there is no shortage of pinheads in town this week.