By Jeffrey Page
Of course he should resign.

Anthony Weiner has rendered himself useless, a distraction, a joke, even worse, a punch line. If he were to remain in Congress for the next 10 years, there is little he could hope to accomplish because to get things done you have to be taken seriously.

If the Democrats are smart, they’ll get behind Weiner – and push him as hard as they can to get him out of the House as fast as they can. They’ve got more important business, such as the start of the 2012 presidential season. And Weiner, it turns out, is an early Christmas present for the Republicans, a distraction from the GOP’s own miserable lot of possible presidential candidates.

Pretend you are John Boehner, the speaker of the house, and you just heard Sarah Palin declare from the bottom of her idiotic heart “I haven’t heard the president state that we’re at war. That’s why I too am not knowing – do we use the term intervention? Do we use war? Do we use squeamish? What is it?”

Or you’re Boehner and you have one guy who used to make pizzas wanting to be president. You’ve got Rick Santorum, who was voted out of office as the senator from the Great State of Uterus. You’ve got Michelle Bachman who scares everyone and is loved by the Tea Party, which doesn’t love you. You have Romney and his early version of Obama-like medical care. And you have, as Bob Gaydos so artfully puts it, the guy who used to be ambassador to China.

You’re Boehner.

And then, along comes Anthony Weiner, the man who singlehandedly gave the tabloids in New York the opportunity to use the words “putz” and “schmuck” in 72 point type on Page 1. You turn to heaven and say, “Thank you, God.”

Weiner the schmuck claims he has broken no laws and therefore doesn’t wish to resign from the House.

Not since Bill Clinton declared to a grand jury “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” has anyone in political danger parsed as well as Weiner. He is deeply ashamed, he said. But not mortified enough to do the gentlemanly thing. He wept at his news conference. He’s sorry for what he has caused his wife of one year. “She told me we are going to get through this,” he said. We’ll see when it all calms down a little. His behavior amounted to “a deep personal failing,” he said. We knew that, right?

But resign? Never – a word that sounds like it carries a sense of finality. Except in politics, of course, it doesn’t.

One of Weiner’s more telling quotes: “I have not been honest with myself, my family, my constituents, my friends, my supporters and the media.” Aside from his dog, if he has a dog, who else is there? He has lied to everyone as in e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e. And he won’t resign? What is he waiting for, the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

One reporter asked about the ages of the women who received the artwork of Weiner in skivvies. A very dangerous question.

And this response, more than any other, is reason for Weiner to quit the House and find himself a job, preferably in the former Yugoslavia.

“I don’t know the exact ages of the women,” he said. But he sent the pictures anyway, knowing that to send them to a kid can get you tossed in a lockup with some strange characters who might find you cute?

“But they’re all adults,” he said. How did he know?

“At least to the best of my knowledge they were all adults,” he said. Ah ha, a step back. He didn’t know for sure.

“And they were engaging in these conversations consensually,” he said. Well if he doesn’t know whether they’re adults, and if he has otherwise lied to us, how can we be sure that their looking at him in his boxers was consensual?

And now, the line of the, uh, explanation that should get Weiner a one-way ticket out of Washington: “Someone could theoretically have been fibbing about [their age] and that’s a risk,” he said.

Fibbing about their age? And that’s a chance he was willing to take? He would risk his marriage, his reputation, his career, his good name, his place in history, his political future on the possibility that a woman is too young to see him in his underwear? And he’s not resigning?

Goodbye Weiner.

Jeff can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com

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