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September 4, 2007

A Post-Script on Larry Craig - "Advise & Consent" by Allen Drury

D
uring the summer, I read a novel published in 1958 called "Advise & Consent." In a word, it's about a confirmation battle over a pro-appeasement nominee for Secretary of State who favored working with the USSR, rather than a more confrontational approach.

But the back story includes the suicide of a young Senator from Utah, who chaired a Foreign Relations subcommittee investigating the nomination. The President threatened to use the young Senator's recently discovered, though still secret, homosexual relationship during WWII against him unless he voted to confirm the nominee.

The story line about the young Utah Senator is loosely based on the real-life story of former GOP Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt. It seems Hunt, though a Republican, was anti-McCarthyism.

So, with the 1954 mid-term election heating up, the GOP forced Hunt to resign his Senate seat on the threat of exposing his son's arrest for soliciting sex from a male undercover police officer in a public place.

Hunt resigned. Then he later committed suicide.

It's a sad commentary on the Washington establishment -- the GOP in particular -- that homosexuality remains such a politically deadly taboo.

Posted by shertaugh at September 4, 2007 3:01 PM