Sadness at Anthony Weiner's demise

Although former Congressman Anthony Weiner mostly bedeviled me when I covered politics in New York City, I only feel sadness today at his political and personal demise. Any schadenfreude I felt after his first Twitter stumble in 2011, which led him to resign from Congress, has dissipated.

Partly that's a result of his repeated humiliation over time. No one deserves that -- even if he did set himself up by seeking such a high profile and insulting staff and reporters like me. The man's got an addiction, which I define as a willful self-destruction even as there are parts of one's life that are so worth showing up for. Like his vision for the middle class that he hoped to carry out as NYC mayor. Like his beautiful and extraordinary wife Huma Abedin, who filed for divorce on Friday even as Weiner was pleading guilty in the federal courthouse in Manhattan to sexting with an underage girl. Like the couple's son.

If kids don't give you a reason to be a better person, I don't know what does.

Weiner, however, even involved 4-year-old Jordan in his sext-capades. He took a suggestive image of himself for his 15-year-old sext partner as Jordan lay next to him in bed. I can only shake my head at how sad this is, how much this man in that moment was obliterating everything. Especially, but not exclusively, any image he could hold in his mind of himself as a good person.

To me, this is the nature and the bottom of addiction. Hatred of oneself creates a downward spiral, finally extinguishing decency and integrity.

In the opening lines of the documentary Weiner, for which filmmakers followed Anthony on the campaign trail for mayor in 2013, he admits to having done bad things but adds, "I've done good things, too."

I wonder where we will find the next generation of political leaders if we have to screen for such a panoply of character flaws. Narcissism, self-destructiveness, crossing the line into involving minors in one's obsession and damaging the public regard for a woman, Huma, who's a political force in her own right.

Are we, the public, supposed to overlook these flaws, as Weiner suggests, and concern ourselves with the good he might do in office? (I'm hard-pressed to find many accomplishments while he was in Washington.)

Who runs for political office in America today, at least on the highest levels, but for narcissists? Is there another motivation for public service, or are some politicians just better at hiding their self-regard? Perhaps self-regard doesn't have to be as toxic as Weiner's?

I'm sure I'm being too bleak about our political class. Weiner's felony guilty plea is depressing. He's smart, rose from humble beginnings, and can talk circles around his opposition. All, so it seems now, gone to waste.

If you liked this post, please subscribe to future updates by scrolling down on the home page. Also, please check out my book, Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives, published in March 2017.

Loyalty to a cheating spouse helps tank Hillary's candidacy

Huma Abedin is Hillary Clinton's closest aide, and since graduating from college has held no job that wasn’t connected to this rising American political star. At Huma’s wedding in July 2010, Clinton called her a “second daughter.” That’s how close they are.

Ten months after her marriage to Anthony Weiner, on May 27, 2011, Huma’s husband was caught very publicly cheating on her via sext message. Anthony sent photo of himself, erect in gray undershorts, to a 21-year-old sext partner. By mistake, he bypassed the direct message function on Twitter and sent the pic to all 45,000 of his followers. A conservative blogger and Anthony detractor, Andrew Breitbart, got hold of the errant tweet and publicized it further to the world.

And what did Huma do? At first, she believed Anthony’s story that his Twitter account had been hacked. Within a couple of weeks, though, he told the truth. She considered their unborn child she was carrying, and she stayed with Anthony. She tried to resurrect his political career in 2013, as he ran for New York City mayor. Huma used her connection with Bill and Hillary Clinton to raise money and support for Anthony's mayoral campaign.

Such marital stoicism, in the words of journalist Jennifer Senior. And to whom did Huma look for this example? Her mentor Hillary Clinton. “At the end of the day,” Huma has said of the senior woman’s advice, “every woman should have the ability and the confidence and the choice to make whatever decisions she wants to make that are right for her and not be judged by it.”

To whom did Huma look for this example? Her mentor Hillary Clinton.

Huma stayed with Anthony until August 2016, when a fresh leak of sexts showed that he had not only continued virtual flirtations with female partners but was now referring to the couple’s toddler son, Jordan, as a “chick magnet.” At this point, Huma announced that she was separating from Anthony. But was this decision to break with a cheating man already too late?

The following month, in September 2016, the FBI learned that Anthony had been sexting with a 15-year-old girl. Given the girl's age, this was now a potential crime, and the FBI opened an investigation into Anthony's activity.

Then, with less than two weeks to go before Election Day in on Nov. 8, 2016, FBI Director James Comey announced that this investigation had revealed a new cache of emails, forwarded by Huma on Anthony’s laptop during Hillary Clinton’s tenure at the state department. Comey’s revelation reinforced public concern that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was careless. Then, just two days before the election, Comey told Congress that the new emails contained nothing of interest in regard to Clinton—but if he intended to clear the air, Comey’s announcement had the opposite effect. It energized Donald Trump supporters to show up at the polls and vote.

We all know now how that turned out.

Huma had a Sophie's Choice

In the end, it probably wasn’t Huma Abedin’s injured wifely feelings that ended her marriage so much as her professional pride.

This is the third time that Anthony’s Weiner’s sexting has landed him on the front pages of New York tabloids. Again, he was embarrassingly shorn of his shirt, wearing just his skivvies and apparently happy below the waist.

The first time Anthony went public with a photo like this, it was intended for a 21-year-old admirer, but he accidentally tweeted it to his roughly 45,000 Twitter followers. It was May 2011, and he was congressman, a loner and a whip-smart combative son of middle-class Brooklyn with the ambition to run New York City as its mayor. Huma, his pregnant wife of one year, apparently hadn’t known about his obsession for e-sex with strangers.

But she knew when she propped him up for his mayoral run in 2013 – helping solicit funds from her friends among the Bill and Hillary Clinton campaign donors. And so it mustn’t be the infidelity – if you can call it that – of phone sex that finally caused Huma to walk. It must be the public embarrassment. A scandal isn’t a scandal if it’s private between two people. It’s a scandal when it appears on the cover of the New York Post.

For Huma, the Aug. 29 NY Post cover was a potentially career-ending juncture. It called into question her judgment at a time when her long-time mentor Hillary Clinton is a breath away from becoming the nation’s first female president. Why would a woman as talented and striking as Abedin stay with a guy who regularly humiliated her? Love is one reason, but it doesn’t overcome every odd. Not odds this repeated and this public.

Heartbreakingly, the photo also compromised Huma as a mother. The couple’s son Jordan, now 4, appears as a baby next to his dad in the offending pic. His face was blurred out in the published photo – but, my God. One of the reasons the couple stayed together all these years – five years since his first fateful tweet in May 2011 – was an aspiration to give Jordan a good family life.

Huma said, at a July 2013 press conference, “I made the decision that it was worth staying in this marriage and that was a decision I made for me, for our son and for our family. I didn’t know how it would work out, but I did know that I wanted to give it a try.”

Anthony’s view in October 2014, as told to Politico, may have been the more pessimistic if realistic outlook for young Jordan: “I am quite confident that my son will have the ability to look at the totality of the experiences he has with his father and the record that I've got and judge me appropriately. Maybe, you know, it teaches him a little something about adversity and everything doesn't go great all the time.”

Especially not if you keep working at making it un-great, no.

Anthony could not keep his fetishes inside the walls of his home. Perhaps if he could have, his and Huma’s personal bargains could have had a chance. All relationships make accommodations – maybe those of political spouses more than the rest. But because of who Huma is – given her near-familial relationship with Hillary Clinton – the interpersonal is always going to be front-page, tabloid fodder.

Huma had to choose: Hillary or Anthony. Anthony’s behavior tilted the scale. As a mother and a political force, Huma knew the stakes on both sides were rising. I think she chose well.

If you liked this blog post, please sign up for updates on the book launch of "Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives" at whytheystaybook.com, publishing in March 2017. Anne Michaud is a veteran political journalist and columnist for Newsday in New York.