Game in national politics

Alpha chaser Maureen Dowd shows how the difference between the Clinton sex scandals and the Weiner sex scandals comes down to Game, and specifically, the second and third rules of sexual harassment:

1. Be handsome
2. Be attractive
3. Don't be unattractive

Bill and Hillary Clinton transformed the way we look at sex scandals. They plowed through the ridicule, refused to slink away in shame like Gary Hart, said it was old news, and argued that if Hillary didn’t object, why should voters? 

Poppy Bush thought Americans would reject Bill Clinton in 1992 because of his lascivious ways, but he learned that voters are more concerned with how their own lives will be changed than they are with politicians’ duplicitous private lives. Americans keep moving the marker of acceptable behavior, partly as a reflection of the coarsening of society and partly as a public acknowledgment that many pols with complicated personal lives have been good public servants. 

Now, defining deviancy downward, Señor and Señora Danger are using the Clinton playbook. The difference is, there’s nothing in Weiner’s public life that is redeeming....

[Huma's friends] fear Huma learned the wrong lesson from Hillary, given that Bill was a roguish genius while Weiner’s a creepy loser. 

“Bill Clinton was the greatest political and policy mind of a generation,” said one. “Anthony is behaving similarly without the chops or résumé.” 

As often as Bill apologized, he didn’t promise he would “never, ever” do it again, as Weiner did.

Maureen Dowd, who never met an Alpha Male she didn't like, was very quick to forgive Bill Clinton his peccadilloes.  Clinton wasn't handsome, but he was attractive to women due to his personal charisma and formidable charm.  Anthony Weiner not only looks like an anti-semitic caricature of a goblin, but he has absolutely no charm that is visible to any woman who isn't into late night sexting on Twitter.

The key phrase is: "The difference is, there’s nothing in Weiner’s public life that is redeeming...."  What Dowd actually means is that Weiner is too socio-sexually low in rank to justify giving him an Alpha pass on bad behavior.  And the key socio-sexual identifier is the word "creepy".

Someone previously asked where Weiner would rank socio-sexually.  Now that he has been publicly denied the Alpha pass, we know he cannot be Alpha.  I would say that he is a Gamma, because he's far too tightly wound to be a Beta and too desperate to be a Delta; he's psycho-sexually juvenile, and he won over Huma through traditional Gamma acts of service.  Even more importantly, he is not only married to a woman who is widely assumed to be a lesbian, he is afraid to follow through on pursuing the women he meets online and he appears to dwell in a delusion bubble.  And then, there is the description of him as "a creepy loser".

The clear contempt that so many people harbor for Carlos Danger despite his fame and political power is a good indication of the importance of socio-sexuality.