Our (not so) private Idahos

An interesting piece by David Ehrenstein in the L.A. Times explains the signalling thing that lead to Larry Craig’s arrest. Craig’s objectives were clear.

Ehrenstein also includes this:

To get there, let’s climb into the Wayback Machine and return to Oct. 7, 1964. That’s when Walter Jenkins, one of the most senior aides in President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration, was arrested for soliciting sex in the men’s room of a Washington YMCA. Being that it was three weeks before the election, LBJ suspected some kind of Republican foul play, but the GOP chose not to exploit the incident.

The Jenkins affair put “homosexuality” on the nation’s front pages in a way it hadn’t been since Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s famous report in 1948.

Jenkins, of course, had to quit the White House after his arrest. Some well-placed observers believe that his leaving was a significant loss to the nation. Jenkins was the one person who understood LBJ well enough to say “no” to the man. Some believed he could have kept the president from his worst excesses including unlimited escalation in Vietnam. Most likely not, but still the whole Jenkins business was sad.