Perhaps confused by the Christopher Lee photo episode a few weeks ago, Rep. David Wu apologized yesterday on “Good Morning America” for emailing staff Halloween pictures of him dressed as a tiger last fall. Unless it’s a very different tiger suit than the kind I’m imagining (or unless he was dressed not as a tiger, but as Tiger), it doesn’t seem like that was the thing he needed to address on national television.
Because setting aside the Halloween pictures, there’s still the matter of:
- Taking oxycodone from a campaign donor,
- Engaging in such hostile and erratic behavior during the campaign last fall that his staff urged him to be hospitalized for psychiatric care and then quit after he won reelection,
- Talking his way past airport security in Portland in order to hit up deplaning passengers for votes,
- Taking the highly unusual step of making himself his own campaign treasurer after yet another staff member quit last week,
- And–based on what I was hearing from Wu staff way back in 1999 during his first term in Congress–generally being one of the most volatile and verbally abusive members of Congress.
Next to all that, apologizing for the Halloween photos is like your teenage son throwing an out-of-control bash that culminates in a Snickers-and-deep-fryer incident that burns down the house, and then apologizing for not watering the plants while you were gone.
UPDATE: And now an Oregon newspaper is calling for Wu to resign.
