Danny’s boy

He’s caused pain in his marriage. He’s admitted to an improper relationship with a woman who was a workplace subordinate. He’s sorry for what he did, but not as sorry as he says those who exposed his shenanigans should be.

No, he’s not Bill Clinton. The author of these misdeeds is none other than Rep. Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican who last spring was so incensed by the president’s misconduct he used the term “scumbag.” Now the scum’s on the other foot.

Except this hustling Hoosier has done the president one better. His dalliance — with an Indiana state employee while he was an Indiana state senator — didn’t produce mere enormous national embarassment. It produced offspring. The congressman who likes to call himself Danny Boy has a son.

And what a dad old Danny Boy turned out to be. In an emotional address to supporters the other day, Burton said, “I have fulfilled my responsibilities as the father.” Pressed for details, Burton described that fulfillment as writing out a monthly support check.

That level of responsibility that would be admirable in the leader of a crack gang, but it’s hardly what civilized society considers family values. The boy, now a teen-ager, doesn’t have much in the way of father-son childhood memories, but he’s got a great collection of bank deposit slips.

How Burton’s little secret got out is a true life lesson in why the glass-house set really ought to leave the rocks alone. After the “scumbag” remark, Vanity Fair magazine (which, incidentally, has as an editor a former Clinton press secretary) found its curiosity piqued by persistent rumors of Burton’s philandering. A reporter was dispatched and a full-scale snoop was initiated. Burton, so mad he could hardly think straight, denied he’d done anything wrong, but promised his constituents that if anything he’d done wrong got into print, he’d own up to it.

Hoosiers who missed the subtle humor there must have laughed out loud when Woody Burton, the congressman’s brother — himself an Indiana state senator — denounced the Vanity Fair inquiry as a “witch hunt.” Loyalty is one thing, but really, sir, that’s no way to talk about your brother’s ex-girlfriends.

So Burton cracks under the pressure Saturday and spills his guts. Well, mostly he blames the media for bothering a lot of innocent people, for opening old wounds, for making public an intensely private matter. Somehow, it all sounded so familiar.

So two men, starting from opposite political poles, wander into the same swamp. The public is no closer to answering the question of whether it should elect ideals or ideology. The only one who clearly came out ahead here is a certain Indiana teen-ager.