Breaking America's Favorite Taboo

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And no one knows that better than the Republicans, who from Richard Nixon through the Willie Horton episode have campaigned as the law-and-order party. Now they face a backlash from the same culture of fear and suspicion they benefited from before. Casting yourself as the answer to an "assault" on children isn't just a means of getting votes; it can also justify power grabs. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales argued last month before a Senate committee that Internet service providers should be required to keep a massive database of their clients' activity, ostensibly to track down child pornography. In 2002, Foley was furious when the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to outlaw computer-generated animations--not actual video--that depict underage characters having sex. "The high court sided with pedophiles over children," Foley blustered. Or it sided with, you know, the First Amendment. Tomato, tomahto.

Arguing in the name of "the children" is an irresistible device, and Republicans have no monopoly on it. (They would have to pry it from Hillary Clinton's cold, dead hands.) But it's also an uncontrollable force. In a media culture that focuses on the most lurid and scary--as opposed to the greatest--threats to kids, Republicans are suddenly at the mercy of a social force that used to work for them. In his disgrace as in his career, Foley has focused America on the most emotional of law-and-order issues--a little too well, perhaps, for the law-and-order party's own good.