What Tiger Woods could learn from Max Baucus

Published 5:48 pm Wednesday, December 9, 2009

WASHINGTON — When it comes to scandal, Tiger Woods could improve his game by studying Sen. Max Baucus’ technique.

Both the golfer and the Montana Democrat have been in the news recently because of their sex lives. But while Woods has been crashing his car, hiding in his house and losing his Gatorade sponsorship, Baucus has survived his indiscretion without a scratch. He has kept his place as the Senate Democrats’ floor leader for health-care reform, and in half a dozen appearances on the Senate floor on Wednesday uttered upward of 9,000 words.

Baucus’ secret? Call it the Dork Defense. The Senate Finance Committee chairman, who turns 68 this week, is just too much of a nerd for a sex scandal to stick. Consider:

—The career lawmaker wears crooked wire-rimmed glasses.

—He totes around charts bearing messages such as “Distribution of High Cost Insurance Excise Tax.”

—While running in a road race a few years ago, he fell on his face, requiring surgery to relieve pressure on his brain.

—He subscribes to a word-of-the-day e-mail service and attempts to use the five-dollar word in that day’s conversations.

—He once said the highlight of his day was listening to Garrison Keillor on National Public Radio.

Admittedly, Baucus’ scandal circumstances are not quite as challenging as Tiger’s. While the tabloids’ mistress count for Woods is up to 13, including two attached to the pornography industry, the senator has only one girlfriend, who is 53, and he was separated from his wife when he found her. But there were different problems for Baucus: The woman had been on his staff when they struck up their romance, and he recommended her for a job as a U.S. attorney without disclosing their relationship.

Yet his colleagues jumped to his defense when word got out Friday night — in contrast to the initial reaction to other senatorial sex scandals. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., immediately announced his “full support” for Baucus.

As Tiger surely must be wondering: How does Baucus do it?

Lesson One: Keep it clean. Text messages emerging from the Woods scandal have not helped Tiger’s case. “Send me something very naughty,” he writes to Jaimee Grubbs. “I want you to lay next to me, lay on me or wherever you want to lay,” he writes to Rachel Uchitel.

Compare that to the sort of messages that get Baucus excited. “The average affected taxpayer with an income under $75,000 would get a tax cut of more than $1,500 in the year 2019,” he said on Wednesday. Oh, Max!

“About 60 percent of those who will be getting insurance in the individual market in the exchange will get tax credits which result in about roughly 60 percent reduction in premiums. I mean, it’s between 56 percent to 59 percent.”

You’re driving us crazy, Senator.

“On page 7, a letter from the Congressional Budget Office dated November 18 to Senator Reid estimates that state spending on Medicaid would … be about a 1.89 percent increase of state obligation.”

Don’t you love it when he talks dirty?

Lesson Two for Tiger: Confess quickly.

Woods has been in hiding, issuing perfunctory statements on his Web site. But Baucus, before his scandal was 24 hours old, walked up to a group of Capitol Hill reporters Saturday and took their questions for 10 minutes.

“The Griz are ahead,” he reported of the University of Montana’s football team. But the reporters did not want to talk about the Griz. They waited for Baucus to address his love life with Melodee Hanes, his former state director. “OK, well, um,” the senator began. “Melodee and I have a wonderful, you know, romantic relationship. … It’s very, very happy in my life where I am right now. It’s wonderful.” He spoke giddily, like a teenager confessing his first love.

Baucus went on. “We became close after we each had separated from our spouses,” he explained. His wife, Wanda, made news a few years ago when she agreed to attend anger-management classes to avoid prosecution for allegedly slapping a woman at a Washington gardening center. “When it became more apparent that we were getting closer,” the senator continued, “we both realized that it didn’t make sense for her to continue to work for me.”

He acknowledged that he submitted Hanes’ name on a list of possible candidates for a job as U.S. attorney in Montana, a decision that was, naturally, “just totally objective,” because Hanes “was so good, unbelievably qualified” and “just shines above everybody.” But on further consideration, they later “thought it made sense for her to pull her name out of contention.”

Did the White House know about his relationship with one of the candidates? “I don’t think so,” he said. Should the Senate ethics committee investigate? “I can’t understand why,” he said. “I did everything straight on the up and up.”

Well, that’s not entirely clear. But as Baucus gushed about his girlfriend, it felt as if it would be cruel to punish the love-besotted senator for his lapse. “We’re enjoying a wonderful, happy life together,” he said.

And even dorks deserve a little happiness now and then.