Enough of McGavick soap opera

In the cycle of sorries that is our U.S. Senate race, let's add another one: I now feel sorry for Mike McGavick.

You recall McGavick. He's the GOP challenger to Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell who two weeks ago went all confessional. With no prompting, he announced a list of "the very worst and most embarrassing things in my life for you to know." Such as: driving drunk 13 years ago in Maryland.

To me, this is not a big deal. He made a bad mistake. He hasn't repeated it. End of story.

It was his Clintonesque impulse to spill out all his remorse that bugged me.

I called his recitation of drinking, divorce and campaign shenanigans "too much information." Tell us how you'd end the war and keep the Oprah stuff to yourself, I wrote.

On Wednesday, a frustrated McGavick called me from the campaign trail.

"I won't say you were right," he said, "but I will say that what I was trying to do sure hasn't worked out very well."

Since he voluntarily copped to drunken driving, the shrillest lefties have called McGavick "dishonest," "immoral" and a "blackout drunk." A Seattle P-I columnist, after first praising McGavick for possessing the courage of Socrates, turned on him with a vengeance, essentially calling him a liar.

The reason is that a police report showed two errors in McGavick's story. The errors are so small they're barely worth mentioning. Yet McGavick's critics have used them to hammer the guy into a political pulp.

One, he said he was stopped because he "cut a yellow light too close" — i.e. tried but failed to make it before the light turned red. The report, though, said he ran a "steady red."

So he's guilty of using a euphemism. Who cares? He obviously was stopped for running a red. What difference does it make if it was freshly red or had time to mellow?

The other discrepancy is that he said in interviews he was cited and released. The police say he was also arrested — taken into custody — then cited and released.

I don't see why this distinction matters, either. The point is the guy was drunk, he drove and he got busted. We wouldn't know any of this if he hadn't told us. He even recounted his precise blood-alcohol content, an embarrassing 0.17 percent. And for all this, he gets branded a liar?

McGavick's campaign in the past two weeks is a perfect illustration of a downward spiral in American politics. Politicians and the press share the blame.

I don't know when this obsession with prurience started — maybe back with Gary Hart. Then there was a hounding press. Now reporters don't even need to hound; candidates like McGavick offer their sins unbidden. The confessionals beg scrutiny, which leads to more personal revelations, and down the spiral we go.

It's ironic. McGavick says his campaign is about elevating politics out of this swamp. Yet here he is, stuck deeper in it than anyone.

So deep that this week he offered a fresh "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry that we have all been distracted from the real issues facing our state," he wrote in an e-mail to supporters.

Me, too. Can we talk about something else now?

Danny Westneat's column appears Thursday and Sunday.

Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.