Everyone is entitled to a presumption of innocence, but Sen. Larry Craig has a problem: He's already pleaded guilty. The Idaho Republican's efforts to disown his plea are laughable, and his attempt to blame the sordid mess on others is contemptible.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Everyone is entitled to a presumption of innocence, but Sen. Larry Craig has a problem: He's already pleaded guilty. The Idaho Republican's efforts to disown his plea are laughable, and his attempt to blame the sordid mess on others is contemptible. At his disastrous press conference Tuesday, Craig apologized only for casting "a cloud over Idaho." Idaho's skies are clear - the cloud is over Craig.

The senator was arrested on June 11 at the Minneapolis airport, where he was accused of making advances to an undercover police officer who was conducting a sting operation in a restroom listed on adult Web sites as a place where men can find partners for sexual encounters. He pleaded guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct on Aug. 1. He was fined and placed on unsupervised probation for a year.

Craig said nothing about this to anyone - not his constituents, not his colleagues, not his family. Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, broke the story Monday, 11 weeks after the arrest.

Craig's response: He wasn't really guilty after all. He entered the plea in hopes of making the whole episode go away, the senator said, and wouldn't have done so if he'd had the advice of a lawyer.

Craig says he has a lawyer now, and it had better be a good one: In pleading guilty, Craig signed a statement affirming that "I understand that the court will not accept a plea of guilty from anyone who claims to be innocent" and "I now make no claim that I am innocent of the charge to which I am pleading guilty." If Craig is telling the truth now, he signed a false statement then.

Washington has seen enough scandals to have developed a sense of proportion about them. Craig's misdemeanor, by itself, is small-bore. It's a scandal without sex, money or victims - no victims, that is, except for the people affected by Craig's conduct before, during and after his arrest. The circle of people victimized in this way is large, with consequences that add weight to Craig's minor crime.

Craig's wife and family were victimized by his secrecy - no one should learn of a spouse's or father's arrest from a newspaper. Craig now implies that the police made a wrongful arrest - and according to the police report, Craig appeared to expect special treatment after identifying himself as a senator. The Republican Party's grip on a safe Senate seat has been loosened, and Congress is shamed by another demeaning spectacle involving one of its members.

People in Idaho and beyond are victimized by being drawn toward the conclusion that Craig is a hypocrite - an Elmer Gantry figure who privately engages in the very behavior he publicly deplores. Even those inclined to give Craig the benefit of the doubt must be troubled by his silence, his evident hope that he would get away with it, and now his angry protestations of innocence and persecution. Confidence in the sincerity of Craig's statements on any issue will not be easily restored, and trust in public officials is lowered by another notch.

Craig understands none of this. He claims to be the target of character assassination by the media - even though the newspaper he identifies as his chief nemesis, The Idaho Statesman in Boise, showed admirable restraint in declining to publish the results of a five-month investigation into long-standing rumors about the senator's sexual conduct until after Craig's arrest had been reported. He insisted at Tuesday's press conference that "I am not gay. I have never been gay," even though the issue is Craig's candor and conduct, not his sexual orientation.

Craig has provided a sorry demonstration of how not to handle an embarrassment. The Senate Ethics Committee will investigate, and there may be further facts to be learned, but the result is already clear: Craig is finished politically, and by his own hand.