Who knew that the key to a functioning, effective Congress would be revealed in the scandal surrounding Representative Anthony Weiner? Yet, there it was in the Sunday Times in a piece by Sheryl Gay Stolberg explaining why sex scandals are rarely initiated by female politicians:

“The shorthand of it is that women run because there is some public issue that they care about, some change they want to make, some issue that is a priority for them, and men tend to run for office because they see this as a career path.”

Follow up:

The oracle was Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. (That’s in New Jersey, which with its dearth of women office holders may seem an odd place for a feminist political oracle, but she was there when we needed her.)

I’m not one of those who felt that what Weiner did was inconsequential, just static on a day when reporters were too hot and lazy to chase down anything that required in-depth reporting. But I was suspicious when the first Tweeted photographs were reported by Andrew Breitbart, the right-wing zealot who made a shambles of Shirley Sherrod’s legitimate work. Breitbart, of course, seemed to think this was as much about him as it was about Weiner, which shows that like the congressman he reported on he has an enormous ego and does not play well with others. But this time he didn’t have to construct the evidence.

Weiner has a solid record as a representative for Queens and Brooklyn, and I once heard him give an energetic and substantive speech. What annoyed me was that he didn’t address the issues that the organization who invited him had specifically laid out. It was all about his agenda. So while he sorts things out with the help of a therapist (a long overdue exercise, I’d say), let’s ponder Walsh’s idea that women run because they seek change about something they care about and are unlikely to be involved in sexual imbroglios.

Representative Carolyn McCarthy comes to mind. The Long Island representative had no political ambitions until the day a lone gunman shot and killed her husband and critically wounded her son on a commuter train. She’s still fighting to make sure laws requiring all gun purchases to be registered, and she must be exhausted.

And then there’s recently elected New York Congresswoman Kathy Hochul, who replaced Chris Lee, the man who advertised shirtless for a date while married. Hochul won an upset victory upstate because she defended Medicare vigorously while her opponent supported its demise. She was not a political novice when she ran; she had held several state posts, but more importantly, she and her family had a long tradition of service to people with special needs and abused women.

I also think of Representative Barbara Lee, who knows that her Oakland, CA, constituents have no stomach for more wars and was the sole member voting nay to the Bush incursion into Iraq.

And there’s Marcy Kaptur, the Congresswoman featured in Michael Moore’s film, Capitalism: A Love Story, who has worked tirelessly to restore the economy of Toledo, Ohio.

Since I don’t Tweet myself, I have no idea if any of these women do, but I’d be surprised if anything they Tweeted was flirtatious much less topless.

Not every female office holder is a paragon of modesty and unselfishness, of course. Which brings us to Sarah Palin, who seems cast in the male mode. Unafraid to trade on her good looks (and legs), unembarrassed about her lack of grounding in history, geography or current events, she moves on with a Reaganesque wink, good naturedly brushing aside any concerns about her qualifications. “I’m good enough,” she seems to say, in that good ol’ boy/gal manner, “Trust me.” How far she can string this out I have no idea. Mostly, she’s a tease, and that seems understood by almost everyone except the media.

More complex on the Alaskan front is the 2010 write-in victory of Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski against Tea Partier Joe Miller, whom Palin supported. Appointed by her father to her first term, Murkowski lost the primary to Miller then refused to take the defeat in stride. As the recipient of tons of federal aid, you’d think Alaska would send Democrats to the Senate like other states in the Northwest, but Murkowski, who’s pro-choice incidentally, seems to know how to take with one hand while, say, refusing to support the new health care plan with the other. I’m not sure she fits Walsh’s profile, but perhaps voters preferred someone who will keep bringing home the pork to an ideologue.

Palin has a mirror opposite in the well-formed, unflappable Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard professor who has Wall Street scared to death. She’s one of those women who never seems to have a hair out of place, but you never doubt that it’s real hair, and that’s a good analogy to her thinking, which is clear cut and straightforward. Ever since the financial crisis struck the United States in 2008, Warren has been patiently explaining its ramifications for ordinary people without sugar coating (the end of the middle class) or backing down from placing responsibility on those whom she thinks are to blame (there’s a list). It should surprise no one that she’s a former Methodist Sunday school teacher.

Warren has proved so formidable that Massachusetts Democrats have suggested that she might make a strong candidate for the old Ted Kennedy Senate seat that was lost to Republican Scott Brown. While she might pull it off, this would be a serious waste of her talents, which seem tailor-made to protecting all us Americans outside the banking system. In the Senate, she’d have only one vote in 100, whereas as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau she’d have the power to affect American life directly.

What’s blocking her nomination in the Senate now are Republicans and a few Democrats who fear what might happen if her truth-telling were given official sanction. All of them stand to gain by generous campaign donations from Warren’s opponents.

Nothing Walsh said negates the overwhelming influence of money on Congress regardless of the gender of its members. If President Obama exercised his power to appoint Warren during an upcoming recess—and he could— we’d really have something to Tweet about.And if we'd really like a less distracted Congress, we could make sure the next year's freshman class includes those fetching women on Emily's List.