Massachusetts Senator-elect Scott Brown says he has “no regrets” about posing nude for a 1982 Cosmopolitan magazine photo spread.
In an exclusive “This Week” interview, Brown told Barbara Walters “you have to have a sense of humor about yourself,” and links the centerfold to many of his successes that came later in life. “If I hadn’t done that… I never would have been sitting here with you. It’s all connected,” Brown told Walters.
An unknown law student at the time, Brown said the magazine appearance put him in the company of such stars as Burt Reynolds, Arnold Schwarzenegger and David Hasselhoff, who had also posed for the magazine.
Asked how he would react if his daughters ever wanted to pose nude, Brown said he’d “leave it up to their discretion”.
Brown said he hopes there’s no double standard that might apply to a woman politician who had been photographed nude in her past. “If someone is qualified to do the job, they should be able to do it, regardless of what they’ve done in their past,” Brown said.
After a night of taking a step back and thinking about what really happened I’ve come to two simple conclusions. First, contrary to my initial reaction, it is unclear what this will do to the Health Care bill. There seems to be a possibility that a “stripped down” “bipartisan” bill could still pass. While such a bill would not represent “sweeping” health care reform, it would still count as a first step, which is more than the last bunch of presidents were able to accomplish. Second, while many see this outcome as a political disaster for President Obama (my first reaction as well), I think it may actually present him with some big political opportunities. As he has already acknowledged in his interview on ABC today (which I thought was a great first step), “The people of Massachusetts spoke… the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.” Instead teaming up with the democrats who want to rush a health care vote before Brown is sworn in, Obama is doing what great leaders do: taking a step back, acknowledging what the people had to say, re-evaluating the situation and looking for a way to move forward. This election result, which seems to be a referendum on health care, the democrats, and Obama, could represent an opportunity for a change in Obama’s agenda. Now that the super majority is gone, Obama may have to really “reach across the isle” and become a more compromising president, which won’t help him with the left wing of the democratic party, but could help him with independents and maybe some republicans. In other words, if the democrats had him on some sort of “leash,” that leash is no longer there because “the people have spoken,” and the democrats can no longer claim a public “mandate” to pass whatever they want. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll be forced to be a little more creative in their bill writing and a little more bipartisan in their approach to the issues we face. That’s not necessarily bad, right? Of course, I’m being somewhat naive, but Obama already seems to be heading in that direction.
