Politicos on 'roids

I've decorously avoided all mention of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), but a few commenters have been suggesting that steroids might have played a role in his self-inflicted travails. Here's a PG-rated picture of his shaven chest the skinny 46-year-old Congressman took of himself in the mirror for his Internet admirers. 

The impact of steroids on behavior has a fair degree of randomness in it, but it does seem to increase the seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time factor. In general, when ambitious men take male hormones, it makes them more ambitious but also increases the odds that they'll feel powerful urges to do things that might undermine their ambitions. In particular, muscle-building drugs seem to increase feelings of vanity and invulnerability.

The impact of steroids on political figures has been curiously underexamined in the press. At least two governors, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura, were professional musclemen before entering politics. Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's running amok that led to a big scandal during the Bush Administration obviously had something to do with performance-enhancing drug use (President Bush greeted him, "Hey, Buff Guy, what are you benching?"), but as far as I can tell, I'm just about the only one who ever mentioned it in public. Andrew Sullivan wrote at vast length in the New York Times in 2000 about the fluctuating impact of his prescription testosterone cycle on his judgment, but practically nobody seems to have noticed.

I'll leave it to others to look for a picture of Dominique Strauss-Kahn with his shirt off to see if we can create a General Theory of Self-Destructing 2011 Politicians. But I wouldn't be too surprised. Run for President of France? Of course! Rape the maid? What could possibly go wrong?

By the way, here's a perfectly reasonable letter Weiner sent to the FBI in 2008 suggesting that investigating pitching ace Roger Clemens for perjury over steroids should not be a high priority. So, steroids were at least on his radar.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer