Jim McGreevey, who will be resigning as New Jersey’s governor on November 15, cares deeply for the people of the Garden State.  (No, not the way you’re thinking!)  Despite the admission on August 12 that he engaged in an extramarital relationship with a homosexual Israeli with possible ties to the Mossad—whom, early in his administration, he had attempted to hire as the state’s homeland-security advisor—the Luv Gov recently told the New York Times that “having accepted responsibility for my action by proffering my resignation didn’t necessarily mean that I was required to abandon midstream important initiatives that this administration holds dear.”

In that case, Jim, the citizens of Connecticut should sue their sleazy Republican ex-governor, John Rowland, for abandonment.  Rowland, who had a penchant for accepting gifts from contractors doing business with Hartford, announced his resignation on June 21, and, by July 1, Republican Lt. Gov. Jodi Rell was sworn in as acting governor.

Among the “important initiatives” that McGreevey wishes to fulfill is the protection of the public from terrorism, which he originally had planned to leave in the hands of an apparently unqualified foreign national with whom he engaged in deviant and adulterous sex.

McGreevey’s self-outing was, perhaps, the most disgraceful speech and piece of political theater in American history, and, for a country with our rogues’ gallery of unsavory pols, that’s saying something.  There he was, with his wife, mother, and Marine Corps father by his side, smiling and gesticulating, as he delivered a focus-group-driven civics lesson, concocted the night before with the help of consultants and other riffraff, after his inner circle learned that the jilted boyfriend had intentions of outing the governor.

Most hacks caught with their pants down would have sent a typed one-pager over to the AP and then slinked away, but, since homosexual activity now accords one instant victim status in our indulgent society, why not play it to the hilt?

McGreevey, conscience now clear—or less soiled—writes that “going forward” he can avoid “the pitfalls of a divided self or secret truths.”  Secret truths?  That is the artful new phrase for living a lie, which he has now managed to do through two faux marriages.

The biggest secret truth is that his resignation before September 3 would have made a special election necessary this November, possibly putting New Jersey into play in the presidential race, where John Kerry currently holds a comfortable lead over George W. Bush.

A previous manifestation of unseemly maneuvering by the Democrats in New Jersey was to unhorse the light-fingered Bob Torricelli from his Senate reelection campaign in favor of the senescent ex-senator Frank Lautenberg to preserve that seat in 2002.  The strategy worked, with the leftist state supreme court ruling that state election law really didn’t say what it said in plain English about substituting candidates just before an election.

The political machine kingpin of Hudson County decades past, Frank Hague, would have relished all these dirty dealings in the state where he once plied his trade, but, if he were alive today, in the privacy of the club back room, he would probably call McGreevey something other than the p.c. “gay.”  Some things do change.