Nashville’s Mayor Has Stumbled. Who Will Cast the First Stone?<br />NASHVILLE — On Jan. 31, the mayor here, Megan Barry, called a news conference to announce<br />that she had been having an affair with Robert Forrest Jr., a police sergeant who was the head of her security detail: “It was wrong, and we shouldn’t have done it,” she said.<br />But for those who are unperturbed by appearances of hypocrisy, a sex scandal presents a golden opportunity to halt Ms. Barry’s ambitious progressive agenda — primarily her expensive plan for public transit,<br />but also her unequivocal support for abortion rights, gun control, same-sex marriage and refugee resettlement — and end any plans she might have for higher office.<br />“Please know that I’m disappointed in myself but also understand that I’m a human and that I made a mistake,” Ms. Barry said in her news conference.<br />All we know for sure is that this is a particularly fraught moment in American history for<br />a person in a position of power — male or female — to reveal an affair with a subordinate<br />An editorial in the conservative Tennessee Star wasted no time in calling for her resignation: “Barry<br />and the fawning, liberal Nashville media are trying the Clinton defense.”<br />In the age of Donald Trump, conservatives have surely surrendered the right to moral outrage on this particular subject.<br />Along with this confession, the mayor offered the kind of full-throated apology we almost never get from<br />public officials: “I accept full responsibility for the pain I have caused my family and his,” she said.<br />“I knew my actions could cause damage to my office and the ones I loved, but I did it anyway.”<br />She ended her statement with a pledge: “God will forgive me, but the people of Nashville don’t have to.
