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I'm really surprised he resigned. Scandals are rarely fatal to politicians, and I suspect something this minor wouldn't impact the polls at all. And that's true for a very important reason - we love to talk about personal integrity and family values and all sorts of other junk like that, but the job of politicians is voting for or against bills - what matters is the voting record.

I mean, look at Mark Sanford - that was a real, proper scandal but the people of South Carolina ultimately understood what matters is the person's voting record. Sanford won his bid to return to Congress by about 10 points.

The alternative is the lesson learned in Massachusetts, where voters favoured the personal charm of Scott Brown over the fairly insipid Martha Coakley. Brown then went to Washington and voted pretty consistently with the Republican party, as you'd expect a member of either major political party to do. Six years later, and while voters still liked Brown he lost pretty handily to Elisabeth Warren, because all that really matters is voting records, and Massachusetts had now learned that lesson.

I doubt he want to be a standing member of Congress and get pulled back in uniform to get his degree revoked and reduction in rank. That would be all over the networks