I have no idea if Jim McGreevey is more sinned against than sinning -- I'll take his word that the gay affair he was having was consensual until I learn otherwise -- but if he thinks everyone's going to make nice now that he's fessed up and promised to resign, he's crazy. Here's his thinking:

By making his resignation effective Nov. 15, McGreevey’s decision will prevent the need for a special election in the fall. State Senate President Richard Codey of West Orange will become governor until the next scheduled election in 2005.

Forget it. He won't last that long.

First of all, the GOP is about to make him John Kerry's running mate. Not all over the country, mind you -- you won't hear gay-bashing at the faux-moderate convention -- but on talk radio and the Internet, and probably above the radar as well, albeit in code words. And I'm sure they'd love to turn the guy who plans to sue him into the next Paula Jones. If they can make an even barely plausible case that he's truly a wronged gay lover, then all bets are off -- they can play this everywhere; they can play it as outrage at abuse of power for the swing voters while working the homophobia and aren't-Democrats-freaks? angle for everyone else.

They're certainly going to play McGreevey's decision to hang on until November as a sleazy Democratic trick -- and now the various nonsexual scandals of the McGreevey years (scroll down to paragraph 14 in this story for a brief summary) will go national. McGreevey may even bump the Swift boat Kerry haters from their spot at the top of the Fox News charts.

The Kerry people will sense, perhaps correctly, that he's hurting them in swing states with blue-collar voters. So I think he'll have to resign early.

If you doubt that the GOP can go national with this, I have two words for you:

Gary Condit.

(P.S.: Oh, and one more thing -- if you look at the third link above, you'll see that the man who's planning to sue McGreevey was hired as his homeland security advisor. Oy. Expect that to be played up by various right-wing blowhards as "the Democrat approach to homeland security" -- as if hiring one's gay lover as anti-terrorism czar is some sort of party-wide habit.)