Coverage of President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz to be attorney general has concentrated largely on his sex scandals and the question of whether the House Ethics Committee will release its long-awaited and probably damaging report on Gaetz’s alleged sexual encounter with an underage girl. Another wrinkle came Tuesday, when it was reported that a hacker had stolen files with details of the sexual encounter from attorneys working on a civil case focused on some of the allegations.

I understand the attraction of the sex angle. It’s simple. It’s salacious. Everybody loves a sex story. Also, so the theory in some Democratic circles presumably goes, it would give Senate Republicans terrified of defying Trump an easy excuse to vote against Gaetz: “He’s a pervert, a sexual predator, and maybe a criminal. And we certainly can’t have somebody like that as attorney general.”

Nonetheless, I think the obsessive focus on Gaetz’s alleged sexual misconduct is a mistake, both for the media and, in due course, for senatorial opponents of the nomination. In the first place, the notion that being a sexual predator is disqualifying for the highest offices in the land now seems almost quaint. After all, Gaetz hasn’t been found by any court to have committed a sexual offense. The man who nominated him has. It would be interesting indeed to hear Republican senators attempt to distinguish the master from his man. One suspects that the vast majority of them lack the stomach for that task.

In addition, except in the unlikely event that a large number of Senate Republicans signal in advance that Gaetz is unacceptable, a confirmation fight focused on sex and the contestable memories of vulnerable young women would too easily be distorted by Trump, Gaetz, and the right-wing media into just another example of the detestable liberals trying to smear a patriot (see: Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh) with disgusting lies.

More importantly, Gaetz as attorney general would be a disaster not because he (allegedly) had sex with a 17-year-old. The real issue is that, regardless of his alleged sexual misconduct, he is stupefyingly unqualified for the job and his confirmation would present an immediate danger both to the rule of law and, though they may not yet see it, to Republicans themselves.

Let’s start with basic qualifications.

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