Until Father’s Day 2011, John McGee could have been described as the most image-conscious member of the Idaho Legislature.

McGee earned and seemed to embrace his unofficial back-channel nickname, the “Boy Governor.” Everything McGee said and did seemed to be said and done with an eye to higher office and bigger things. Ambition made him media-friendly yet careful in his choice of words, publicity-hungry yet calculated in crafting his legislative priorities.

Now, it all appears to have been a facade — an image of political self-control at variance with a lack of personal self-control.

McGee’s downfall became official Wednesday, as he resigned from the Legislature in the wake of a sexual harassment complaint filed by a Senate attache. The news was sudden, but can it really be surprising?

Only if you believe — as McGee asserted and a majority of Senate Republicans accepted — that McGee’s Father’s Day arrest was somehow an isolated lapse of judgment.

McGee made that argument in the face of the bizarre circumstances of that evening. He was arrested, barefoot and drunk, 6 1/2 miles away from the golf clubhouse where he had downed enough gin and tonics to blow a .15 percent blood-alcohol reading, nearly twice the legal limit. He was arrested behind the wheel of an SUV he had stumbled upon along the way, famously telling police that he was looking for “the promised land.”

Six months after pleading guilty to DUI and agreeing to a $12,000 cash settlement that settled a more serious felony theft charge, McGee managed to briefly repair his relationship with the Senate. In a closed caucus on Jan. 11, he was able to convince enough of his colleagues that he was in sufficient control to stay in Senate GOP leadership, as spokesman for the caucus.

McGee rehabilitated his image just long enough to obliterate it.

Yes, the allegations of sexual harassment are still allegations — and McGee admits to no wrongdoing, Senate President Pro Tem Brent Hill said Wednesday. But allegations of this kind are plenty damning to take down many a politician, even a polished one.

They were damning enough to make Senate leadership move swiftly, just weeks after granting McGee a second chance. On Saturday, Senate President Pro Tem Brent Hill and Majority Leader Bart Davis received the complaint. They met with the attache Monday, and reassigned her. McGee resigned Wednesday — of his own accord, but after Hill had made clear that the Senate could convene an ethics committee to look into the matter.

There are second chances in life. Third chances are rarer, as they should be — even in a state Senate that prides itself on collegiality. According to Davis, the alleged harassment occurred during the 2012 session, months after the DUI arrest and, most likely, after that Jan. 11 caucus meeting. The harassment complaint never came before McGee’s now-former colleagues. Hill and Davis dealt with this mess themselves, no doubt recognizing that the caucus had an image to consider.

I have to believe there are senators who are feeling like they’ve been had. Senators who resent being put through some unneeded drama, because McGee, ever protective of his political brand, was trying to convince them, and himself, that he still had business being a leader among senators.

McGee leaves a Senate GOP caucus somewhat divided. After he kept his leadership post on Jan. 11 — perhaps, in part, because none of his peers rose up to run against him — nine senators took the unusual step of going public and saying they wanted McGee to step aside as caucus chair.

One of the nine, Sen. Chuck Winder of Boise, said he had been hopeful that the Senate was “healing.” The sexual harassment allegation, he said, had just “fallen from the sky.”

Perhaps it only seemed that way. And perhaps because McGee’s colleagues wanted to convince themselves that isolated transgressions are just that, and not a red flag.

Extending benefit of the doubt is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of charity. Indeed, after his guilty plea in July, our editorial board extended some benefit of the doubt to him, saying his admission of wrongdoing was a good, contrite first step.

I don’t feel any happiness in McGee’s downfall, but given its self-inflicted nature, I can’t work up much heartburn over it either. On Wednesday, Hill rightly made a point of publicly extending the Senate’s sympathies to McGee’s wife and family.

They must rebuild as well, and rebuild something much more important than one politician’s self-image.

Kevin Richert: 377-6437