A couple of times a year, 60 or 70 families from around the country send their teenage sons and daughters off to Washington, D.C., to spend a few months with the people who write the laws and set the policies of the mightiest nation on Earth.

It’s a proud moment for the parents and a heady experience for the exemplary youngsters who undertake it.

As the past week’s disclosures suggest, it may also be a chilling exposure to risk.

While TV analysts grow hoarse jabbering about how the Mark Foley uproar will affect the results of next month’s election, the parents in the pages’ scattered families must wonder if letting their kids go to Congress was such a smart idea after all. Political insiders on both sides of the aisle may concentrate on partisan gains and losses, but it takes parents to focus on what matters: Were children physically or emotionally endangered by a public official who exploited their trust and abused his position and age advantage over them?

The political strategists couch their remarks in similar terms, but anybody who pays close attention to their comments will grasp their true interests.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, under pressure to step down for not acting sooner on concerns about Foley, told the Chicago Tribune: “I think that (resignation) is exactly what our opponents would like to have happen – that I’d fold my tent and others would fold our tent and they would sweep the House.”

Liberal talk show host Mike Papantonio has been telling his Air America audience that GOP stands for “grand old pedophiles.”

Republican Congressman Mike Simpson of Idaho told the Associated Press that the news of Foley’s e-mail exchanges with ex-pages has weakened his party’s confidence about retaining the House majority.

Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that if he or anyone else in Republican leadership had known what Foley was up to they would have told him to step down so somebody else could run for his “safe Republican seat.”

The information’s very release was clearly timed for partisanship rather than the protection of children.

If the rumor is true that Capitol Police prevented a drunken Congressman Mark Foley from entering a page dorm, that would be a welcome sunbeam of reassurance piercing the storm clouds of scandal. It would be a sign of duty and professionalism in the face of an elected official’s arrogant expectation of deference.

Inside that dorm was a special group of kids. They didn’t become pages by winning a lottery; they got there because they’re serious, purposeful teens. Their very interest in the experience demonstrates a respect for American government that will serve them and their communities as they assume their adult roles.

Mark Foley violated the physicial and emotional security of young people he should have safeguarded. He may also have eroded their faith in representative government.

Many others in the House are making a bad situation worse by manipulating the story for political stakes. They’ll get away with it only if Americans give such arguments a credibility they don’t deserve.