To some, this conduct is more of the same revolting harassment that has finally started to get men in trouble. To others, Bush’s condition puts him in another category. The truth is somewhere in between.

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It’s possible to make too much of Bush’s behavior. His actions are not on the same plane as Weinstein’s, or Leon Wieseltier’s or Mark Halperin’s alleged abuses (or, for that matter, Bill Clinton’s). Treating them as if they were draws attention away from the crimes that most deserve condemnation.

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It’s also possible to make too little of it. Suggesting that Bush’s advanced age means he did not harm the women he fondled feeds into the same story that society has told itself for decades. It shames women into making excuses for their harassment and their harassers — and into keeping quiet. The statement Bush’s office issued saying he had “patted women’s rears in what he intended to be a good-natured manner” in an effort “to put people at ease” suggests that what he did was okay. It wasn’t.

Still, though, this case may say less about Bush than it does about the people around him.

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One sign of senility is a loss of control. A patient with Alzheimer’s who in life was always gentle may lash out in anger and aggression; Lewy body disease often leads to what doctors call inappropriate sexual behavior. Parkinson’s medication can also cause impulse-control disorders. We can’t know for sure whether any of these maladies has anything to do with Bush’s actions. But if age or illness exonerates the former president, there are plenty in his orbit who could have taken on responsibility instead.

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Barbara Bush, according to all accounts, stood by when her husband fondled these women. She rolled her eyes. She joked that he might end up in jail. People standing nearby laughed. Aides knew; the Secret Service knew. (One security guard told the woman who initially complained about George H.W. Bush that she shouldn’t have stood next to him.) The same thing had happened enough times that women were warning each other to stay away. Bush’s own spokesman said he did it “routinely.”

It is difficult, no doubt, to manage a sick man who does unexpected things at unexpected times. In this case, though, there appears to have been no effort at all. There was only embarrassed acceptance.