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"We needed more facts," Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., told Mayer. "That due process didn't happen is not good for our democracy."

"If there's one decision I've made that I would take back, it's the decision to call for his resignation," former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp from North Dakota told Mayer. "It was made in the heat of the moment without concern for exactly what this was." Six other Franken colleagues expressed similar regrets.

But one who kept her zero tolerance attitude toward Franken's allegations was Gillibrand, even though she has moved to the left on such other issues as gun safety and immigration. Now even her own supporters say her zero tolerance hurt her prospects, especially as Democrats try to unseat a president who mocks such behavior standards as "political correctness."

Talk about your teachable moments. It's easy to see with the 20-20 vision offered by hindsight how the Franken situation could have been handled better. As feminist author and New York magazine writer Rebecca Traister told The Nation's Jeet Heer, Franken could have taken, say, a three-month leave to learn how his behavior might have caused discomfort.

Then he could come back with a "bang-up speech on gender, power, harassment and powerful men's responsibility to do their own reckoning."

I agree. I have a theory that the current back and forth over #MeToo standards is a corrective phase. The major scandals surrounding Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein and other wealthy and powerful men can lead to overreaction and rushes to judgment, especially in ambiguous situations.

To maintain the respect that serious charges deserve, we need standards that calibrate punishment in relation to the seriousness of the offense. Not every situation is a 10 on a scale of 10. Sometimes zero tolerance makes less than zero sense.

(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)

(c) 2019 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.