No, this is not a piece about the Super Bowl or all the antics surrounding it. It’s not even about ACC basketball and the surprising turn of events there. It’s time for a little reflection on public trust: Who wins and who loses.
You don’t have to think very hard to come up with a long list of betrayals to which trusting citizens have been subjected. One of the most massive, of course, was the Wall Street mess of several years ago. Even today, most of us are suspicious of what goes on behind the mahogany doors of lower Manhattan and that concern is heightened by the record profits of the banking industry.
Closer to home we are being exposed to corruption in our state government. That is doubly disappointing because Virginia has been nationally cited for a squeaky clean state government. Even in the days of the Byrd Machine, honesty was never in doubt. Now, things have changed. The facts have been bandied about for months and the judicial system was kind enough to wait until Mr. McDonnell is the ex-governor before bringing indictments against him and his wife.
Now that the process will unwind over the next months and perhaps years the courts have imposed a gag order on the case. That means that no one involved can discuss any aspect of the alleged wrongdoing. The presiding magistrate said the case will be tried in the courtroom, not in the media.
What a disappointment that must be for those anticipating a feeding frenzy. A limitless buffet of political plenty has been whisked away from the hungry press. What a windfall for those who will participate in the proceedings. Not to suggest that the O.J. Simpson trial turned into a courtroom circus and justice was not done, but we can have our suspicions. That won’t happen here. The McDonnells deserve a fair and impartial trial; the public deserves the same and that doesn’t mean we have to wallow in the suspected sordidness of the alleged actions. While the press may feel like they have lost this round, the rest of us are winners.
The biggest winners of all will be the team of lawyers who defend the McDonnells. It has been reported that the legal fees from just August through November 2013 totaled $210,000 bringing their total fees to $785,000. Who are the losers? It could be the Virginia taxpayers who may have to foot some of the legal bill even after the governor is out of office. Surely, some of that monstrous fee will fall to the family and friends of the governor. Jon Williams, will you be there when he needs you?
The biggest losers may be the electorate who have had the trust of the Governor’s office besmirched. The kindest (and hardly plausible) explanation is that Star Scientific threw upwards to $185,000 in gifts, loans, and other perks . . . and those are the ones we know about . . . just because Jonnie Williams likes the governor and his wife. McDonnell says that he never did anything to help Star Scientific with their state tax problems and that may be true. If so, he may not be guilty of being bribed but he certainly needs to look up the meaning of mea culpa. To say he and his wife are naïve is better than saying they are stupid, although a strong case can be made for the latter. It seems unlikely they did not know what they were doing.
One could go on to list a lot of other sins, both of omission and commission, but there’s no need to do that. We won’t mention unbridled avarice, ridiculous conspicuous consumption, or the need for something better than a Timex on the gubernatorial wrist.
Those aren’t crimes, just failings of moral fiber. Let the courts decide if there was a crime and, if so, what the punishment should be. However it works out, it is a tragedy for the state, for his family, and certainly the death knell for his political future, which appeared to be brilliant. He would have surely been on the short list for national office had this not surfaced.
When the final verdict has been rendered (sometime in 2017?) we will be talking about the successor to Governor McAuliffe. We can hope that the General Assembly will have enacted ethical reforms that have some teeth. We do not want to follow the example of Illinois where four of their last seven governors have gone to prison.
Hayden Hollingsworth
