Bob McDonnell, Once One of the GOP’s Rising Stars, Heads to the Courthouse
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Morning Jolt January 22, 2014 Bob McDonnell, Once One of the GOP's Rising Stars, Heads to the Courthouse Bob McDonnell, you're a big jerk. Here's one detail from the indictment that's just heartbreaking if you ever thought Bob McDonnell had a bright future as a leader on the national stage:
If these points in the indictment are accurate, even Jonnie Williams -- the guy allegedly bribing the McDonnells with these gifts and loans — seemed to sense this was a bad idea. McDonnell earned $175,000 per year as governor — one of the highest salaries of any governor — and obviously doesn't have to worry about paying rent while he's governor. But the Rolex cost $6,500. That's a pretty hefty chunk of change for a timepiece. People would inevitably ask questions about how he could afford it. It sounds like the McDonnells had well-hidden financial issues from the moment they entered the governor's mansion. In December 2009, one month after McDonnell wins in a landslide, Maureen McDonnell e-mails "JE," one of Robert McDonnell's senior staff members:
Painful lesson: You never really know a candidate or public official unless you're in the innermost of inner circles. Little or nothing in Bob McDonnell's past as state attorney general or state legislator pointed to an extravagant lifestyle, serious personal debts, or blind spots in judgment. Even if you know a candidate . . . you never really know how power will change him. Someone asked how much of this mess is the responsibility of Maureen McDonnell, and how much is the fault of the governor. That doesn't really matter much, now does it? He's the governor. He's got to know that if he's going to accept a gift, he has to disclose it. He's got to have the basic common sense to realize that one guy offering more than $150,000 in loans and gifts isn't just doing it because he's a nice guy. And if his wife is getting him involved in financial arrangements that appear compromising, he's got to put his foot down and get himself out. The legal response from McDonnell's lawyers — citing me! Thanks a heap, guys!* — is that governors get gifts from donors all the time, and that no matter how awful it stinks, nothing actually breaks federal law. But part of me can't believe they've been reduced to arguing this:
Yeah, that's all! The Commonwealth of Virginia does not provide its governor a mansion so that he can help donors sell their products, and we don't elect these guys so they can suddenly become enormously popular with rich guys who want to share their vacation homes and buy them watches. You can't cash in on your office — and if the argument is that every elected official does it, you can't do it on this scale. *This is sarcasm. Toughen Up, Beltway By 11 p.m. Monday night, most of the school districts in the Washington, D.C., area announced they were closed in anticipation of an approaching "Alberta Clipper" snowstorm. Tuesday morning, the federal Office of Personnel Management announced that federal government offices in the D.C. region would be closed. Emergency employees and telework-ready employees are expected to work. The first snowflakes didn't fall until about 11 a.m. At 1 p.m., most of the major roadways remained clear, with the salt trucks having had plenty of time to prepare the roads. The clipper did amount to a genuine snowstorm by the standards of the mid-Atlantic region, dumping four to seven inches. My suspicion is that the Washington, D.C., area is a lot more capable of toughing its way through a few inches of snow. We would like to try, but nervous-Nelly school administrators won't let us. Either that, or those administrators are terrified of nervous-Nelly parents. Jake Tapper: "When I was a kid they waited for snow to accumulate before they called snow days. Then we had to walk home in it barefoot with bags of rocks." The AP wrote that the U.S. is becoming a nation of "weather wimps," attributing it to . . . global warming, contending that the warmer globe means we're less used to cold weather, so we have a harder time coping with it. That article featured a Rutgers University climate scientist positing that melting Arctic sea ice is generating "more weirdness" in our weather. That darn indecipherable, precise scientific jargon! But this isn't really about the actual temperatures or precipitation; it's about how we react to them. Winter's always going to be cold, ranging from pretty cold to bitterly cold. Some years we won't get much snow, some years we'll get a blizzard or two. What's stupefying is how this region always seems shocked by it. Washington, D.C.,'s snow accumulation this year (before Tuesday's Alberta Clipper) was . . . 3.4 inches. Not counting Tuesday's school closure, Yuppie Acres, Northern Virginia has already used up its three snow days and had a delayed opening, and that district's school closure decisions are about par for the course in the region. The annual usual total snowfall in the Washington, D.C., area is . . . 5.4 inches. So we're getting a bit more snow than usual, but not much. (You can check out snowfall totals and averages for 57 cities here.) Washington Post's Petra Dvorak spoke for exasperated parents a few weeks ago when there was talk that some school districts would close school because of the "Polar Vortex." No actual precipitation, snow, sleet, or ice, just a blast of really cold air.
Perhaps it is memories of the January 2011 "Carmaggeddon'" that haunt administrators in the D.C. region. But even that storm was relatively mild — five to ten inches — but it caused colossal problems because of the timing of its arrival in the mid-afternoon. The federal government dismissed its workers, and every commuter in Washington, D.C., tried to leave simultaneously — clogging every artery out of the city. I spent six hours in traffic on Carmaggeddon, on a drive that can take twenty minutes on a weekend. But what really aggravated the problems of that night were the little gestures of petty incivility, such as the private and city buses that completely blocked and gridlocked city intersections because they just had to inch ahead on the yellow lights, or the guy who abandoned his car in the middle lane of the 14th Street Bridge. Thanks, pal. Carmaggedon was one of the few times my four-wheel-drive light SUV looked better than the Porsches and sports cars abandoned by the side of the road. The natural obstacles were greatly exacerbated by very human misbehavior. Human beings are capable of walking, driving, and functioning in snow; otherwise places like Boston, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Minneapolis (and Canada) would be abandoned throughout winter. But not only does Washington, D.C., fail to do that… it seems afraid to even try. That Awful Governor Boo Burnham
Noonan describes the reaction to New York's Andrew Cuomo as thus:
ADDENDUM: Texas Democrat Wendy Davis, in a release attacking her GOP rival, Greg Abbott:
Abbott, of course, is a paraplegic. To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com
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