| Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty November 24, 2014 R.I.P. Marion Barry, Beloved D.C. Figure and Very, Very, Very Bad Mayor The vast majority of the coverage of the death of former Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry offered variations of, “He shouldn’t be judged just by his arrest for smoking crack cocaine in 1990.” Okay. But let’s not forget it, huh? Yes, we are more than the consequences of our worst act at our worst moment. But this was a pretty spectacular failure of judgment, in a life that had plenty of those moments: Marion Barry Jr., the Mississippi sharecropper’s son and civil rights activist who served three terms as mayor of the District of Columbia, survived a drug arrest and jail sentence, and then came back to win a fourth term as the city’s chief executive, died early on Nov. 23 at United Medical Center in Washington. He was 78. Mr. Barry, who also served on the D.C. Council for 15 years and had been president of the city’s old Board of Education, was the most influential and savvy local politician of his generation. He dominated the city’s political landscape in the final quarter of the 20th century. There was a time when his critics, in sarcasm but not entirely in jest, called him “Mayor for Life.” Into the first dozen years of the new millennium, he remained a highly visible player on the city’s political stage, but by then on the periphery, no longer at the center. His personal and public life was fraught with high drama and irony. He struggled with alcohol and drug addiction, relapse and recovery. He was married four times, divorced three times and separated from his fourth wife. His extramarital liaisons and legal trouble over unpaid taxes made news. Yes they “made news” because they reflected a lifelong assurance that the laws and the rules didn’t apply to him. I lived in Washington, D.C., during the Barry comeback in the early 1990s. On both of his mayoral watches, life in the city got worse. Here’s how Washingtonian magazine delicately puts it: “As an elected official, Marion often misconstrued the mission of his government as one to provide reparations to black Americans,” says Jarvis. “Somehow he came to believe the government was the employer of first resort. He hired without much criteria. His greatest failure was in not training city workers for their jobs. It would have helped the government and in their own lives.” Barry made sure that African-American companies got their share of city contracts, though he did a poor job of holding them accountable. In the process, he enriched many political allies. But wait, there’s more! Along the way, his management of the government suffered even more. In the halls of the District Building, aides had to deal with a chief executive who was losing control. In 1986, former city administrator Tom Downs stopped into the office of Herb Reid, then Barry’s political adviser. “How’s Marion?” Downs asked. “If it walks, he f***s it,” Reid responded. “If it doesn’t, he ingests it.” Up in Toronto, Rob Ford’s a mess, but a lot of folks think he’s actually been a good mayor. You have to look far and wide to find any indicators moving in the right direction during the Barry terms. Reflecting an attitude quite common among those who sing the virtues of government, Marion Barry seemed to think he was exempt from paying for it: After leaving the mayor’s office, he had quit paying taxes. Federal prosecutors went to court to force him to pay back taxes, and in 2005 he pleaded guilty to not filing federal or D.C. returns after 1999. A judge gave Barry three years’ probation. When he continued to ignore his tax bills, federal prosecutors asked a judge to give him jail time, but she declined. Prosectors brought Barry back to court in 2009 for failing to file his 2007 return. The federal government garnished his council paychecks to collect nearly $200,000 in taxes, penalties, and interest. The District put him on a voluntary payment plan to pay back about $50,000 in back taxes.
Meanwhile, Barry got caught twice crossing ethical lines as a council member. In February 2010, he admitted to awarding a $15,000 contract to a girlfriend. “I apologize for my actions and lack of sound judgment and for causing great embarrassment to the city and the city council,” he said. His girlfriend had paid him “several thousand dollars,” he said, which he claimed was repayment of a loan. His council colleagues saw it as a kickback, censured Barry, and stripped him of his chairmanship. In September 2013, the council censured Barry again, this time for accepting $6,800 in cash from two city contractors. He was not a nice man: As his health began to fail, Barry’s prejudices went on display. In April 2012, he lashed out at Chinese merchants in his ward: “We’ve got to do something about these Asians coming in, opening up businesses, those dirty shops.” His comments were caught on camera the night he won another Ward 8 council primary. He suggested African-American “businesspeople” take their places. R.I.P., Marion Barry -- may his family and friends find some peace as they cope with their loss. But let’s not let the sadness of his death alter our perception of the historical record. House Intelligence Committee: Hey, Everything Went Fine at Benghazi Didn’t see this Friday-night news dump coming, huh? Two days after a Republican-led committee found no intelligence failure or cover-up in the deadly Benghazi embassy attacks, Republicans are moving to discredit the two-year investigation. “I think the report is full of crap,” said GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on CNN’s ” State of the Union. ” The report by the House Intelligence Committee , dumped Friday , concluded there was no wrongdoing by the Obama administration and no one intentionally misled the American people regarding the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks that killed four Americans — Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. The panel is chaired by vocal President Obama critic Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) He and his Democrat counterpart Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger concluded “there was no intelligence failure prior to the attacks,” in the report that had little fanfare the Friday before Thanksgiving. Does this part seem a little… rosy? The panel’s findings reflected well on the intelligence apparatus, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency. The agency “ensured sufficient security” for its facilities in Benghazi and “without a requirement to do so, ably and bravely assisted the State Department on the night of the attacks,” according to the report. “Their actions saved lives,” the report said. The report said the C.I.A. did not have an “intelligence failure” in the months before the attacks. In fact, the report said, the agency had increased its security because of intelligence reports showing that attacks had intensified in the area . . . The report also debunked a few accusations against the C.I.A. It said that the agency had not intimidated or prevented “any officer from speaking to Congress or otherwise telling their story.” It also said that the agency had not administered “any unusual polygraph exams” to officers about their assignment in Benghazi. And it said that the C.I.A. was not collecting arms in Libya and sending them to rebel groups in Syria. The Select Committee on Benghazi -- headed by Representative Trey Gowdy -- is continuing its work. That Gender Gap? Looking Like Just a Gender Crack Lately In the alleged “war on women”, women are starting to root for their alleged oppressors in greater numbers: 4. That’s the margin by which Democrats beat Republicans among women nationwide in the vote for the House. That’s a significant decline from President Obama’s winning margins among women (11 in 2012, 13 in 2008), although it’s an improvement from the 2010 midterms, when Democrats lost the women’s vote by a point. Still, the massive focus by Democratic candidates across the country on the Republican Party’s supposed “war on women” clearly didn’t persuade large numbers of female voters to abandon the GOP. Assuming Hillary Clinton is the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, the historic nature of her candidacy as the first female presidential nominee may erase any doubts about a shrinking gender-gap edge for Democrats. But, in midterm elections at least, women are simply not an overwhelmingly Democratic constituency. And note this step in the right direction for the GOP: 36. That’s the percentage of the Hispanic vote that Republicans won Nov. 4, an improvement on the 34 percent they won in 2010 and a major step up from the 27 percent that Mitt Romney took in 2012. The 36 percent was the strongest showing for Republicans among Hispanic voters since Bush won 44 percent of the Latino vote in the 2004 election. (Bush’s showing was, by far, the best performance for a Republican presidential nominee since 1972.) It remains to be seen how Obama’s executive action on immigration — and the Republican response to it — will affect those numbers in the long run, but 2014 was a step in the right direction for Republicans among Latinos. ADDENDA: There won’t be a Morning Jolt on Thanksgiving Thursday, but there will be one on Black Friday, complete with a long list of holiday gift ideas.
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