A Real Deal?

The Real Deal
By Curt Thompson

There are two lessons I learned about scandals while studying politics. The first is a famous line from Earl Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men: “There is always dirt.” The second is the famous lesson of Watergate: the cover up is often far worse than than the “crime”. Know those two things and you should be able to navigate any political scandal, yours, your bosses, your colleague’s, someone you support or someone you oppose.

In spite of All the King’s Men being first published in 1946 and Watergate occurring in 1972 you’d be surprised how few politicians learn these lessons. In general most political scandals these days seem to be partisan affairs that are in the eye of the beholder. Because of that there literally is always dirt. If you cannot find real dirt then you can always have it shipped in via conspiracy theories and partisan media. Voters know that. Few of these scandals rise to actual misdeeds and fewer still the type of misdeeds that get a person run out of office. Some are personal life scandals that the public generally doesn’t care about. Some are more in the nature of the wheeling and dealing of sausage making and the “good ole boy” or “machine” systems that, while unseemly and perhaps ill advised, aren’t illegal. Those are the things that, if done with an eye to furthering a cause or constituency the elected official rightfully represents are generally shrugged off, right or wrong, as part of politics. Serve in politics long enough and you too will accumulate dirt. Right or wrong – voters know that too. Yet, in spite of that, politicians still feel compelled to cover up their tracks when called on the carpet, investigated on it by the press, political opponents, prosecutors, or an ethics commission. This where most politicians screw up, taking what may have been mere missteps or at worst immoral and fattening but not illegal and sure enough turning it into something illegal and worth getting booted from office.

I’m concerned our Governor, Nathan Deal, may have joined the long list of elected officials who failed to learn that lesson. Much of the underlying issues and accusations about Governor Deal’s conduct in Congress and in his campaign for governor were litigated in a contested primary and an even more contested and contentious general election campaign where voters, rightly or not, decided they did not care about what sounded like good ole boy wheeling and dealing. They elected him governor comfortably. I say that as a member of the other party who would have preferred that voters had seen the matter the other way. Voters didn’t see it my way. It should have ended with that and likely would have in my opinion had Governor Deal, successfully having passed lesson one from All the Kings Men, not failed lesson two from Watergate.

Now it appears we have a classic “the cover-up is probably worse than the crime setup.” Governor Deal appears to have gone out of his way to stop an investigation into his own actions. Something that Watergate teaches you do at your own peril. Great peril.

For those out of the loop, at issue in this entire case is what happened to the State Ethics Commission after they began an investigation into Gov. Deal for misusing campaign funds. Everyone on the commission who was leading the charge on this case found themselves out of job pretty quick. It’s a trend that’s gotten surprising familiar. If you can’t beat them, make it so they can’t investigate you anymore. What may have just been good ole’ boy hijinks is now being looked at for a possibly far more damaging coverup.
Again, it’s entirely possible this thing is a big misunderstanding. Campaign finance laws can be difficult to keep up with and one missed digit on the paperwork is all it takes to mess up the numbers. What makes it look bad is this continuing trend of investigations petering out after somebody gets fired or resigns for trying to investigate. That is if not legally improper, at a minimum politically stupid.

The latest suspect move is that the investigation has been limited to a performance audit. That is the type of thing that sounds like a real continuation of the coverup that led to the September 30 call for an investigation. (See hyperlink below for a timeline of what has happened so far.) This really cannot stand. A conveniently hyper narrow performance audit isn’t going to clear up matters – especially if the terminations at the state ethics commission were more than mere coincidence and there was some “real dirt” being hidden.

If the Governor really did nothing wrong, as he claims, (about the alleged coverup not the campaign spending) an independent investigation is needed more than ever to clear this up so we can move on. Had he left the Ethics Commission to do its job there would likely be a report by now that would do little more than rehash accusations voters already said they didn’t care about. But tampering with the investigation is something voters, courts, and history care about. Voters will want to know about that and, if it’s true, voters tend to pass a harsh judgment on those activities even if the justice system doesn’t. Everything won’t be laid out on the table until an independent review by a special Attorney General commences.
Here is where we are now- a “Watergate-like” timeline that shouldn’t be- as laid out in the AJC by Greg Bluestein and Shannon McCaffrey found athttp://www.ajc.com/news/news/fbi-questions-ethics-lawyer-at-center-of-deal-comp/nbLSX/.

Reprinted from 5th District State Sen. Curt Thompson's (D-Tucker) blog. Thompson represents parts of unincorporated Duluth, Norcross, Tucker, and Lawrenceville. Also, check the senator out on Facebook and Twitter.