Teddy Roosevelt’s only daughter, Alice, was one of the great characters of the nation’s capitol for most of the 20th Century. She knew everyone, married the Speaker of the House, Nicholas Longworth, and had a long and passionate affair with Sen. William Borah of Idaho, who was likely the father of her only child. The outspoken Alice widely and freely shared her deliciously candid opinions about politics and people with anyone and everyone.
The embroidered pillow in her living room said: “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.”
Alice famously said of President Warren Harding, who she knew well and was perhaps our worst president, that he “was not a bad man. He was just a slob,” which reminds me of Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
To paraphrase Alice Roosevelt Longworth: “Rick Perry may not be a bad man, but he really isn’t a very smart one.”
Perry, the long serving Republican Governor, has been indicted by a grand jury in Austin accused of abusing his power. Imagine that, a Texas governor doing such a thing, but I digress.
Sometime back Perry quite openly tried to force the resignation of a Democratic prosecutor in Austin who has jurisdiction over public corruption cases. The prosecutor made a fool of herself during a drunk driving incident and spent some days in jail. Perhaps seeing an opening to get rid of a pesky prosecutor who was apparently looking into some details of Perry’s 14 years in the governor’s office, the governor demanded that the prosecutor resign. She refused. Pretty standard political behavior, right? But wait a Texas minute and whoa there cowboy!
At this point in our tale, Perry failed to turn off the stupid. In public remarks the governor tied the resignation of the vodka-swilling Democratic prosecutor to the state appropriation for the political corruption unit she commanded. Viola! Intimidation. Retribution. Abuse of power. Stupid. And, of course, there was no resignation, but rather a grand jury.
Most governors, obviously Rick Perry included, can’t resist the “threat” of the veto. It is the ultimate power of the executive. The legislature can vote and vote and vote, but in the end only one vote – the governor’s – stands between a law and a piece of paper headed for the round file. Rick Perry’s real failure as the man-who-would-be-president was more his threat than his action. You’d think a guy who has been governor for all of this century would understand that the action of saying NO – decisive, final, surprising, perhaps even a little mysterious – has way more political impact that the threat of saying NO followed by the anticlimax of action.
Perry was playing hardball when hiding the ball would have been the politically smart and more effective tactic. Nothing inspires political fear in an opponent more than the belief that you might do something really surprising. It’s always a good idea to keep the other guy guessing and asking, “Will that crazy S of a B come out of right field and do something really bizarre?” That, my friends, is the exercise of political power. Don’t threaten. Act. And surprise.
Rick Perry showed up to be booked on the abuse of power charges wearing a swell blue necktie and a slightly off-kilter grin. He 
must be calculating that being indicted for abuse of power actually helps him with the GOP-base in places like New Hampshire and Iowa and it will.
Republicans in Congress want to impeach President Obama for abusing his power, but when one of their guys is charged with abusing power – a felony in Texas – it actually helps his positioning for the 2016 nomination. Isn’t American politics great?
I suspect many Democrats would like to be gleeful about the Perry indictment, but most know, as nearly everyone from Human Events to the Washington Post also know, his actions really aren’t criminal. Stupid maybe, but not criminal. As the Post wrote in an editorial: “What everyone should recognize is that this particular kerfuffle fell within the bounds of partisan politics, which, as the saying goes, ain’t beanbag.” By criminalizing stupidity we just worsen the crowding crisis in our jails. Not smart.
Reuters photo
Which brings us to Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York where political scandals are about as prevalent historically as coyotes in Texas. If Rick Perry’s stupid threat followed by a veto was politics as usual, then Cuomo’s decision to appoint a high profile commission to investigate New York political corruption and then stonewall the commission’s work at every turn is potentially a whole lot more. The aggressive U.S. Attorney in Manhattan is on the case.
The New York Times, which, by the way, editorially called the Perry indictment silly, recently documented the extent to which Gov. Cuomo and his minions have tried to thwart the ethics commission’s work. This actually has the smell, as does Gov. Chris Christie’s Bridgegate problem across the Hudson River in New Jersey, of a real and lasting scandal.
Cuomo may one day look back on the much ballyhooed and very high profile launch of his ethics commission, complete with promises of transparency and candor, as a moment of gubernatorial hurbis that makes Rick Perry’s Texas stupid look pretty small town along side a New York perp walk.
But back to Warren Harding. When Harding died in 1923 under what are still not completely explained circumstances he was bedeviled by charges of corruption in his administration. Eventually his Secretary of the Interior went to jail and his Attorney General was forced to resign. Shortly before his death Harding complained that in the business of politics it always seems that your friends cause you the greatest amount of grief. It was true in 1923 and true today.
If it turns out that Gov. Perry has a problem it will be because he was trying, with his now criminalized veto, to clean up after his friends in the Texas Cancer Prevention and Research Institute, a favorite Perry cause where grants and such seem to flow steadily to his friends. The zeal of Gov. Cuomo’s staff in micromanaging the New York ethics commission may come close, if not cross the line, to obstruction of justice or witnesses intimidation. The same can be said for Christie’s staff in New Jersey and Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, whose staff allegedly played fast and lose with the rules against mixing official business with political hijinks.
All these ethically challenged guys have huffed and puffed that all they have done is practice politics as a high art. Nothing criminal about that, they say. No usual suspects to round up in these parts. Still, politics isn’t just about high fast balls thrown at the other guys head. It shouldn’t always be just bluster and fuss wrapped in raw power. At its best politics is both style and substance; skill and sophistication. Be a little subtle while gently sticking in the knife. Bring down the hammer, but wrap it in velvet. Above all don’t channel Nixon and give them cause to call you a crook. And, while you’re at it, don’t get mentioned in the same blog post with Warren G. Harding.
The unpopular Barack Obama has some advice for Perry, Cuomo and the current gang of governors forcing us to mix politics and crime: don’t do stupid stuff. Or, as the always quotable Alice Roosevelt might have said, don’t be a slob.