If John Edwards goes to prison, then many other politicians should join him, according to the Department of Justice’s logic.
I have a friend, for instance, who during his first campaign unintentionally did almost exactly what Edwards did. After my friend’s first campaign event, the host pulled him aside and said, “Great job! But, can I be candid with you?”
“Sure.” Sure, he said, wondering if his rhetoric had been too strong for some in the room.
“OK. Please don’t be angry,” she said. “But people think you look like a kid, not somebody who could be in Congress. Your suit’s too big. Your shirt is threadbare, your slacks look like rags, and your shoes are scuffed. Basically, you like a boy in your dad’s hand-me-downs. Oh, and you really need a haircut. Your hair looks like a hornet’s nest. You‘ve gotta go see my girl Melissa, she can help you.”
My friend went to Melissa for the duration of the campaign, and her handiwork was by all accounts a huge improvement. Melissa refused to charge him, no matter how vehemently he tried to pay her.
A few weeks later my friend ran into his high school tennis coach, who also commented on his suit. “You can’t go around looking like that,” said the coach, and gave my friend several stylish suits and blazers that he hadn’t worn in years, with instructions on where to get them altered.
Little did my friend know that he had his own Bunny Mellon and Fred Baron, on a slightly smaller scale. And like John Edwards, he neglected to report these gifts on his FEC filings. (FEC rules state that any gift to a federal candidate that is meant to influence an election and which has not been given routinely prior to the benefactor’s candidacy must be reported.)
But if Lanny Breuer, the Assistant AG who is prosecuting John Edwards, has anything to say about it, there will be a precedent set for candidates, even those like my friend – neophytes who know precious little about the intricacies of federal campaign finance law. Any failure to report such gifts would merit a felony charge and, potentially, prison time.
***
Let’s lay out a few pertinent facts about the Edwards case.
A centenarian billionaire gave almost a million bucks to help him hide his pregnant mistress while he ran for president. Edwards failed to inform his campaign treasurer about these gifts.
Who was hurt here – other than Elizabeth Edwards?
We can agree that John Edwards make a mistake by succumbing to the “charms” of a bleach-blonde New Age party-girl who approached him (“You’re so hot”) at a NYC hotel bar one evening. And he compounded this initial mistake with many more along the way. By carrying on an affair as his wife’s cancer progressed, he was appallingly self-indulgent and callous. By running for president while concealing it, he became one of the highest-stakes gamblers in history, literally risking the nation’s well-being on a Houdini-like escape from this tangled web.
But that doesn’t mean the government should have spent two years and millions of dollars to prosecute him.
The crux of the case is that Edwards failed to report the “gifts” as campaign contributions. However, no Bunny-money ever touched any of John Edwards’s campaign or personal accounts. Prosecutors don’t even allege that it did. And apparently Ms. Mellon even paid gift taxes on the money. So should Edwards really be prosecuted and potentially incarcerated for misleading his campaign staff about the fact that a billionaire kept his mistress living in style?
Is there anyone in the country who doesn’t think John Edwards is a world-class heel? Probably not.
Would you like to help pay the millions of dollars for his prosecution and possible incarceration? I didn’t think so.
***
As regular readers know, I lied to federal agents about my knowledge of a postcard that was mailed out by an independent group during my 2004 congressional campaign. With my knowledge, one of my aides had given publicly available information about my opponent’s legislative attendance record to the independent operator, a fact that my aides and I hid from investigators. The wire worn by one of my best friends for two months in 2009 revealed my awareness of the plan to send the mailer, along with the fact that I frequently use four-letter words.
Read the rest of… Jeff Smith: Your Tax Dollars at Work, Prosecuting (& Potentially Incarcerating) John Edwards
Let’s stipulate that John Edwards’ misdeeds are already legendary. Whatever your view of the linkage between sexual misconduct and public life, Edwards picked an usually sordid path to travel–the betrayal of a dying spouse, the failure to own up to a pregnancy, and a political cover-up that traded on the loyalty of people who believed in him deeply.
But sin is still not criminal, and I am in the camp that thinks the prosecution of Edwards last week is misguided.
These are the basic facts around the case: in 2007 and 2008, several major Edwards donors funneled just under a million dollars to Edwards for the purpose of paying off Realle Hunter, Edwards’ mistress, in the hope that she would remain silent about the affair. The Edwards campaign did not disclose the money in its quarterly FEC filings, and there has been much subsequent wrangling over whether they should have.
Whether the money should have been revealed turns largely on how it is classified: gifts need not be reported to the FEC, campaign contributions must be. If the funds had a political purpose like preserving Edwards’ candidacy from scandal, they are arguably campaign contributions. If they were political, they also might be what campaign law calls independent expenditures, and in that case, it would be a campaign finance law violation if Edwards “coordinated” the expenditures in any way.
The Edwards camp responds that the money, which came from two longtime friends of the former Senator, was a personal gift meant to help Edwards by shielding his wife and family from finding out about the affair. In its charging, the Department of Justice contends that the Edwards team is wrong and that its receipt of the money, which is way outside the legal limits for individual contributions, and its subsequent failure to disclose it, are criminal violations. Edwards alone has been charged.
Again, a concession is in order: a candidate’s receipt of sizable amounts of money from a few sources is not a good thing for those of us who worry about the sway big money donors have on politics. Moreover, the idea that money has either a “political” or a “personal” purpose is a rather obvious fiction: keeping an extramarital affair out of view helps save both a marriage and a political career.
But imagine a scenario that is slightly less salacious. Let’s say a major cable television network pays a potential presidential candidate a significant salary to host a program on public affairs, and regularly features that candidate as a commentator on its other programming. The candidate has no previous experience as a journalist and the show performs poorly enough in the ratings that the network derives little benefit. Is this generosity a campaign contribution, on the grounds that the free time and the salary boost the candidate’s presidential interests in obvious ways, and spares him the inconvenience of a day job? Or is it just an act of kindness meant to sustain a figure whose views are shared by the network’s management?
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Former Fed. Prosecutor Calls Edwards Prosecution “Misguided”
By Jonathan Miller, on Mon Jun 6, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET
Yesterday, June 5, marked the 43rd anniversary of the tragic assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
His daughter, our very own contributing RP, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, spent the weekend paying tribute to the virtue of public service. In a speech before the The Women’s Network, Townsend shared her thoughts on the meaning of her father’s legacy:
In 1968, as you all remember, my father was running for president. David Frost asked Ronald Reagan and my father a question. I’m going to ask you that same question and give you thirty seconds of silence to think about how you’d answer that question, okay? The question is, “What is the purpose of life?” Think about how you would have answered it, okay?
Both Ronald Reagan and my father came up with good answers, and answers that rooted in the American tradition. Ronald Reagan said “The first thing is you have to reproduce yourself. Of course my mother [of ten] did a really good job on that one. And then he said what we really need in this country is individual freedom. We’re based on a belief in the Judeo-Christian belief of individual salvation and so what we need is individual freedom within the extent of the law. That was his answer. That makes a certain amount of sense. We talk about freedoms, we’re clelebrating Franklin Roosevelt’s four freedoms.
But I think Ronald Reagan missed something. My father said the first thing you do, you need enough food, clothing and shelter. If you don’t have that, that’s not a worthwhile life. But after you do that, you have to help others. You may have no shoes, but there’s always somebody else who has no feet. Our responsibility is to help others.
What had happened in 1968 when my father lost the election is we moved away from a sense that we’re all in this together, we’re part of a larger community, and we have to help one another. [We moved to] A belief only in ourselves, individualism. That started to dominate our economic system, which wasn’t there before. Milton Friedman, Allen Greenspan, who only thought: “What can we do for me?” Ayn Rand. And that has been a destructive economic system. We hear the rhetoric: “We want to cut taxes to create wealth”. Well, wealth for whom? Wealth for the top two percent of Americans. Wealth for the rest of Americans has not gone up in thirty years. What we’ve done is focused on wealth and not on worth. It means our country is weaker of this bad ideology which we have to change, and that’s what Democrats need to do.
Coincidentally (?) , Townsend entered the patheon of the American intellectual zeitgeist yesterday as well. She was featured as a clue in the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle:
106 Down: “Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, to J.F.K.” Five letters.
Earlier today, former Governor and U.S. Senator Evan Bayh joined our team of contributing recovering politicians.
We thought it was appropriate then to share the video of his moving speech in which he announced that he would not seek a third term in the U.S. Senate. The themes he strikes — a lack of civility in politics, the hyper-partisanship of Washington — are many of the same messages that animated the creation of The Recovering Politician.
So sit back and enjoy our RPTV Friday Video Flashback:
Our newest contributing recovering politician was a Secretary of State, two-term Governor, two-term Senator, and on the short-list of potential Vice Presidential nominees three times. So Evan Bayh needs little introduction. Suffice it to say that the centrist Democrat is one of the most well-known and well-respected recovering politicians in the country.
In this week’s edition of RPTV’s Fifteen Minutes of Fame, Bayh shares his thoughts about political retirement, the virtue of public service, and the fiscal course our nation faces. Enjoy this interview as the RP welcomes Bayh to The Recovering Politician:
By Jonathan Miller, on Thu Jun 2, 2011 at 5:00 PM ET
I’m thrilled to report that our highest profile contributing RP yet, Evan Bayh, will be joining the team tomorrow morning at The Recovering Politician.
For those of you who don’t follow politics or read the newspaper, Evan Bayh is the former two-term Governor and two-term U.S. Senator from Indiana, who chose not to run for a third term in 2010 because he had tired of the hyper-partisanship and polarization in Washington.
Tomorrow morning, we will have a special, personal episode of RPTV in which Bayh and I discuss his post-politics life, his reflection on the merits of public service, and his judgment on today’s great budget debates.
I hope you will join us first thing tomorrow morning for Evan Bayh, and stay with us the rest of the day for our usual feast of civil dialogue.
Our very own contributing RP Artur Davis offered his insights on the ongoing John Edwards scandal to Politico’s Ben Smith. In addition to being a member of the House Judiciary Committee while in Congress, Davis previously served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Alabama, with a nearly 100% conviction record.
Here’s what Davis had to say about the Edwards affair:
It’s a new low for Edwards stemming from his affair with a former campaign aid, and at least one knowledgeable observer thinks any charges brought may be off the mark. Artur Davis, a former federal prosecutor and four-term Alabama congressman, says that an Edwards indictment would be highly unusual by normal Justice Department standards.
“Campaign finance law gives candidates significant leeway on how to spend campaign dollars, as long as the money does not end up in their own pocket,” says Davis, a former member of the powerful House Judiciary Committee and now a partner in the white collar and government investigations practice at law firm SNR Denton in Washington.
“It is exceedingly rare for the government to bring criminal charges in connection with the misuse of campaign dollars; when it happens it usually involves some other crime like obstruction or making false statements to investigators. Those elements seem to be missing here,” Davis adds.
By Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, on Wed Jun 1, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET
Elementary education thrives in the middle of an Orlando YMCA
I was in Orlando a few weeks ago, but not at Disney World or the Epcot Center. My youngest is 19, so it’s been a while since I stayed at the African lodge and watched the giraffes come up to our window. Even further back is my memory of “It’s a Small World After All” at the New York’s World’s Fair in 1964, a place I visited quite often as a 12-year-old when my father was running for the Senate. Fast forward almost half a century and my second daughter is pregnant, so I hope I’ll be back to Disney World again before too long.
Actually my destination a few weeks ago was just as exciting as the Big Mountain Thunder Railroad or Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin. It was a school of the future, already up and running: the Lake Nona YMCA/NorthLake Park Community-School Partnership.
NorthLake Park public elementary school is located in the same building as the local YMCA. Wow! The 30,000-square-foot Y is literally right in the middle of the school. The children, who would never have had access to a swimming pool at any regular public school, can now learn to swim, and they also get in shape in the gym and on the walking trails. Some of them take yoga before a test to reduce their pre-test butterflies.
Teachers, too, can easily get to the gym’s StairMasters, weights, and workout classes. The results aren’t just better abs but better attitudes. The teachers are happy, and their higher retention rate pays dividends for the kids.
The parents are also more involved. Instead of an awkward once-a-year meeting, teachers and parents find themselves on adjacent bikes in the spin class. They’re comfortable with one another.
I was stunned to learn that the school was more than a decade old, because it looked so new and fresh. A few years ago, when the school system didn’t have the money to paint the building, they turned to their partner. The Y raised the money and the painters came.
The school and the Y were originally built in 2000, the result of an innovative partnership that included Orange County Public Schools, the Central Florida YMCA, and other private- and public-sector partners.
I admired this partnership because I had led efforts to connect schools and communities in Maryland for almost 20 years. If the community feels the school is theirs, the parents are more apt to visit, volunteer, and talk to teachers. The schools can only benefit from neighbors who care — fewer fights, better test scores, healthier students. Nationally, the group Communities in Schools, launched by the visionary reformer Bill Milliken, has done a terrific job of attracting community support for schools and promoting the ideas that all children should have mentors, do community service, and have great health care.
But what I saw in Orlando was unique, a local initiative that’s the first of its kind in the nation. Here the community is represented by the YMCA, an already vigorous and attractive institution. This means that the school doesn’t have to do all the hard work. It has a built-in magnet.
As I walked along the halls and visited the classrooms, I kept imagining what could be accomplished if we replicated this model in the 2,500 YMCAs across the country. The Ys already flourish, because they have enticing facilities that people are eager to come to. It would be amazing if each Y could be paired with a school.
Read the rest of… Kathleen Kennedy Townsend: The School of the Future, Up and Running
As Sarah Palin takes significant steps to potentially enter the Republican primary for President in 2012, Politico’s Arena asked Jeff Smith whether Michelle Bachmann poses a real threat to Palin’s chances to capture the nomination.
Here’s Jeff’s reply:
Both parties have a primary within a primary in presidential elections. Democrats have a shot-and-a-beer versus wine-and-cheese primary, with the long-term trend favoring the wine-and-cheese candidate (Clinton and Gore representing the former type, Kerry and Obama the latter). Republican primaries have a similar structure, the culture warriors vs. the blue-blood establishment. Bachmann and Palin represent the former while Romney and Huntsman are pure blue-bloods.
To become the nominee, 1) you need to be the leading candidate in your mini-primary and 2) you want fewer people in your mini-primary than the other mini-primary.
As a member of congress, It was both obligatory and an honor to attend Memorial Day celebrations in my district.
In New Hampshire, we have a beautiful Veteran’s cemetary and events are well attended. Often sitting in bright sunshine, sometimes in a late spring cloudy chill under a blanket, the World War II veterans who were residents at the nearby Veterans Home were always given front row seats. Many were in wheelchairs, some required constant attendance. Some came in uniform and some just came.
Having never experienced the horror of war myself, I sometimes struggled to convey my deep gratitude to thank those who served and died for their country. At first, it was intimidating to be in the company of so many former and present military personnel.
I later became comfortable with my role and theirs. I always tried to say something different and meaningful, something that went beyond the ritualistic expressions of gratitude. After a time, I came to appreciate the rituals and the importance of the repetition of those ritualistic expressions. But, here’s something I never talked about and I don’t know why.
I was named for a distant cousin. When I was a child my grandparents told me that Paul was a sweet, brilliant, handsome man destined for greatness. He died during World War II flying a combat mission. I carry his name and his legacy. He died in service to his country as did so many others.
So, on this Memorial Day, I am honored to remember him and thank him for his service and his sacrifice.
Cousin Paul, I thank you for your life, your service and your name. My own service, of a different kind, is the living proof that you did not die in vain. This great country with all its greatness and its flaws, endures thanks to you.
