In reading highlights of the indictment against former Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen, I alternate between having sympathy for the governor and wanting to cuff him across the back of his head. How could he have gotten himself into such a situation?
We knew from previous reports that the McDonnells were facing financial difficulties resulting from ill-advised investments during the mid-2000s real estate boom. Now we discover that the McDonnells had run up their credit card debt as well. To quote a Maureen McDonnell email noted in the Times-Dispatch:
Bob is screaming about the thousands I’m charging up in credit card debt. We are broke, have an unconscionable amount in credit card debt already, and this Inaugural is killing us!!
It seems that Ms. McDonnell was out of control. Despite having run up the family credit cards, she wanted more stuff… and she didn’t mind asking Star Scientific CEO Jonnie Williams Sr. to get it for her: a designer dress by Oscar de la Renta for the inauguration, dresses and accessories for her daughter’s wedding, her daughter’s wedding banquet, a Rolex watch for her husband, a vacation at Williams’ lake house.
It does not appear that McDonnell initiated any of this but he did not have the cajones to put a stop to it. Indeed, he happily wore the $6,500 watch that Maureen gave him. Any normal husband in his financial straits would have asked, “Er, Maureen, that’s a lovely gift but… are you out of your cotton pickin’ mind? Where did you get the money to buy this?”
You’d also think that, living on a governor’s salary of $175,000 a year — a $25,000-a-year pay raise over his attorney general salary — and enjoying rent-free residency in the Governor’s Mansion, the McDonnells could have gotten their finances in order. But curtailing her lifestyle spending apparently was not at the top of Ms. McDonnell’s agenda.
Now there’s only one thing standing between the McDonnells and enduring disgrace: the hope that a judge and jury will buy McDonnell’s argument that he never promised any favors or attempted to influence anyone to provide state benefits to Williams. The indictment, he said in his public statement yesterday, “rests entirely on a misguided legal theory, and that is that facilitating an introduction for a meeting, appearing at a reception or expressing support for a Virginia business is a serious federal crime if it involved a political donor or someone who gave an official a gift.”
I have sympathy for that argument. I still haven’t seen evidence that McDonnell provided substantive favors in return for the gifts and loans. But I have zero sympathy for the behavior that created the furor in the first place. There is no shame for a governor of humble financial means to live a humble life in the Governor’s Mansion. Harry Truman, how we miss ye.