'Virginia Way' Sounds a Lot Like 'Chicago Way'

When their far-fetched marriage-gone-bad defense failed to save former Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, from guilty verdicts in their corruption trial, I could not help but wonder: Why didn't they take a plea deal when they had the chance?

Federal authorities had offered to avoid charging the state's first lady if the then-governor pleaded guilty to one felony fraud charge, according to news reports.

But the governor rejected the offer, and the couple was jointly charged with trading on his office to help businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. and his company Star Scientific to sell a nutritional supplement called Anatabloc, made from tobacco derivatives. Sounds yummy.

Instead, both McDonnells were found guilty Thursday by a federal jury in Richmond -- on eleven corruption-related counts against the former governor and eight against his wife.

They could face decades in federal prison at a sentencing hearing scheduled for Jan. 6, although their actual sentences are likely to fall far short of that.

But accepting the offer probably would have fallen even shorter. It also would have spared the McDonnells and their children from the humiliating soap opera that unfolded in their bad-marriage defense, also covered as a "throw-your-wife-under-the-bus" strategy.

For nearly two years, authorities charged, the McDonnells used Williams as a personal ATM for loans and gifts of money, clothes, golf fees and equipment, trips and private plane rides totaling more than $165,000.

In exchange, the McDonnells allegedly worked together to sell the prestige of the office that, as Virginians are quick to point out, once was occupied by Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson.

Their defense? Lawyers argued that the two were barely on speaking terms, so the governor could not have known that Williams had paid for such gifts as, for example, a $15,000 high-fashion New York shopping spree for Maureen or a $6,500 Rolex watch she gave her husband as a Christmas present.

Nor could he have known about actions she took to help Williams promote his dietary product, the defense claimed, in exchange for more than $165,000 in luxury gifts and loans.

But the blame-the-wife narrative crumbled in contradictions over how much of that largess was for the governor, including sweetheart loans and other contacts that the governor described as "routine" access to government.

So why didn't the governor take the plea deal? Having witnessed way too many other politicians whose rising stars flamed out in a stunning scandal, one word came to my mind: hubris, the belief that you're too clever and wonderful to have to care about the rules that other mortals do.

As a successful lawyer and politician who was on Mitt Romney's short list of vice-presidential hopefuls, McDonnell may have fallen prey to a common political pathology: the earnest belief that he could charm his way out of any mess.

It worked for President Bill Clinton, who could earnestly argue that "It depends on what your definition of 'is' is," and survive impeachment with his approval numbers on the rise.

But it did not work for eight other governors who were convicted in the past 15 years alone, including Illinois' Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat who was sentenced to 14 years in 2011 for trying to sell President Barack Obama's Senate seat.

Virginia traditionalists like to cite "the Virginia Way" as better than "the Chicago Way," a popular nickname for the politics in Obama's adopted home town. Virginia didn't have any governors indicted before McDonnell. But, as his case reveals, that's partly because they have some of the most lax ethics laws in the nation.

For example, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, it is one of just 10 states that allow officeholders or their relatives to take personal gifts of unlimited value. Even McDonnell promised ethics reform as a candidate then dropped the issue as governor. Is the Virginia Way all that much less corrupt or do they only have looser rules?

It is my hope that politicians nationwide take the McDonnells' convictions as a wake-up call: Voters may be getting even more fed up than usual with rule-bending politicians.

And those pols who impress voters with their charm on Election Day may face a much tougher challenge in the jury box.

========

E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.