When to Police Political Behavior
WASHINGTON -- The headlines bring the accidentally colliding tale of two governors and, with it, a valuable debate about the proper role -- and proper limits -- of criminal law in policing political behavior.
Exhibit A is the questionable -- "sketchy" was the apt word used by, of all people, Democratic strategist David Axelrod -- indictment of Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry.
Exhibit B, a responsible contrast to the Perry mess, is the ongoing federal trial of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, also a Republican.
The difference between these two prosecutions is the difference between the appropriate -- indeed, the necessary -- function of criminal law in punishing political corruption and the risk of prosecutors wielding the threat of jail time in cases where voters should be free to judge for themselves the behavior of elected officials.
It is the difference, too, between hardball politics practiced in the light of day and the kind of furtive self-dealing that requires a grand jury and subpoena power to unearth effectively.
Start with Perry. Rosemary Lehmberg, the Travis County district attorney, disgraced herself and her office when she was arrested last year for astonishingly drunk driving and was videotaped abusing the arresting officers. Perry demanded that Lehmberg resign and, when she balked, threatened and executed a veto of state funding for her office's ethics unit.
There are wrinkles here that could legitimately pique a prosecutor's interest. Lehmberg is not only a Democrat but, under the state's wacky arrangement, is responsible for investigating state-level public corruption cases.
At the time of Lehmberg's arrest, her office was investigating the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, a state agency that disbursed research funds, including to major Perry donors. Last year, the office indicted a top agency official for awarding an $11 million grant to a Dallas biotechnology firm without undertaking required reviews.
Then came a court-appointed special prosecutor with what looks like a shockingly skimpy indictment of Perry. He is charged with coercion of a public official for threatening to strip Lehmberg's funding if she did not resign and misusing government property by exercising his veto authority when she failed to comply.
The prosecutor doesn't seem to be a partisan cowboy, so perhaps there is some undisclosed smoking-gun fact. But for now, to read the language of the criminal statutes is to understand how far the prosecutor had to stretch to fit Perry's acts within the contours of a criminal violation.
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