Folks outside Virginia, and most in it, almost certainly didn’t notice the news this week that former Gov. Bob McDonnell is joining the faculty of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He will be a “Distinguished Visiting Professor of Practice,” the school announced.
Distinguished? Really? And what kind of practice exactly?
As someone six years into retirement outside of the Old Dominion and even further removed from the years I reported on and wrote about Gov. McDonnell and other Virginia politicians, I probably should suppress the urge to recall a bit of unpleasant history.
Never mind that…
Eleven years ago, just days after he left the governor’s office, McDonnell and his then-wife, Maureen, were indicted and later convicted by a federal jury on multiple counts of “honest services” fraud, extortion and conspiracy. Put simply, the jurors concluded that the McDonnells had accepted bribes.
The prosecution focused on more than $170,000 in personal loans and gifts lavished on the McDonnells by a Virginia businessman, Jonnie Williams. Among other things, Williams picked up the tab for Maureen McDonnell on a $20,000 designer clothing shopping spree in New York and bought a $5,000 Rolex watch for her to give to the governor. Other Williams gifts to the couple included golf bags and clubs, luxury vacations and the use of Williams’ Ferrari.
In return for that loot, the Justice Department said, McDonnell became a pitchman for a tobacco-derived dietary supplement, anatabloc, developed by Williams’ firm.
Jurors heard testimony that the governor hosted anatabloc promotional events at the Governor’s Mansion and introduced and vouched for Williams and his company with other state officials and researchers who might help in marketing and legitimizing the drug.
Amid questions from regulators about its effectiveness, anatabloc was pulled from the market shortly after the McDonnells were indicted.
The Supreme Court agreed unanimously that McDonnell had behaved shabbily, but it ultimately set aside the convictions. In an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, the justices said that notwithstanding the alleged link between Williams’ gifts and the favors McDonnell provided, the governor’s actions were not “official acts” and thus were beyond the reach of the law.
“Setting up a meeting, calling another public official, or hosting an event does not, standing alone, qualify as an ‘official act…’” Roberts wrote. “Conscientious public officials arrange meetings for constituents, contact other officials on their behalf, and include them in events all the time.”
Still, the chief justice acknowledged that the evidence established that McDonnell’s conduct had been “tawdry…” and did not “typify normal political interaction.”
McDonnell, perhaps surprisingly, has insisted otherwise. Though shortly before leaving office he apologized to Virginians for “the problems and the pain” associated with the scandal, he has never publicly acknowledged wrongdoing. “I’ve set exceptionally high standards for myself. But, as a flawed human being, I’ve sometimes fallen short of my own expectations,” he said then.
A 2017 interview with CBS correspondent Bill Whitaker allowed McDonnell to elaborate on his thinking. However bad it looked, there was nothing wrong with the assistance he provided Williams, he said. It was the sort of constituent service he and other public officials provide every day, he said.
“There was never a quid pro quo, or any conspiracy, or any agreement to help Mr. Williams,” McDonnell told Whitaker. As their exchange continued, his tone turned defiant:
McDonnell: At the end of the day, the United States Supreme Court said that this was the routine stuff that governors do. And we may not like the amount of gifts, but it was consistent with Virginia law and so, Bill, that’s why at this point, I feel vindicated.
Whitaker: Vindicated? That’s not my reading of the Supreme Court decision. Chief Justice Roberts said himself, and this is a quote from his opinion, “There is no doubt that this case is distasteful. It may be worse than that.” So this wasn’t an exoneration. They looked at what you did, and called it tawdry.
McDonnell: Well, I would disagree with that. (Emphasis mine) You’ve — you’ve picked two sentences out of a 28-page opinion. But the import of that opinion, Bill, is not the language that you’ve read. It’s the other 99% of the opinion.
Whitaker: But what I hear you saying is that, “I will accept 99 percent of what the Supreme Court justices said, but that one percent that sort of slaps my wrist…
McDonnell: No, I’m not saying that. I accept that…You know, the words are what the words are. I accept 100 percent of the opinion. And so, you know — with my own conscience that’s really between I guess me and God about how I did.”
The bottom line is that McDonnell saw nothing wrong with an elected official’s acceptance of gifts — indeed, tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts — from someone doing or seeking to do business with the government. All that mattered to him was that it was legal.
Heaven help the Commonwealth if most Virginians share that view.
If McDonnell has changed his mind and now recognizes the ethical blindness in those remarks, he’s kept quiet about it. And so we have a public university in the shadow of the nation’s capital honoring as a “distinguished visiting professor” a former public official who disgraced himself and soiled his office but thinks he did nothing wrong.
GMU’s announcement of the hiring was full of praise for McDonnell and his years of admirable service to the Commonwealth. That’s appropriate; he did a lot of good. But there was nary a hint of the scandal that brought him down and his failure to fully grasp his perfidy. Nor was there any suggestion that McDonnell might try to atone for his mistakes by counseling students interested in public service to be on the lookout for folks bearing gifts while asking for the government’s help. The inescapable conclusion is that GMU, like McDonnell, would like the whole sordid tale to be forgotten.
Virginians should expect better than that from their colleges and professors.
Postscript: You might think that after all the damage he inflicted on Virginia’s reputation for honest government, McDonnell would be shunned not only by universities but by his fellow former public officials. You’d be wrong. As the Supreme Court reviewed McDonnell’s conviction, a bipartisan group of other state leaders in both political parties, ex-governors prominent among them, signed onto an amicus brief urging that the case be dismissed. After the conviction was overturned, the ex-governors welcomed him back into their informal fraternity, greeting him like an old pal whenever they gather for special occasions like the inauguration of a new governor.
And they wonder why so many people are cynical about politics and politicians.
Dale Eisman spent 36 years as a reporter and editor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Virginian-Pilot, including 15 years as the Pilot’s Washington correspondent. Now retired, he lives in Surf City, N.C.
