The cost of wisdom

It didn’t used to be like this.

There really was “a Virginia Way.”

Now that a Virginia governor and his first lady have been convicted on numerous federal corruption charges, many of us are just a bit embarrassed by our naiveté, by our willingness to trust the people we elect.

   
This is the first time in the history of the commonwealth that a governor has been convicted of federal corruption charges. (Perhaps we should form a commission to study the appropriateness of a historical marker or statue or some such. We Virginians do have a penchant for memorializing historic firsts.)

The headline on the front page of this morning’s paper was one word, all caps: GUILTY. It was as big as the headlines when FDR died or when JFK was assassinated or when Nixon resigned.

The verdict was a punch in the gut for many Virginians. Our governors have included such American stalwarts and symbols of decency as Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe. And now it has come to this.

(I don’t believe for a minute that Virginia politicians have always been paragons. I’m not so gullible as to believe that every single governor we’ve ever had since Jamestown has been as honest as the day is long. They probably weren’t. But none were ever convicted of a felony before yesterday.)

Having a governor convicted of corruption in office is just so … Illinois.

The ethics laws governing Virginia politicians have never been strong. On the other hand, we never seemed to need stronger ethics laws.

Now we know we do.

Virginia politicians today are acting like a gaggle of hens who just discovered a fox in their midst. They’re squawking and flapping their wings madly as they discover – what a shock! – that their constituents want honest government.

But give them a couple of weeks and the feathers will no longer be flying. The pessimist in me thinks that the public fancy will have been attracted by some other shiny news bauble. What do you want to bet that little, if anything, will be done about ethics reform in Virginia?

(Let me hasten to say I hope I’m wrong.)

So here we are. After drifting along, trusting in the Virginia Way, we have been slapped in the face with a dose of reality: our former governor and his “nutbag” wife were reduced to revealing the tawdry side of their marriage as a defense against taking money and gifts that they shouldn’t have taken. Their defense didn’t work, and their reputations are now as tattered as a Confederate battle flag.

We’ll survive, and so will the McDonnells. The latter might even be vindicated on appeal. Who knows?

But the Virginia Way is no more. We can’t just blindly trust our elected leaders to be straight with us.

We’re much wiser on this day after the verdicts were announced in federal court.

But at what a terrible cost.