Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock
In the last couple of weeks, American politics took a big turn — all of it, from national to state to local.
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., gave a speech to explain how he has devoted his life to acting on inclusive feelings of love and harmony while following the ministry of a man who preaches hatred of entire races and classes of people. We all can identify with such candor. None of us is running for president like Obama is, so we just can deal with the faulty people we like as best we can without major policy addresses.
The new governor of New York, David Paterson, who rose from lieutenant governor when its holder was found to be a prostitution client, pre-emptively announces he is an adulterer. Not only that but his wife had been an adulterer, too. Campaign donations used for hotels have joined the headlines.
Locally, a former Arkansas attorney general, Steve Clark,* began preliminary moves toward running for mayor of Fayetteville. He’s only lived here a couple of years, not counting his college days — and a teaching stint — decades ago. Clark, however, became an ex-attorney general in 1990 by being convicted and fined for credit-card fraud.
Clark in preliminary research found that because he can vote again, having paid his debt to society, he could run. But now it’s reported that Mike Huckabee’s pardon isn’t enough. It’s a shame, because being a convicted felon and a recovering alcoholic might be keys to electoral success in the beginning of the nation’s post-celebrity century.
Consultant Walt Eilers, businessman Jeff Koenig and Alderman Lioneld Jordan so far are the only candidates. None is a convicted felon. None admits to being a drunk. None has spoken of questionable sexual practices, nor has come clean about defending loudmouth bigots.
How does any of them expect to win like that? -30-
* Disclosure. I’ve met Steve Clark. He won’t remember me, but he and other state leaders played a croquet tournament in 1986 outside the state Supreme Court with Mallets Aforethought, the croquet team of the Arkansas Democrat then Democrat-Gazette. My team. They won. (I have met Lioneld Jordan a couple of times, too, not the others, but Jordan and I have played no games.)
One reply on “What Honesty Comes To”
[…] Steve Clark is the remaining announced candidate. Likely all of the previous hopefuls have had parking tickets or similar run-ins with the law. Clark, a popular attorney general for the state, was convicted of credit-card fraud, after which he blamed alcohol and renounced both. Though he is rather new to the city, he is a more-than-capable administrator. Brick has given this a brief look. […]