General

Strickland Must Resign or Repudiate the Foley Standard

Wooo! There’s been a lot of heat generated over the last week and a half. Unfortunately, as expected and as I talked about here, the media sensationalized the salacious aspects and never delved into the real issues.

This was expected and should not be suprising to anyone. In fact, I’m sure it was a key part of Strickland’s strategy for dealing with it, as it is oh-so-clintonesque. Make it “all about sex” and then demonize the attackers. Right out of the playbook.

Unfortunately for Strickland issues remain. We’re going to deal with one in this post.

First let’s take a look at this from the Blackwell campaign’s angle, as they’ve taken a lot of heat since Blackwell brought it up in the 4th debate. See my buddy newshound for a good CW idea of the negative response to the Blackwell campaign.

The problem with this issue is that there is a lot of salacious stuff mixed in with the judgement issues. If the Blackwell campaign stayed out, there was a real possibility that the Ohio media would bury the whole thing. If the campaign jumps in they’re negatively campaigning on “gutter politics”. You get the idea, the headlines write themselves.

As a tactical matter, I would have preferred that the campaign stay out of it as much as possible. I would also prefer that they issue a Press release making clear what the interest, issues, and priorities are in this case. Oh wait. They did.

Well alright then. First let’s deal with the gay angle. As some folks know, this first came up back in July and was something that Pullins put out there, leading to an email sent around by a campaign staffer who was subsequently fired. This also came up in an interview where Strickland completely blew the question. Strickland could have put it all to rest right there but he didn’t.

So when this came up again, he had to answer the question, again. And this time he was angry that he had to answer the question. Note to Strickland, you can be annoyed, you might even be angry, but you should not be shocked considering your history in dealing with this. As I noted in an earlier post, this wasn’t an issue, it wasn’t something I’m interested in or was pushing, and I’m taking his word for it.

But that leaves us with one of the real issues, Stricklands hiring of a staffer who had had a real conviction for something that is really serious. Jerome Corsi lays it all out here. First, Strickland said he never knew about the man’s record when he hired him. But that’s a red herring. Jerome has shown that Strickland had the sheriff’s records at the time. Strickland chose to believe the staffer’s denial over the sheriff’s records he had in his hand.

As a practical matter, Strickland is not a newbie in politics and he must know that these sort of charges among the campaign staff are just a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. Did he not want to risk it getting out in the open by firing the guy right then? Did he really sit down and have a heart-to-heart with the guy and decide that it was all in the past? The latter would have been an easily acceptable answer to many, including myself. Either way, it appears that Strickland has not come clean at all about what happened.

Which brings us to the Foley standard. The Foley standard, as we now know, is that when someone brings you allegations of sexual impropriety, you must immediately launch an investigation, AND call for full public disclosure of everything that is known. This is true if you are merely an associate of the person in question, much less the guys employer.

Anyone who fails to take these steps on the first hint of a sexual impropriety must resign their positions.

The Democrats have been very busy in the last few weeks newly defining this standard and applying it to Hastert, John Boehner, Deb Pryce, and anyone else they can.

How does Strickland measure up against this standard? The actual hiring of a guy with an actual conviction, notified of it, handed the police reports. What does Strickland do?

No public disclosure, no firing, keeps the guy after the election, and keeps him close enough for an after campaign reward trip to Italy. Yeah I’d say that doesn’t exactly meet the Foley standard.

Now the Democrats have two choices here. They can take a step back, look at the Foley standard, look at Strickland, and honestly admit that maybe they were a little harsh on Pryce, Boehner and the rest.

Or, they can throw Strickland under the bus. And this is exactly what PowersPoint takes:

But it does raise a different issue. If it is true that Strickland knew about these offenses — and this needs to be confirmed — and didn’t a) fire him and b) disassociate himself from this person, then the Republicans have a legitimate issue, especially in light of the criticism Hastert has received for his lack of oversight on Foley (criticism I have made myself).

A lefty who gets it! Amazing.

You can have Strickland, or you can have the Foley standard. You can’t have both. And this is going to be a front page issue for me until you get this resolved.

Now for Strickland himself there are two ways out of this mess as far as this particular issue is concerned. He can repudiate the Foley standard and declare that Boehner, Pryce, Reynolds, and Hastert all acted reasonably and his fellow Democrats are way out of line. That’s what a “man of integrity” would do.

Or he can resign and let Lee Fisher take over his campaign for governor.

Your choice, Mr. Strickland.

© 2006 NixGuy.com.