The Book of Bastards

by Brian Thornton

  BASTARD CRIMEFIGHTER

  When he became New York's Attorney General, Spitzer used the office to pursue a different kind of organized crime: The rampant fraud and corruption taking place on Wall Street. In one of his cases, Spitzer successfully prosecuted Merrill Lynch tech stock analyst Henry Blodget. Blodget became famous for predicting that Amazon.com's stock would rise to over $400 a share. His career in the industry was short-lived, however, when the truth came out. Blodgett was issuing “buy” and “strong buy” recommendations on stocks that he was disparaging in internal e-mails as “piece[s] of shit.” He was prosecuted for fraud, first by Spitzer and then by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and was ultimately banned from the industry for life. Spitzer also prosecuted a number of cases involving the collapse of Enron.

  The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald once remarked that there are “no second acts in American lives.” Don't try to tell Spitzer that. After tossing his career in the dumpster over the call-girl scandal, Spitzer is busy working on rebuilding his reputation in anticipation of some sort of “second act.”

  “If you're a frugal governor who doesn't even like paying his political consultant bills, as opposed to an Arab sheik or a Vegas high roller, do you really need to shell out $4,300, plus minibar expenses, to a shell company for two hours with a shady lady? Aren't there cheaper hooker hook-ups on Craigslist? It makes you wonder how sharp Eliot Spitzer's pencil was on the state's fiscal discipline.”

  — Maureen Dowd

  97

  TOM DELAY

  The “Hammer” Gets Nailed (1947– )

  “I am the federal government.”

  — Tom DeLay, to the owner of Ruth's Chris Steak House, after being told to put out his cigar because of federal government regulations banning smoking in the building

  Elected to Congress in 1984, Tom DeLay is a born-again Christian who has backed pro-life and anti-evolution causes all the way through his career. He has also fought for pro-business causes; he has supported a bid to repeal the ban on ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons and other laws he deemed unduly taxing to business. In the late 1980s, he made a name for himself as one of the main critics of the National Endowment for the Arts, calling for it to be defunded.

  IT'S ALL IN THE NICKNAME

  “The Hammer” has been known by a number of nicknames over the course of his political career. Before he first ran for public office he owned his own pest control service; once he was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1978, he became known (not surprisingly) as “the Exterminator.” Within a year his hard-partying ways earned him the sobriquet “Hot-Tub Tom.”

  DeLay didn't truly gain a prominent place in national politics until 1994. It was then, as House Majority Whip, he acquired the nickname “The Hammer” for his unwavering ability to enforce party control and to exact vengeance on his rivals in both parties.

  One of his favorite tactics was to threaten to “primary” — to fund and endorse a primary election challenger — any congressman who voted against a bill he was trying to pass. One of these key votes was the impeachment of U.S. President Bill Clinton. DeLay refused to allow a compromise option during the trial, even though a vote of censure was favored by moderates in both parties.

  DeLay did not always see eye to eye with the rest of the Republican leader-ship. He felt that Newt Gingrich was not sufficiently committed to Christian values. DeLay even tried to stage a coup to depose Gingrich from the speakership in 1997.

  Still, DeLay was elected House majority leader in 2003. During this time, he backed a bid to gerrymander Texas's Congressional districts to assure a “permanent Republican majority.” Democratic members of Texas's legislature fought back by leaving the state to prevent a vote on the proposal. He was also involved in the “K Street Project,” an effort to sway key lobbying firms to hire Republican activists.

  DeLay was forced from office in 2005 when he was indicted on multiple federal and state charges. He was accused of money laundering and violation of campaign finance laws, among other things. He resigned as majority leader upon his indictment and declined to seek reelection in 2006.

  In 2009 the “Hammer” appeared on TV's Dancing with the Stars. Before leaving the competition citing back problems, DeLay pranced around on stage in a glittering red-white-and-blue sequined American flag costume that would have made Liberace blush.

  As for the charges against him, the prosecutor who first brought them has demonstrated a good deal of resolve: “There are particular cases pending that are enormously important to this state, this country, and democracy itself. If they are not resolved during the forthcoming last year of my term I will offer my assistance on those matters on a pro bono basis to my successor.”

  “Guns have little or nothing to do with juvenile violence. The causes of youth violence are working parents who put their kids into daycare, the teaching of evolution in the schools, and working mothers who take birth control pills.”

  — Tom DeLay, on the causes of the Columbine High School massacre

  98

  KARL ROVE

  “Just Get Me a Fucking Faith-Based Thing. Got It?” (1950– )

  “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the people we should concentrate on.”

  — Karl Rove

  While many political figures in the history of the United States have earned the nickname of “bastard,” few have worked harder and longer to earn it by dint of petty, mendacious action after petty, mendacious action than former Bush staffer Karl Christian Rove. Rove was born in Denver, raised in Nevada, and went to high school in Salt Lake City. There, he won student council elections despite being “scrawny” and “uncool.”

  Rove's first brush with national attention came during his quest for the chairmanship of the College Republican National Committee. During the group's 1973 convention, tapes of Rove teaching underhanded tactics (like rooting through opponents' garbage cans) were leaked to the Washington Post. This drew an FBI probe, but Rove's campaign manager (future Reagan and Bush political aide) Lee Atwater swore in an affidavit that the tapes reflected coffee-break conversation in jest. The FBI closed its investigation and Rove became chair of the College Republicans.

  Atwater mentored Rove and taught him that “bare knuckles” weren't ever enough. Atwater was known for wanting “to always drive one more stake” into a political opponent. In Rove, Atwater found an apt pupil; Rove would one day use the bastard playbook to surpass his erstwhile mentor.

  Rove met the Bush family when then-Republican National Committee Chairman George H. W. Bush secured Rove a full-time job with the Republican Party. He has remained close to the family ever since, advising George W. (“Dubya”) Bush's failed 1978 Congressional campaign and George H. W. (“Poppy”) Bush's abortive 1979 presidential campaign.

  Rove's arsenal of dirty tricks also includes push polls. While working on the younger Bush's 1994 campaign for the Texas governorship, Rove asked voters pointed questions: would they vote for incumbent Texas Governor Ann Richards if they knew most of her staffers were lesbians? He got the answers he wanted and started plenty of trouble for the opposing camp.

  BUGGY BASTARD

  Throughout the 1980s, Rove pioneered direct mail political fundraising, offering his services to hundreds of Republican candidates. In 1986, while working on William Clements, Jr.'s Texas gubernatorial campaign, Rove alleged that Democrats had planted listening devices in his office. In fact, Rove bugged his own office to make his opponent look bad and to attract votes.

  Such rumor-mongering has become a Rove staple. In 2000, when Bush Jr. was running for president, Rove derailed a primary challenge by Arizona Senator John McCain by spreading rumors in Southern states that the senator had fathered an illegitimate child with a black woman. In the 2004 presidential election, Rove was said to have been in league with the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who smeared Senator John Kerry's Vietnam service record. He also made sure the Homeland Security terror alert threat lev
el rose whenever Kerry advanced in the polls.

  During Dubya's second term, Rove found himself embroiled in several of the administration's many scandals. He was one of two sources who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to reporter Robert Novak who outted her in his column. He also was a central figure in the Attorneygate scandal when several U.S. attorneys deemed disloyal to Bush were hastily fired. Rove selected the White House's candidates for dismissal, though the Justice Department did the firing.

  After the 2006 Congressional elections returned the Democrats to power, Rove resigned “to spend more time with his family”; in truth he was given the boot. Even the thick-headed Dubya by now saw him as a liability.

  He has yet to be indicted for any wrongdoing. Since his resignation Rove has popped up on (go figure) Fox News Channel as a political commentator.

  99

  SARAH PALIN

  'Nuff Said! (1964– )

  “I think on a national level your Department of Law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out.”

  — Sarah Palin

  There's plenty to say about Sarah Palin. Her political career and time as governor of Alaska, her historic run for the vice presidency in 2008, her son's problems with drug abuse and petty crime, her daughter's unwed teen pregnancy, her tax problems, and the investigation into her mishandling the firing of her chief law enforcement official due to a conflict of interest have all been noted in the media and the annals of history. We're going to focus on just two small aspects of her checkered career: her at times hilarious inability to keep the facts straight, and her willful misuse of the phrase “fiscal conservative.”

  In September of 2008, Palin accepted Arizona Senator John McCain's offer to join him on the Republican ticket; in her speech accepting that nomination, she polished her credentials as a “fiscal conservative” and energized the Republican Party's conservative base. Too bad it was mostly fantasy. This should surprise no one who has learned anything about Palin. In fact, it confirms two things about Ol' Snowmobile Sarah. First, Caribou Barbie might not know much, but what she knows, she knows down to her manicured toenails. Second, she doesn't lack for guts.

  As for Palin's solid record of “fiscal conservatism” (two words that rank right up there with “pro-life” and “gun-rights” in the hearts of the denizens of the American right wing), there is room for debate about whether or not she even understands the term.

  In speech after speech, both before she helped McCain lose the 2008 election and afterward, Palin has alternated between savaging the media covering her and claiming that she's a fiscal conservative. This includes her famously ludicrous claim to have said, “thanks, but no thanks” to the Feds when they tried to force her to take the $300 million to pay for that much-needed “Bridge to Nowhere.” The truth is that she did take the money, she just didn't build the bridge!

  So since when is Palin a fiscal conservative?

  Since she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska? If Palin was so fiscally conservative during her tenure as mayor of Wasilla, why did she raise the sales tax (even on food) to a crushing rate? While it's true that she cut corporate taxes to the bone, people in Wasilla saw their individual tax rates skyrocket during her time in office there. Why did she leave the city $6 million in debt? Was the municipal debt level that high when she took office during the late 1990s? Nope. It was at zero.

  Okay, so maybe Palin became a fiscal conservative after she became governor in 2006.

  If that's the case, then why did she borrow money from the state to pay for necessities such as road maintenance (those roads she couldn't get the Feds to pay for, that is)? The state was enjoying record surpluses in revenue before oil prices crashed in late 2008! Since when is handing out legally collected state revenues as “cash dividends” to Alaskan voters while borrowing money to fix the roads “sound, conservative fiscal policy”?

  BASTARD DIVA

  “She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone. She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else. Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.” — An anonymous McCain adviser com-plaining to CNN about Palin going off-script

  Palin announced her resignation from office effective in August 2009. Maybe she's got her sights set on a presidential run of her own in 2012? To paraphrase one of her own speeches, how do ya see that workin' out fer ya?

  “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast.”

  — An angry McCain aide describing Palin's $150,000 shopping spree

  100

  MARK SANFORD

  The Wages of Hypocrisy (1960– )

  “I think it would be much better for the country and for (President Clinton) personally (to resign) … I come from the business side …. If you had a chairman or president in the business world facing these allegations, he'd be gone.”

  — Mark Sanford

  Republican real estate developer Mark Sanford first held office when he was elected to Congress in 1994 at age thirty-four. He became famous for drawing the line on President Bill Clinton's behavior in connection with his affair with staffer Monica Lewinsky during the president's impeachment trial during the late 1990s. When asked during a December 1998 interview why he thought Clinton was able to survive attempts to remove him from office after the Lewinsky scandal, Sanford said: “In politics you can get away with anything as long as it's what's expected …. If people expect you to be a rascal, you can be a rascal.”

  Sanford traded on his integrity and his reputation as a devoted family man with a terrific marriage as part of the package when he began his political career; he served three terms in Congress and made a successful run for South Carolina governor in 2002. During that time he developed a contentious relationship with South Carolina's Republican-controlled legislature.

  His stature with conservatives jumped considerably when he threatened to refuse all or part of President Barack Obama's proposed stimulus money, intended to restart the stalled economy in early 2009. At this point Mark Sanford's world began to fall apart.

  Turns out that Sanford had been conducting a secret affair for many years with an Argentine commodities broker, María Belén Chapur. Honest Mark Sanford, whose reputation was built on integrity, had lied about this affair repeatedly. Sanford, the same upstanding man who loosed the pigs on legislators he felt were misusing public money by supporting pork projects, had himself misused public funds. In Sanford's case he used them to organize several trade missions to South America to see his mistress; something he'd been doing at least since 2004.

  It all came to a head over Father's Day weekend of 2009, when devoted family man Sanford disappeared. He told his aides that he was going to spend a few days hiking the Appalachian Trail. So what did Sanford really do? On June 18 he went to Argentina. And from then until June 24, no one had any idea where he was.

  Sanford was finally spotted by a journalist as he stepped off a plane in Atlanta. Speculation mounted as to what he had been doing and where he had been doing it while supposedly hiking the Appalachian Trail. And that was when Sanford broke his silence and began to talk. And talk. And talk.

  BASTARD ULTIMATUM

  Sanford's wife Jenny knew about his on-again-off-again affair with Chapur. After repeatedly asking him to end things with his Argentine paramour, she had finally had enough. In June 2009 she told Sanford that if he wouldn't end things, she wanted a divorce. Jenny Sanford, millionaire heiress to the “Stihl” power tool fortune, former Wall Street vice president, and all-around smart cookie, later said of her husband's decision to take a few days on the Appalachian Trail to hike and think: “I was hoping he was doing some real soul searching somewhere and devastated to find out it was Argentina. It's tragic.” She has since filed for divorce.

  Upon hearing of Sanf
ord's tearful confession, one Republican South Carolina state senator said, “Lies, lies, lies. That's all we get from his staff. That's all we get from his people. That's all we get from him …. Why the big cover-up?”

  Why, indeed.

  Bastard.

  101

  JOHN EDWARDS

  The End of the “Breck Girl” (1953– )

  “[John] can try to treat the wound, and he has tried. He can try to make me less afraid, and he has tried. But I am now a different person.”

  — Elizabeth Edwards

  Before his election to one of North Carolina's U.S. Senate seats, John Edwards was known as the top trial lawyer in the state. He also was known as the “Breck Girl” for his fastidiousness about his hair and habit of spending $400 on haircuts. His first big win was in 1984 when a jury ordered a doctor to pay Edwards's client $3.7 million in damages in a case involving misuse of the anti-alcoholism drug Antabuse. From there, Edwards went on to secure the largest jury award in North Carolina history: $25 million for an improperly secured pool drain cover that resulted in a young child being disemboweled.

  He soon leveraged his legal successes to gain political clout. In 1998, he ran as a Democratic challenger against ultraconservative Republican Senator Lauch Faircloth. Edwards was fighting an uphill battle. In the sixth year of President Bill Clinton's term, Democrats were expected to lose big, especially in the wake of the president's various sex scandals. This is not what happened. Democrats actually took back some of the ground they lost in 1994, and Edwards rode this wave into the Senate.