Matt Hurley spared his readers any direct quotes from the Marc Dann Vindy interview. I will not be so kind. What makes the interview so interesting – like a car crash you can’t stop watching – is Dann’s need to defend himself and present himself in a good light while at the same time attempting to seem contrite and take responsibility. What he is really sad about is that his personal mistakes prevented him from achieving the greatness he was bound to achieve and was already on his way to achieving:
Here’s the other thing. I had been successful, I believe, to contributing to changing the dynamic of Ohio politics, paving the way for the elections in 2006 for Democrats in the work I did in the state Senate because I was always incredibly open and honest, even when it didn’t serve me well. I just can’t be any other way. It was hard for me and it was inconsistent with my values, it was certainly much more inconsistent with my values to betray my family the way that I did, and that I’m going to have to take responsibility for and I’m going to have to live with rest of my life. But it was also inconsistent with my values to not be transparent. I didn’t just make this stuff up about wanting to have transparent and open government. I actually believed it. So if there was a reason that people might think I would be compromised as attorney general I thought it was important that the public understand and know what it is. So I couldn’t have been any other way. Maybe a smarter, more strategic politician would have done it differently.
But to be honest with you, David, a smarter, more strategic politician wouldn’t have tried to bounce the Consumers Counsel, wouldn’t have taken on the mortgage industry and the investment banks that, at that time, were still the lions of the economy and not the lambs. Wouldn’t have taken on the fights that I did in terms of forcing the state Board of Education and the state Board of Regents and the other state agencies to act in a transparent and open way. I didn’t have to take those fights. I didn’t have to do it all at once. I wish I had slowed down. I wish I had been a little bit more of a strategic kind of a politician. But I just felt that we had all this work to do in such a short time to do it. That’s part of what hastened the end of my time.
More below.
And he found out how fast political friends drop you like a hot potato.
What amazed me, and you talked about one of them, Mike Harshman, I had lots of friends a year ago today even in the throes of the difficulty I was going through. Literally hundreds of people that would call, that I would call, that would send notes when there was a small item in the newspaper or when I had a birthday. I think I had 2,000 Christmas cards in 2007 and I had I think 20 in Christmas of 2008. There were people … It’s almost like when I counsel my kids about school. The day you aspire, aspire, aspire to be accepted by all these people and then when you get accepted and something goes wrong you look around and there’s nobody there.
Lee Fisher, a 30-year relationship with Lee Fisher. When he ran for state rep for the first time I filled out big, green index cards in his living room. Not heard from him once since I left office. Sherrod Brown, I was his driver in 1982 when he was running for secretary of state. We drove all over Ohio together, and he won that campaign. When I came on staff it was a summer job in college he was running third to Tony Calabrese and Dennis Kucinich. We fought through that battle together. We’ve been friends for a long time. He did call once since I left office to see how I was doing. I really did oddly thought that these folks in politics, some of them were my friends. My friends are people that are in my family. My friends are the parents of my kids’ friends. They’re the folks that I represented as a lawyer. I have a lot of clients who’ve become friends over the years. But it’s a very narrow and very personal group. This is a good lesson not just for me, but for others who aspire to political office is to make sure you recognize the difference between those fast friends and your true friends.
Dann was once the rising star of the Ohio Democratic Party; their most forecfull advocate. As Matt noted, he was “their conscience and the standard-bearer for ethics and morals.” Once the scandal became public knowledge, however, he was uncerimoniously pushed out of office as fast as the party could move. And despite the gargatuan level of hypocrisy involved in Dann’s career, and the party’s attacks on the ORP, Democrats basically pretend he doesn’t exist and never played a role in their success.
And Dann is clearly bitter about that. And he wants to portray this as his personal failings giving his opponents – the poweful in Columbus – a chance to take him out. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.
The public, however, would do well to think about this episode and what it means for the Democratic Party.