Hopefully the last thing I’ll say about the Reilly/Conte call

There are two angles in the whole Reilly phone call kerfuffle that need

to be separated:

1. Tom Reilly’s ethics as Attorney General
2. Tom Reilly’s political skills in addressing the press and public

These two are related but not identical.

As for #1, this won’t cause me to lose any sleep at all. Tom Reilly

made a phone call to remind someone who was all but certain to do the

right and legal thing, to do the right and legal thing. Absolutely no

story there, as far as I’m concerned. The only ethical question is

whether he made the call on behalf of a friend, a consideration that

the rest of us in the Commonwealth can’t expect. Well, I would be very

surprised if that didn’t happen every single day at every level of

government, from President down to DMV clerk. And Reilly was clearly

emotionally affected by the deaths of his friend’s daughters. (To call

this fellow a “contributor” is accurate but misses the point: $300 is

way more significant to the donor than to the recipient.) In any event,

to charge that he “obstructed an investigation” is ridiculous; any

“ethical lapse” in this situation seems like making a mountain out of a

molehill. The guy showed some compassion, and frankly I’d prefer that a

public official err on that side rather than to reflexively and

publicly bay for blood — someone’s, anyone’s — like Romney and Healey.

To my mind, the real question for Reilly is #2. When Reilly told the

press to back off, that there was nothing to see here, move along …

That is waving a juicy steak in front of a Rottweiler. When you are a

politican, every single freakin’ thing you do is political, is

politicized. Folks who know and who have worked for Reilly say he

really is in public service for the right reasons, that he really does

show integrity. Citizens are utterly dependent on the integrity of

public officials. But it’s just naive to expect that the press and the

electorate will show the same kind of studied, professional restraint

of a good AG’s or DA’s office. It doesn’t work that way, and never has.

Actually, Reilly is partly correct to criticize anti-underage-drinking

ads that prominently feature Kerry Healey’s name. As I <a

href=”http://bluemassgroup.com/showComment.do?commentId=4156″>said

in the comments to <a

href=”http://bluemassgroup.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1173″>David’s

post, any advertisement or public display, from TV to highway

signs, should be scrubbed free of the names of elected officials. It’s

just too easy to abuse: One can easily imagine Reilly or Healey or

Galvin shoving aside the cop in the seat belt ads. (Although getting

the accent right might be hard even for longtime Bay Staters: “Wearin’

your seatbelt is the lawr in Massachusetts”.) You ever wonder why the first

thing you see in a new state is the Governor’s name on a sign? Is

that really more important than knowing, say, where the next rest stop

is?

But again, Reilly may be showing the naivete of a genuine public

servant who imagines that somehow his decisions in that capacity can

be separated in the public mind from political considerations, in the

middle of a campaign. It just can’t be done, and the sooner he

recognizes that, and the more effectively he can explain himself, the

better candidate he’ll be. He has to explain every decision he’s ever

made in terms of a broad, popular, and easily understood principle. Not

easy for a by-the-books lawyer.

Please share widely!

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