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March 22, 2006
The pool of good people keeps shrinking
McKay was a rising star in the Republican Party when he served as attorney general. Shortly after McKay became attorney general, one reporter interviewed him on a half hour television program. This was his first exposure to McKay's directness and candor. "Is he for real?" the newsman said. Over the next eight years, McKay built a reputation second to none in state politics, but it wasn't enough to overcome the burdens thrown in his path by powerful people. Their interests were served, but the public lost the chance to decide for itself whether it wanted McKay in office. After Chanos' withdrawal, the Reno Gazette-Journal smugly observed in an editorial, "The lesson: Not everyone is totally suited for political office ... Chanos wasn't prepared. From week one, he was buffeted by political complexity and emotional issues. From case one, he had trouble standing up to the political firestorms. Chanos must have believed an attorney general executes a straightforward position as legal counsel and representative of the state and its agencies. As a longtime corporate attorney operating in a world full of special stresses, he must have thought it seemed easy to transition from the world of business to that of politics. His mentors must have thought so, too. He talked a good political game, a moderate Republican who also saw himself appealing to Democrats. Unfortunately he succumbed to the politics." Those observations serve the protective purposes of journalism. It was politics that succumbed to Chanos, not the other way around. Among the crosses Chanos had to bear was inaccurate criticism from Las Vegas Sun co-owner Brian Greenspun, and when Chanos decided he didn't need such nonsense in his life, it was our loss less than his. Once more a good man opted out. I called McKay, who now lives in Georgia, and asked him what he thought of Chanos' decision. He said he was reluctant, having recently left Nevada, to take shots at the current crop of politicians or journalists. So he talked about what has happened to politics generally, using the U.S. Senate as his example, though his comments apply to politics generally. McKay said he thought his own choice had not been as difficult as Chanos' decision. "It's a tougher business to be in the spotlight and Karen and I had thought about it and decided we didn't want to continue," McKay said. "But we didn't have kids and some other things that George has had to deal with." He went on, "Maybe I should start with pointing at the United States Senate. At least in my mind, when I first got involved in politics, elective office, it was the mid-1980s, or early 1980s ... We had people like Paul Laxalt on the Republican side, Sam Nunn on the Democratic side ... George Mitchell and some others whose names don't come to mind now who are terrific people who held office, I believed, for the purpose of making America a better place to live. "And certainly they were involved in partisan politics, but never really nasty stuff and never stuff that left the floor of the Senate and made all of life uncivilized. And ... those people left - and they all left voluntarily. You know, they chose not to run for re-election. They were not defeated. They did not run for something else." McKay says Washington is the worst, but much of what he criticizes applies to politics generally. Many of the people he talks about were able to work together on the Senate floor. On the floor of the Nevada Legislature it is sometimes seen as a failing to work with members of the opposite party. Everything becomes political; everything becomes grist for the mill. On Feb. 7, the New York Times ran an editorial harshly critical of U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, a Democrat, for blocking a bill dealing with asbestos damages. By the time Nevada reporters arrived at their offices that morning, Nevada's Republican chair had e-mailed it to them with a heading, "Reid seeks to block justice for asbestos victims." He didn't bother to check the details of the asbestos fight or he would have discovered that he was also criticizing U.S. Sen. John Ensign, who took the same position on the bill as Reid and was even more instrumental than Reid in stopping the measure. This isn't peculiar to the GOP - the Democrats have often done the same kind of thing. There is a price to all of this. There are good people who never get into politics because of it, and the consequences to public policy are significant. When some of the best people stay out, guess who comes in? Myers is a veteran capital reporter. His column, "Against the Grain," appears here on Wednesdays. |
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