EDITORIALS

A test of character

Not just for Mark Darr but for others

The best way out is always through.

-Robert Frost MARK DARR was still lieutenant governor last time we checked, though that could change any minute. And certainly should. At last report, he was still twisting in the wind. Despite all the evidence the state’s ethics commission cited when it fined him $11,000 last week. And despite all the good counsel he’s received urging him to resign and cut his and the state’s pain short. His hesitation to leave the political scene says all many of us need to know about his political competence and general character. Or it certainly should.

The range of reactions to Mr. Darr’s self-inflicted ordeal also says a lot about the political competence and general character of the state’s politicians who have commented on it. Some of his fellow Republicans have shown courage and consistency by calling for his resignation, just as they did earlier by calling for the resignation of a leading Democrat-Paul Bookout, a now thankfully former state senator from Jonesboro. In these matters, honor can and should bebipartisan.

By now both Andy Mayberry and Debra Hobbs have set honorable examples by speaking out on this sore subject. He’s the state rep from East End who’s running for lieutenant governor; she’s the state rep from Rogers who’s running for governor. Voters would do well to note both their names if they’re looking for candidates who can face an issue squarely and take a principled stand.

Then there are those politicians who can always find an excuse to talk around an issue rather than face it. The state’s ever adroit governor, Mike Beebe, has wasted no time demanding that his No. 2 step down, even though he never made the same demand of Senator Bookout, a fellow Democrat who disgraced his office. The governor’s excuse? He says he was ready to do so last August if Mr. Bookout had refused to resign. Now he tells us.

John Burkhalter, who’s running for lieutenant governor as a Democrat, expatiated at length on the reasons this Republican lieutenant governor should resign, yet we can find no record of his making a similar demand of Senator Bookout, a fellow Democrat, when that politician messed up. Mr. Burkhalter’s partisan prejudices are showing.

THEN THERE are those pols who are expert at producing high-minded excuses for not taking a stand even when it comes to the simplest matters of right and wrong. Like whether a lieutenant governor who disgraced that office should stay lieutenant governor.

Asa Hutchinson, who may be the Republicans’ leading candidate for governor at this early point in the race, said through a spokesman that a prosecutor should be called on to see whether criminal charges are warranted before he’d be ready to call on Mark Darr to resign. Which is the same position he took, says his spokesperson, when the public official in question was Democrat Paul Bookout. Call it a bipartisan way to avoid exercising leadership.

It’s a very lawyerly excuse, but it ignores the law, which allows the Legislature to impeach an official not just for violating some specific criminal statute but for “gross misconduct in office”-to quote the state’s constitution. The state’s legislature, lest we forget, is a co-equal branch of government with its own duty to enforce ethical standards, not just stand aside and leave all the heavy lifting to the judiciary and its corps of prosecutors.

If mishandling some $40,000 in campaign contributions and state expense accounts isn’t gross misconduct on Mark Darr’s part, then what is it? An innocent clerical error? Please. Mark Darr certainly hasn’t earned any Good Conduct medal in office.

A couple of other Republican state reps demonstrated only their expertise at evading an ethical issue when they declined to take a stand on whether Mark Darr should remain in office-a question that has now distracted the whole state for one week going on two. Nate Bell (R-Mena) said he thought it was never appropriate for one elected official to call for another’s resignation, a proposition so dubious only a Richard Nixon might agree with it.

Bruce Westerman (R-Hot Springs), who’s running for Congress, excused himself from commenting on this issue because he might have to vote on Mark Darr’s impeachment should it come to that. If every member of the Legislature took the same see-no-evil stance as the Hon. Bruce Westerman, who would be left to file the bill of impeachment?

Excuses, excuses. When duty calls, they come in all varieties-high and low, sophisticated and not so, partisan and bipartisan. Any excuse will do when a politician would really rather not take a principled stand.

THE PHRASES that become common in a society, so common they are used without thinking about their ramifications, can provide a handy index to that society’s deterioration.

Consider the phrase regularly and thoughtlessly used in reporting, debating and considering this whole, sordid, and much too drawn-out matter of whether Mark Darr should go quietly or hold on to his office till the bitter end, if it ever comes: ethics laws.

Ethics laws. Think about that phrase for a moment and the contradiction at its confused core becomes apparent. For the law comes into play in such sad cases only when ethics have been ignored, when the sense of personal honor that used to be such a familiar aspect of life, at least in these latitudes, has been abandoned. And men look to the statute books to see what their duty is, rather than consult their own conscience, and their own sense of honor. Law comes into play only when ethics have failed.

Only because Mark Darr has substituted his own political calculations and self-destructive pride-the kind that goes before a fall-for his clear and simple duty in this not very complicated case has it become necessary for some of the state’s leading figures to trot out the law, if only to find excuses to evade the moral imperative behind it.

Law is to ethics as it is to what earlier and more thoughtful generations referred to as the Higher Law, or natural law, or what the Declaration of Independence (a philosophical statement as well as a political declaration) calls the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.

It should never have been necessary to draw the law from its bejeweled scabbard and, with learned sophists in attendance, test how sharp its edges might be in this instance. It should never have been necessary to wield that sword in so simple a case-if only the sad figure at the center of it had listened to his inner voice, his own ethical sense, or just sense of self-respect, let alone respect for his office.

It should never have been necessary for clear-seeing and morally informed public servants like Andy Mayberry and Debra Hobbs to lecture Mark Darr on so simple a subject as his clear duty. What a sad, and still continuing, spectacle. It is embarrassing. It is demeaning. And all so unnecessary.

Editorial, Pages 14 on 01/07/2014

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