There’s A Difference Between “Bad” And “Criminal”

(Fred Weinberg/The Penny Press) – I have to admit that I’m disappointed by Mike Huckabee’s decision to not run for President in 2012.

I agree with Donald Trump that the former Arkansas Governor would have been a terrific President.  And there’s always the possibility that he may someday be.  After all, he’s only 55.  

But not next year.

“All the factors say go, but my heart says no, and that’s the decision I have made,” he told his audience last week on his Fox News Channel show.  He said that even he didn’t fully understand his decision.

Frankly, his decision is understandable.  And predictable.

You see, Mike Huckabee is one of the sanest and most reasonable people in public life today.  But right now, he’s a civilian and doesn’t have to play by Washington rules.

We chew Presidential candidates up and spit them out and then we grill the spittle for another meal.  Destroying people has become a sporting event in Washington.  Watch a Winston Cup Race on Sunday, watch a life being destroyed on Monday.  Nothing pleases the media more than taking a politician or staff member of a high ranking politician and prosecuting them.

Scooter Libby is now a convicted felon who spent millions defending himself because he misstated something to a grand jury and was prosecuted even after it was clear that he was NOT the person who leaked information that Valarie Plame was a CIA agent.  And, by the way, never mind that it was common knowledge in DC.  But he also happened to be Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff and a special prosecutor wanted to “get” him at the urging of the lefties in Congress.  He was days from reporting to prison when President Bush commuted his sentence.

It’s also not the exclusive purview of the left.

Kenneth Star persecuted (that’s not a typo) Bill Clinton for years because he didn’t tell the truth about an extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky. Now I’m not condoning extramarital affairs from politicians—I’ll get to that in a minute—but what Clinton did had no effect on his job as President.

While all of this goes on, the American public watches it like a NASCAR Cup race.

This isn’t a game to the people whose normal human activity is being criminalized.  Defense attorneys cost money.  Freedom, in that case, truly isn’t free.

Don’t forget, we have an Attorney General who is refusing to drop an investigation into CIA agents who interrogated the very terrorist who gave us the first clue about where Osama Bin Laden had holed up. And we have a Federal Appeals Court Judge, Jay Bybee, who some members of Congress wanted disbarred because he wrote a memo when he was a White House lawyer declaring waterboarding legal.Which it probably is.

And then, there’s our very own John Ensign.

What he did in his personal life was reprehensible.  Sleeping with your campaign treasurer, who happens to be your Chief of Staff’s wife, is one thing.  Doing that when you are a member of Promise Keepers is entirely another.

But let’s be honest.

We in the media all knew Ensign had a zipper problem since his days in Congress.

We overlooked it because it’s his life, he was a likable guy, and it was not then nor is it today a crime.  Oh, yes, he was a pretty decent Senator, aside from his zipper problem. This is a planet populated with flawed people.

And when your parents give the “victims” of Ensign’s behavior $96,000, it also isn’t a crime.  If there was a crime there, it was extortion on the part of the “victims,” who I have no sympathy for because it takes two people to have an affair.  The word “no” usually serves as a deterrent.

Yet, in Washington, even after Ensign resigned from the Senate, they’re rooting for an indictment.

So I can understand why a guy like Huckabee might want to think twice before bringing that sort of scrutiny on himself.  The very fact that he may well have won should have scared the hell out of him.

I don’t know that there’s a solution.  Perhaps we ought to start by recognizing the difference between criminal behavior and just plain old bad behavior.

One can be resolved in the criminal courts.  The other should be resolved at the ballot box.