I’m going to hold my fire on Senator Bob Menendez for a little bit, despite my dislike for his politics, my low opinion of his ethics, and the fact that I haven’t been this unsurprised by an indictment since Vince Fumo finally, at long last, got his comeuppance. Yeah, I don’t like him much but that doesn’t mean that I am going to start spewing about his obvious guilt before I have even read the prosecutor’s case against him.
Having said that, I don’t like to see people bend over backwards to avoid stating the obvious, which is that the New Jersey Democratic Party, and the Hudson County machine in particular, are embarrassing sewers of corruption, and have been for all of our lives.
I much prefer how Olivia Nuzzi just comes out and says it.
For every Menendez or [former Gov. Jim] McGreevey, there are dozens other small-ball crooks and creeps populating New Jersey’s public offices. [Bob] Ingle told me what has struck him most about the type of corruption most commonly seen in the Garden State is how “how small the amount of bribery or thievery these people will be involved in.”
New Jersey is a blue state that has basically no choice but to cough up the occasional Christie Todd Whitman or Chris Christie because the Democrats are not good trustworthy public servants. When the Democrats try to find someone untarnished by bribes, they wind up tapping Goldman Sachs executives like Jon Corzine who promptly show that small-ball crooks are preferable to real professionals.
So, setting aside my anger with Menendez over his positions on Iran and Cuba, I’m mad at him simply for rising to the top of the Hudson County machine and forcing the whole state party’s apparatus to rally to his defense today.
I’d like to indict the whole system, but I’ll wait to look at the details before I approve the specific indictment of Menendez.