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The Senator Ensign story: Keith Orr Cliff Notes version by Keith Orr
Bay Windows ContributorSaturday Oct 3, 2009 I just finished the New York Times piece on Senator Ensign. Here’s my pass at it.
Senator Ensign couldn’t keep it under control. For whatever reason, he decided it was a swell idea to bandg the wife of his Chief of Staff, an employee, a guy he attended bible study group with, a guy who he has known for years.
So the Senator and Mrs. Bible Study get together, instantly bond, and carry on hot and heavy for some time.
Looking back, you had to see it coming. You know the story (it’s the same every time): while campaigning for the Senate in 1994, he’s on the record commenting on Clinton/Lewinsky affair saying "...frankly it’s because of what he put his whole Cabinet through and what he has put the country through, he has no credibility left. He should resign."
Part of his current scandal back-story is that Senator Hypocrite, while in Washington, shacks up with some other swell Congressmen in their version of The Hall of the Jesus Superfriends. At night they sit around and watch Charlton Heston in the "Ten Commandments" while they fashion faith-based voodoo dolls and gossip about how they can’t believe no one has ever dropped a dime on Miss Lindsay Graham.
The WWJD gang has cooked up a great scheme to get Senator Hypocrite back on track.
You see, they don’t want to loose him. He may have legs in 2012 and he’s got some street cred with the gang who hates the gays; well, hates them unless they’re playing a wacky campy neighbor on a sitcom.
Not so long ago in 2007, the Senator called on fellow Republican Larry Craig to resign after he got caught working on his contortionist act in an airport bathroom. And in 2004, before he himself began violating the 6th Commandment (perhaps he should have paid more attention during movie night), the legally married Senator said: "Marriage is an extremely important institution in this country and protecting it is, in my mind, worth the extraordinary step of amending our constitution."
So to right the ship, Team WWJD decrees: Senator Adulterer will send a heartfelt note, via overnight mail, to Mrs. Bible Study and tell her that he was weak, he was wrong and it’s 100% his fault. (If you have a moment, enjoy a letter so delicious it has to be fattening: http://ow.ly/stKI ). In addition, the Senator will open up his father’s big fat bank account and pay some tribute for the violation of the "extremely important institution."
Like a scene from the Lifetime remake of ’The DaVinci Code,’ the WWJD squad elects Senator Tom Coburn to put his fragile reputation on the line and jet off to seal the deal.
Mr. Bible Study, the $140k-per-year Co-Chief of Staff, and Mrs. Bible Study will both leave the employ of the Senator (in addition to being his guilty pleasure, she was also his campaign treasurer earning $40k). Because she works for the campaign, Ensign just decides to pay her with campaign funds and give her $96k in payments including a line item for "severance."
If our current economic crisis has taught us anything, we all know that most layoffs come with just over 2 years in separation pay. A check like that would always seem perfectly legitimate, no one would ever even raise an eyebrow.
Except its only about 100% illegal.
For the husband, his payout gets better. How about Senator Fucked-Your-Wife sets you up in your very own lobbying business back in Nevada? How about your former best friend and neighbor, who’s been lying to you all these years, how about he sets you up with a couple of do-nothing $5k per month "clients" culled from the ranks of his high paying donors? All you’ll need are 4 of those and you’re good for $250k; you can endorse the checks on your way to the golf course, right?
Except, there’s one problem. As married Governor Mark Sanford, Christian Conservative from South Carolina, has said in a very touching email to his mistress: "Sometimes you don’t choose things, they just happen..."
WWJD Superfriends be damned, while Senator Hypocrite had no trouble condemning the action of others, his love is pure and must be handled appropriately.
Step one. Call Mrs. Bible Study and tell her that there’s a FedEx with her name on it and when she gets it...throw it away. I didn’t mean it, they made me write it. They just don’t understand us. (I’m paraphrasing here, and I’m pretty sure the actual conversation was even more ’Laguna Beach’ than that)
Step two. Resume the affair and both continue to hide it from their respective spouses for six more months.
Step three. After a time of some VERY questionable Senatorial interventions on behalf of "clients" of this hot new "lobbying business," you slowly start paying less and less attention to the financial needs of your former Chief of Staff and the bogus business you set up for him.
Remember, with no phone call reminders from you in Washington, those do-nothing $60k per year consulting jobs eventually get re-purposed by campaign donors; usually to the more pressing political cover-up of the day.
You can sleep with my wife, but not paying me? That’s where he draws the line -- and this sets the former Chief on slow boil.
And when the pot reaches a rolling boil, when you are eventually confronted about the continuation of the affair and the lack of hush money support, you send a text to Special Envoy Coburn, who jumps back on the next free Halliburton jet (I made that part up) to play ’Deal or No Deal’ all over again.
However, there’s a fly in the ointment when Mr. Bible Study opens up briefcase 69, adds up 2 + 2 and then divides it by the depth and breadth of what he remembers of the Senator’s daddy’s successful casino business. Once he gets all lawyered-up, he comes up with a nice round figure: $8.5 million sounds about right.
Apparently he’s still more than just a little upset with his former employer. Or wasn’t this a movie with Robert Redford?
So Senator Coburn jets back to D.C. to break the bad news.
Now I assume that when things get this expensive, most politicians must turn their thoughts to murder for hire. But not Senator Hypocrite, he’s gonna do the right thing.
He’s going to counter offer at $2M, a 75% discount and forgetting which game show he is on, concludes with "and that’s my final answer."
And in a voice that even Larry King heard, the ex-Chief of Staff said "no dice."
So that brings us to where we are today. We’ve got ethics violations inquiries, criminal probes, implication of fellow Senators in your personal private failings, and a handwritten apology letter in which he accepts full responsibility.
Yet apparently he seems to have forgotten the words of that high and mighty candidate back in 1994, that when one has "no credibility left," he should resign.
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