Could McAuliffe Save Bob McDonnell's Sorry Ass?

The circus of Giftgate - and the possible criminal prosecution of outgoing governor, Bob McDonnell - continues.  Personally, having known McDonnell for almost 20 years, I continue to believe that Maureen McDonnell is the one that started this train wreck hurling down the tracks.  Bob McDonnell's fault was not controlling his wife and doing too little too late to fix the damage.  With Terry McAuliffe taking over as Governor of Virginia next month, a column in the Richmond Times Dispatch suggests that McAuliffe could come to McDonnell's aid in a display of bi-partisanship that might win good will from Republicans in the Virginia General Assembly.  Personally, I think the imagined GOP good will is a fantasy.  The Virginia GOP is too subservient to the Christofascists and Tea Party Neanderthals to ever stray for the far right's extremist marching orders.  Here are column excerpts - make your own judgment call:

Terry McAuliffe has enough to worry about without the distraction of his predecessor possibly being led off in leg irons.

In year one of the McAuliffe governorship, Bob McDonnell’s continuing nightmare — the Giftgate ethics scandal — could play out on two fronts: a possible public corruption trial in federal court, and a misdemeanor case in state court over alleged omissions in his compulsory conflict-of-interest statement.

And, of course, he may not be charged at all.

Republican McDonnell’s problems may be an opportunity for Democrat McAuliffe, a chance to be seen as the bipartisan he claims to be.

It would require McAuliffe to intervene on McDonnell’s behalf, employing the transactional politics that lifted him to fame and fortune in Washington and which his critics in both parties say render him unfit for the highest office in Virginia. 

For that reason, McAuliffe might hesitate.

[T]he sooner McDonnell’s problems are solved — and that includes a legal bill that has cost taxpayers more than $500,000 — the more manageable McAuliffe’s problems become.

McAuliffe is enough of a carnival barker. He does not need the sideshow of a high-profile trial to divert the public’s and the politicians’ attention from Virginia’s serious problems.

In McAuliffe’s first legislative session, beginning in January, these include a new state budget, patching holes in the mental health safety net, modernizing the election machinery, and tightening the ethics laws that Giftgate has shown to be uncomfortably porous.

By helping McDonnell — whether it’s lobbying President Barack Obama for a pardon or for Justice Department prosecutors to back off, or issuing a gubernatorial pardon for McDonnell on a state conviction — McAuliffe could help himself.

It would be a rare expression of statesmanship, easing the toxic partisanship at the state Capitol to which McDonnell contributed by consenting in 2011 to legislative districts that are barely compact, somewhat contiguous and anything but competitive.

Because of this redistricting, McAuliffe faces a Republican-dominated General Assembly instinctively and structurally disinclined to cooperate with him.