My dear friend Mickey Kaus says on his site today that
Antonio Villaraigosa may have lost the LA Mayor’s race yesterday because of a
letter that he wrote to Bill Clinton in support of a pardon for Carlos Vignali,
the drug mini-kingpin who Bill Clinton did pardon in January.
“Do you doubt,” Mickey writes, “that
if Clinton hadn’t commuted Vignali’s sentence, Villaraigosa would today be
mayor-elect of L.A.? In this sense, Villaraigosa isn’t the victim of racism.
He’s the latest (last?) victim of Bill Clinton.”
I’m inclined to think that every pol is responsible for his or her own
actions. But this seems to me like an example of how normally shrewd and
insightful folks often somehow lose possession of their reason when talking
about Bill Clinton. If Villaraigosa wrote a letter (which unbeknownst to him
actually included false information) encouraging Bill Clinton to issue an
ill-considered pardon then it sounds to me like, if anything, Bill Clinton is
the victim of Villaraigosa, not vice versa.
Or am I missing something?
