Former Oregon Governor Kitzhaber: Welcome Back.

The US Attorney office ended the investigation of John Kitzhaber and Cylvia Hayes.  No charges filed.  

Two years of searching, under pressure to find something so everyone could save face for all the turmoil, and they came up with nothing illegal.    

It was a five alarm event, but there was no fire.  

But there is a lasting consequence: smoke damage.
This is the problem with a big false alarm.  Even when no fire is found there is still the odor of smoke.  

Article, then comments. Politics is a tough arena.

Kitzhaber and Hayes were investigated and found guilty in the media and therefore in public opinion, and therefore in politics, the arena in which John Kitzhaber worked.   People are presumed innocent, supposedly, in the justice system, but in politics people make fast judgements based on what they hear or think they hear.  Smoke.

What should John Kitzhaber do?

First, Cylvia Hayes should do what she has just done.  Apologize.  In fact, her sham marriage years ago, before she met Kitzhaber, to assist an Ethiopian immigrant get citizenship, was a crime and it was dishonest and it was provable and therefore it created a factual basis for the public to consider her to be sneaky.  It was real and it was a symbol.  She needed to acknowledge it and apologize for it.   

She did so.

It was a good apology, by the standards of local apology expert, linguist Ed Battistella, author of Sorry About That, published by Oxford University Press.   She fully accepted that she was wrong and that she violated behavior standards that she acknowledged as legitimate.  She recognized and named the people she injured.  She expressed remorse.  She said she would attempt through future behavior to remedy the damage.   Good apologies do not necessarily solve things.  She has harsh critics.   (c.f. the comments section of the media report on her long Facebook apology.

And what about John Kitzhaber himself?

My sense is that John Kitzhaber should internalize and project that he was vindicated.  Full stop.   

But what about the smoke, what about the fact that he resigned from the Governor's office.  Isn't that an admission of something?

No.

It is an acknowledgement that he was in the middle of a media firestorm which did, in fact, so complicate his ability to govern that he stepped down from the Governor's office he had just been elected to.   I recognize that some of my many Republican oriented readers will resist thinking he was vindicated, so I will cite the same comment that Jeff Sessons made, and which I urge my Democratic progressive readers to acknowledge.  Jeff Sessions did not recuse himself from the investigation into the Trump campaign because he was guilty of conspiring with Russians to do treason.   Democrats may want to think that and accuse him of it, and some do, but Sessions reacted strongly and correctly to that accusation.  It was s despicable lie, he said.   Jeff Sessions recused himself because in fact he had had some contact with Russians--not criminal nor nefarious, but contact--and therefore he wanted the investigation to take place without that taint of conflict of interest.

Democrats who think the worst of Sessions will consider it "smoke" and evidence of something bad.  In fact, it was Sessions being conscientious, on this matter.   John Kitzhaber resigned the governor's office for good reasons, in the public interest, so the business of government could proceed.  It was not an admission of guilt any more than Sessions' recusal was an admission of guilt.

I cite the Jeff Sessions examples so that readers from various political perspectives can experience the cognitive dissidence.  Recusal and resignation is a sign of integrity, not guilt.   Democrats need to accept the fact that they may dislike Sessions for whatever reasons, but his recusal was not an admission of guilt.  Republicans inclined to think the worst of Kitzhaber need to recognize that he was investigated very, very thoroughly and not charged after all, and that is resignation was not an admission of guilt.

I have asked myself the question:  what about the smoke regarding Cylvia Hayes' consulting contracts?  Were those legitimate?  Apparently entirely so.  There has been no complaints from the nonprofit advocacy groups that she somehow failed to do good, honest, fair, time consuming work in return for their payments to her for her work.

I am of a generation where I am comfortable with professional women working hard in the profit and nonprofit world.  My own wife is such a woman.  She is an attorney and she is the Executive Director of a a nonprofit Legal Services program.  She gets paid.  She also, simultaneously, cares deeply about the mission of her program, which includes direct legal services plus advocacy for the interests of her clients and others like them.   This is not weird, surprising, criminal, nor a conflict of interest.   It is the most natural thing in the world.   She does work in the field she loves.  She is personally passionate about it.  She works tirelessly.  She is paid--substantially underpaid, actually.  Getting paid to do advocacy services is not criminal nor suspicious or wrong in any way.   It is how professional advocacy work gets done.

Cylvia Hayes got paid a fair market rate to do good work that she loves and cares about.   As I sit and reflect on this I have difficulty finding what she or John Kitzhaber should apologize for.

Bottom line:  I urge John Kitzhaber to stand tall, get re-involved in politics, say that he took himself out of the game until the smoke cleared, to say that, at long last the smoke has in fact cleared, and then to carry on, doing whatever work he wants to do.  He was vindicated.

I expect some readers will think that there must--there simply must--be something he did wrong.  If so, I urge them immediately to contact the US Attorney's office and provide whatever evidence they have.  Perhaps those readers have evidence that escaped the US Attorney, the IRS, and the various other bodies that investigated this.  They spent two years looking for, and at, evidence, and dropped the investigation, not finding a basis for filing charges.

It is unfair but a fact of political life.   People cannot forget the smoke, even when fire cannot be found.  John Kitzhaber won election as governor four separate times.  He has some things to offer Oregonians in the future.   Apparently, he is not ready to retire and disappear.  He was vindicated.  I hope he goes ahead and continues what he was doing two years ago, before the smoke damage.

Welcome back, John.