July 8, 2004, on this blog: Oppo remorse
All that work — weeks of literally sifting through garbage, of wining and dining old political or business rivals — all for nothing.
He was well paid, of course, the campaign has money to burn and they took care of him. And some of the dubious material he had dredged up might be useful to the state party. Yet he still feels disappointed and more hollow than usual.
Similar scenes are playing out elsewhere across the country. In St. Louis, a man who lists his occupation as “security consultant” holds in his grubby fingers the arrest record of a man who was once a social work client of Chrissy Gephardt. A disgraced former reporter sits in a Jacksonville, Fla., Motel 6, wondering what he’s supposed to do now with six boxes of selectively hilighted photocopies of Bob Graham’s daily diaries. A private investigator in Santa Fe is replaying a secretly recorded cassette of the governor of New Mexico singing along with the jukebox of a biker bar. The P.I. is actually feeling relieved — the worst things he had managed to dig up about Richardson were stories the governor himself bragged about.
The actual details are, of course, probably different. But rest assured, these guys are out there.
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