This Sunday Washington Post op-ed by John Feehery, Tom DeLay‘s former Communications Director, provides an interesting perspective on DeLay’s fall — that DeLay’s strength of being willing to delegate was offset by his attraction to those who were willing to cut corners to win:
The overwhelming majority of DeLay’s staffers were professional, honest and working in Congress for the right reasons. But Tom prized the most aggressive staffers and most often heeded their counsel . . . A former hockey player, Tony Rudy was DeLay’s enforcer; he wasn’t evil, but lacked maturity and would do whatever necessary to protect his patron. Ed Buckham, DeLay’s chief of staff, gatekeeper and minister, constantly pushed DeLay to be more radical in his tactics and spun webs of intrigue we are only now beginning to unravel. And Michael Scanlon, who, in my experience, was a first-class rogue and a master of deception. People like Rudy and Scanlon pleased DeLay because they were always pushing the envelope . . . I don’t know if Tom always knew what his staff was doing — I know that I didn’t. But I had my suspicions, and now I have seen them borne out.
Check out the entire piece. Hat tip to Josh Marshall.
I’d be delighted to know what Mr DeLay did after finding out what conditions were like for the workers in the Marianas. Did he comdemn the slavery-like conditions? The child prostitution and forced abortions? Or do anything legislatively to end those things?
He sounds like Ken Lay. He delegated to people willing to push the envelope and had really, really bad judgment about the ethics of those people.