Alec MacGillis argues that both Christie’s Bridgegate and the maybe-scandal emerging around Scott Walker, whose aides did campaign work on government time, reflect the grip of the “permanent campaign” on our political culture:
This mindset has been with us for a long time, but it’s creeping ever outward, further back into the calendar and further down into lower and lower levels of office. It’s bipartisan—we know, for one thing, that the Obama administration all but shut down the rule-making process in late 2011 and all of 2012 so as not to cause any election-year troubles for itself, a decision that likely contributed to the bungled Obamacare rollout.
But it’s not hard to imagine why the mindset seems to have taken particular hold among Republicans, whether on the Hill or in Trenton or suburban Milwaukee. If you’re in government but philosophically anti-government, it’s all the more natural to let the governing be set aside for the sport of the permanent campaign. It’s easier, the goals are clearer, and it’s more fun.
Here’s the gist of the Walker story:
The release of 28,000 pages of documents connected with two criminal investigations involving former aides has put Governor Walker in an uncomfortable spot. … The documents, released Wednesday, showed how, in 2010, aides to then-Milwaukee County Executive Walker worked on his gubernatorial campaign while doing their government jobs, which is against the law. In all, six aides and allies were convicted, including two for doing campaign work on county time. Walker was never a target of investigation and has denied wrongdoing.
In addition, a new investigation launched by prosecutors in five Wisconsin counties is believed to be under way into whether his recall campaign in 2012 illegally coordinated with outside groups. In Wisconsin, people connected with such an inquiry – called a “John Doe investigation” – are generally not allowed to discuss it in public.
Philip Klein thinks the liberal press is grasping at straws:
Given that investigators who had access to these documents for years and heard testimony from hundreds of witnesses found no wrongdoing by Walker, it was unsurprising that the document release turned out to be a dud. Of course, this didn’t prevent headlines attempting to create the specter of scandal surrounding Walker where there is no evidence of one.
The Dish 