Analysis
Neil Macdonald
Sex, hypocrisy and the mysterious triumph of Alvin Greene
Last Updated: Monday, June 14, 2010 | 5:56 PM ET
By Neil Macdonald CBC News
There are moments in this job that make me sit back, stare at the TV and thank the News Gods that I get to cover American politics.
This country is a target-rich environment for a reporter — an orchard of low-hanging scandals, fat, juicy and dependable. You have to love this place.
My favourite, at least in recent years, remains the spectacle of South Carolina's married, family-values governor, Mark Sanford, self-destructing and blubbering on live television about romping with his "soulmate" mistress in Argentina.
Idaho Senator Larry Craig was another, especially his explanation about how he was merely striking a "wide stance" in a Minnesota airport toilet, rather than soliciting sex from the undercover officer who nabbed him for cruising.
The Southern state senator who called President Barack Obama and South Carolina gubernatorial contender Nikki Haley "ragheads" (applying a nasty epithet for turban-wearing Muslims) was a minor one, but nonetheless telling.
Then, just last month, there was the Christian conservative leader caught on video vacationing with a handsome young fellow he hired from "rentboy.com."
Add him to the long-running parade of confessing, weeping televangelists, including the one who used to have anal sex with a male prostitute while smoking crystal meth.
No sex?
And on, and on.
Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich's ongoing corruption trial — he is charged with, among other things, trying to sell the appointment to Barack Obama's vacated senate seat — promises to rival The Tudors for intrigue.
Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich at the start of his corruption trial in Chicago on June 3, 2010. The first Illinois governor to be impeached, Blagojevich faces numerous federal charges. (Frank Polich/Reuters) In the past, we have had a governor, caught with a hooker, who had to quit and then rehab himself. And a senator, caught with a hooker, who brazened it out and didn't have to quit.
There was also the congressman who had to resign over his slap-and-tickle sessions with male staffers. And the congressman who was caught with bundles of bribe cash in his home freezer. And yet another one who actually had a price list for corrupt acts.
There was Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Enough said.
For scandal gourmets, it is like an endless, moveable feast. Uniquely American.
Europe's establishment has tended to bury its scandals deep, often with the complicity of a lapdog media.
Canada is clearly more inept at cover-ups, but its scandals are boring anyway.
I once broke the story of the defence minister who resigned after visiting what was essentially a whorehouse while on an official trip to Germany.
He and his aides spread around some taxpayer dollars but he restricted himself to watching sex movies with a stripper. Europeans were amazed. How could there be a sex scandal without actual sex?
But back to the land I now cover. The latest uproar is perhaps the most interesting I've seen. There is no sex, but the story of Alvin Greene is outstanding even without any salacious detail.
Taking the prize
A 32-year-old unemployed black man, Greene has just won the nomination to be the Democratic party's senate candidate from South Carolina in this fall's mid-terms — a considerable prize in American politics.
One hundred thousand people voted for him, which was 60 per cent of the votes cast. A landslide by any measure.
As of right now, he'll be facing off against veteran Republican Senator Jim De Mint, a hard-line white conservative, who is presumably grinning from ear to ear.
Because Greene might just be the ideal opponent. He has no political experience whatever, was mysteriously and "involuntarily" discharged from the military recently, and has never held a campaign rally. In fact, he doesn't seem to have campaigned at all.
It gets better.
He's facing a felony obscenity charge — which he doesn't want to discuss — and has secured the services of the public defender's office, which means he has declared himself indigent.
But he doesn't want to discuss that either.
Actually, he doesn't want to discuss much. How did he campaign? "The old fashioned way." What cities did he visit? No answer. Where did he get the $10,400 filing fee? "Army savings."
How's he going to explain that to the state authorities who accepted his indigent plea? "No comment."
'Elephant dung'
In interviews, he sounds clueless. He's actually asked to be paid for answering reporters' questions.
South Carolina Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, Alvin Greene, holds his own personal copy of his campaign flyer to show people he actually did campaign in Manning, S.C. Greene has been asked to step down but so far is refusing. (Mary Ann Chastain/Associated Press) Wait. It gets even better than that.
Turns out that in South Carolina, one of the rankest political cesspits in America — this is the place where George W. Bush's team sank John McCain's first run at the presidency by pushing rumours he had an illegitimate black child — politicians like planting highly beatable opponents in the other party's campaigns.
The practice has resulted in criminal charges in the past.
This time, as Alvin Greene was seeking the Democratic nod for the Senate race, another Democrat, incumbent James E. Clyburn, was also fighting off a questionable challenger for the Democratic nomination for the House of Representatives.
His contender was Gregory Brown, whose campaign, we now discover, was run by some well-connected Republican political operatives.
The idea, it seems, is to set up a lousy candidate in the other guy's camp, then somehow ensure he gets as much support as possible from your own election machine.
South Carolina, like many other states, runs what are called "open" primaries, meaning both Republicans and Democrats can vote in whichever race they choose and, if they want, subvert the other party's selection process.
Clyburn says there was "elephant dung all over the place" in last week's primaries and the Democrats' state leadership has asked Greene to step aside. He's refused.
As reporters now begin to dig into his credentials, which they evidently didn't do during the actual campaign, the Greene story reveals itself like a fan dancer.
It has now been reported that Greene holds a university degree in political science and was an intelligence specialist in the U.S. Army. Next thing, no doubt, he'll turn out to have an acting background.
I'm not religious. But as a reporter, I love watching the truth set people free. And when I hear politicians here utter the obligatory "God bless America," even I am tempted to mutter "Amen, brother."
