Blunt's Eckersley Scandal, Day Nineteen

My god, the bar is low where Matt Blunt is concerned.

Here's a governor and an administration who have been for a few years summarily destroying email records --records that should be publicly available-- and who until recently have disputed that there was anything wrong with the destruction of those records.  Only now, when his violations of record retention law, ghastly smear-jobs and sordid cover-up attempts have become the subject of nearly universal disgust on the part of Missourians, has Matt Blunt decided that maybe some of those public documents really are public documents after all and are worthy of retention.  And he acts like we are supposed to be impressed by this.

­Matt Blunt yesterday rolled out his plan for a "save-every-email-system," as though the lack of such a system prior to now is somehow to blame for his administration's flagrant and arrogant dismissal of its legal record retention duties.  His fig-leaf, after the fact email retention measure does precisely nothing to fix or atone for any of what has gone before.  Yet as a result, we get the state's flagship newspaper giving us analysis like this, from "experts":­

Retaining e-mails permanently is " what they should have been doing all
along, so I'm very pleased," said Charles Davis, executive director of
the National Freedom of Information Coalition at the University of
Missouri.

Oh yes, shouldn't we all be very pleased that the governor of the state decided to begin complying with the law after refusing to for a full three years of his term?

Let's consider an analogous scenario.  Imagine on one of the few days a month on which Blunt is in Jefferson City that he walks across to the state capitol.  In the rotunda, Blunt beelines for the beautiful brass inlaid state seal in the floor, drops his drawers, and, uh, does his business right on top of the state seal.  He then leaves and goes back to Springfield.  After a few weeks, people begin to complain about the disgusting mess in the capitol rotunda and how unpleasant the odor, and how it reflects poorly on the state of Missouri to have such a mess on the capitol floor.  At that point, hearing the outcry, Matt Blunt returns to the capitol rotunda with a wet mop, cleans up three-quarters of the waste from the floor, and promptly puts out a release about the marked improvements that he's made for the state through beautification efforts at the capitol rotunda.  

And then the newspapers quote "experts" stating how "pleased" they are about Matt Blunt cleaning up some of his own mess and promising never to defecate in the capitol rotunda ever again --all while maintaining his position that he did nothing wrong by treating the rotunda as a restroom stall in the first place.

It is almost no exaggeration to say that this rather uncannily mimics what has gone on with the Blunt administration's refusal to comply with records retention provisions in state law.   In both cases, someone is expecting to be rewarded for ceasing behavior that everyone knows is completely beyond the bounds of decency and in which he should never have engaged.  If you're the governor, promising to live by the rules and laws by which all the rest of of have always lived is no badge of honor. 

The very fact that a governor should have to make such promises at all is a sickening indicator of just how low our standards have gotten during the Blunt years.

So you'll pardon me if I don't join in the tickertape parade.

*Apologies to Glenn Greenwald, who has used a somewhat similar analogy regarding the war in Iraq.