All sins are not equal

If Scott Reid had been Richard Nixon’s director of communications... Q. Scott, there’ve been reports that the man who led the break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee had ties to the White House -- A. I don’t think the issue is who broke into the Watergate complex, or why. I think the issue is why did the Democrats do such a poor job of locking the doors? Was this some sort of entrapment operation? I think Mr. McGovern has a lot of explaining to do. … Q. The president is heard on the tapes arranging the payment of hush money to witnesses, directing that the CIA should be used to thwart an FBI investigation -- A. I don’t think we should put too much weight on those tapes. It’s pretty clear they’ve been tampered with. The transcripts have several key expletives deleted. And what about that 18-and-a-half minute gap? Huh? What’s that about? I think it’s now up to the Democrats to prove they were not responsible. … Q. The House has voted to impeach the president on three counts. Will he resign, or -- A. I don’t think the issue is any alleged criminal conduct on the president’s part. I think the issue is why did a senior government official agree to serve as a source for the Washington Post, in violation of federal secrecy regulations? Who is this Deep Throat, anyway? * * * We are so easily distracted, we media folk. The Prime Minister’s chief of staff and the minister of health are caught on tape dangling government appointments in front of an opposition MP in exchange for his vote, and the only thing on our mind is the ethics of recording people buying votes without their knowledge. Or whether a 46-second segment out of more than two hours of tape shows signs of editing. Or who approached whom.

Some of this is simply Liberal talking points, fed through the usual press-gallery conveyor belts. But we make our own contributions to clouding the issue through sheer mental laziness, an unwillingness or inability to make some basic logical distinctions and moral judgments.

Hence that favourite cliché of post-tapes commentary, “no one looks good.” That’s true, as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far. To say that no one is without sin is not to say that all are guilty of the same sins. Life is full of grey areas? Of course. But the point is there are different shades of grey -- including black.

Whether Gurmant Grewal approached the government first, or what his motives might have been, are important issues in judging his culpability. They are irrelevant to deciding that of his negotiating partners. The notion that this might raise issues of “entrapment” is particularly misplaced: it requires us to believe that Mr. Murphy and Mr. Dosanjh were not the least bit inclined to promise Mr. Grewal a cabinet post, that it would never have occurred to them had he not suggested it, and that they would never have acted on the suggestion had their resistance not been worn down by his persistent entreaties. Leave aside the abundant evidence to the contrary on the tapes. The only defence available to the Grits had they appointed Mr. Grewal to cabinet would have been precisely that it did occur to them to do so, that it had nothing to do with obtaining his vote: witness similar claims with regard to Belinda Stronach.

The worst that can be said of Mr. Grewal is that he was just as bad as the two Liberals: the supply to their demand. But it is equally plausible that he behaved rather better. You may disapprove of his conduct, even if you believe his story that he was embarked on a one-man sting operation. But seeking to expose alleged corruption, even by improper means, is surely higher on the moral scale than corruption itself, or Deep Throat is no better than Richard Nixon.

Should we believe Mr. Grewal’s story? The evidence that the tapes may have been edited is troubling, though we do not yet know for certain that they were, or if so by whom, or with what intent, or to what degree. Nor can it be seriously maintained that a couple of snips here and there invalidates everything else we have heard on the tapes. It may raise doubts about Mr. Grewal. It does nothing to resolve our doubts about Mr. Dosanjh and Mr. Murphy.

At least Mr. Grewal’s story is consistent, both with what’s on the tapes and with his subsequent actions. As I’ve said before, if he were truly seeking to trade his vote for a job, ie to commit a crime, it would seem more than a little odd that he would tape himself doing so, then announce the tapes’ existence, then release them to the public, then turn them over to the RCMP. (It would be even odder, not to say insane, to tamper with the evidence before handing it over. I’m told the Mounties have quite sophisticated sound labs.)

Perhaps you think he taped the sessions merely as a backup, for use only if he failed to get what he wanted. That still doesn’t explain why, if he didn’t get a deal, he would announce/release/hand over the tapes, given that they place him in such a poor light (“no one looks good”).

“No one looks good” is simply the flipside of that old standard, “everybody does it.” It is not sophisticated, but superficial; not cynical, but, in its own way, naïve.