No, Virginia, Bob McDonnell would not have saved the 2016 campaign

Every now and then, one hears the whispers of a dream derailed by the bizarre and byzantine legal concept of “honest services fraud.” With every poll showing Donald Trump rising in this state or that (a poll like this one from Fox News), Virginia Republicans hear the words tinged with regret.

If only Bob McDonnell could have run…

It’s an understandable impulse. On New Year’s Day, 2013, Governor Bob McDonnell seemed to have the world at his feet. He led the 2009 Republican sweep, and became the first Republican to carry Fairfax County since John Warner in 2002 (and no Democrat ran that year). While one could argue that the successful effort to flip the State Senate in 2011 was largely due to Spotsylvania County, it would have been hard to see Spotsy retire Edd Houck without the inarguably successful Adminstration McDonnell led up to that time.

Then, as the McDonnell boosters tell it (because it’s how they remember it), the Obama Justice Department came down with a prosecution that barely made legal sense and was an obvious cover for a political hit job. Suddenly, Bob McDonnell was a new code word for corruption; his personal life was dragged out for all to see; and a promising national career was ruined – to say nothing of what a successful Governor of Virginia could have done for the 2016 presidential field.

If that sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is.

Make no mistake, any prosecution that involves “honest service fraud” deserves to go off the rails. Before Bob McDonnell thought he should be Governor, before anyone cared about his wife one way or the other, and before anybody heard of Star Scientific, I was following the trail of Canadian newspaper mogul Conrad Black. That gave me a good look at “honest services fraud” – and it was no surprise when the Supreme Court junked every conviction Black got that involved that turn of phrase. The law itself is that usual combination of vaguery and confusion upon which prosecutors can define nearly anything as criminal if they put their minds to it.

Still, to say Bob McDonnell’s convictions should be vacated is not the same this as expecting or hoping he could have been a viable presidential candidate. I can do neither, and I have three reasons.

First and foremost (as one would expect – this is D.J. McGuire, after all) is the tax increase of 2013, the second largest in the state’s history (or the largest, depending on how one measures inflation from 1973). Here in Virginia, where Republicans have proposed and later enacted (with Democrats’ help) three separate tax increases in the last 12 years, we may have become inured to such a thing, but in the other 49 states (particularly those outside of the Old Confederacy) Republican voters still have a near-allergic reaction to tax increases. Keep in mind, this field presently has three Governors (Christie, Bush, and Kasich) who have zero taxes increases to their names – and they’re running in the “Establishment lane”. Can we really think a one-term Governor with a billion-dollar-plus tax hike on his record would appeal to New Hampshire primary voters? Or Nevada caucus goers? Even South Carolina Republicans rejected Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (who had numerous tax hikes on his record), and for John McCain, no less.

Secondly, there is the debacle surrounding US 460. I will acknowledge that the issue is largely a local one, but in a campaign where Marco Rubio’s RPOF credit card is being scrutinized (despite the fact that all expenses on it were paid back), the $300 million spent on a road that was never built (and a road that the Army Corps of Engineers repeatedly told McDonnell could never be built) would be a millstone around the former Governor’s neck. Trump’s responses practically write themselves. So do Christie’s Bridge-road jokes. The rest of the field would have had, well, a field day.

Finally, there is the matter of his successor. Terry McAuliffe would have happily savaged his predecessor on every available occasion. He has already laid the 2014 budget shortfall at McDonnell’s feet. Does anyone really think he would have kept that to himself (or only to his fellow Virginians) if McDonnell was running for President. “McDonnell deficit” and “McDonnell shortfall” would have become part of the MSNBC employee handbook.

I understand there are many who think that without the “honest services fraud” nonsense, maybe McAuliffe doesn’t win at all in 2013. I think that badly underestimates the effect of the tax hike, which, lest we forget, Ken Cuccinelli eventually endorsed and attempted to accredit to his own efforts as Attorney General. It is only due to the unfortunate rise of tribalism on the right that Cuccinelli has been able to avoid answering for this policy and political mistake.

It was, however, a mistake he shared with the tax-hike’s author: Bob McDonnell.

We can argue about the wisdom of what I still call Plan ’13 From Outer Space (in fact, I’m almost certain we will in the comments section), but it’s far less arguable that a tax-hiking Republican can’t be nominated by the national 21st-Century Republican Party (particularly a tax-hiking Republican who ran on a promise not to raise taxes).

I don’t think Bob McDonnell should end up in the Big House, but that doesn’t mean he belongs in the White House, nor does it mean Republican voters would want to put him there either.