My Hero the Thief, and the Role Model for My President


 
More than 40 years later, it still makes me kind of sick to think about it.

I didn’t know that much about Marvin Mandel when I campaigned for him in 1970. I just knew enough. His kind of political figure was the answer to the Nixons and Agnews and Mahoneys dominating the political landscape in those days.

George Mahoney was the last rancid blast from Strom Thurmond days. He was a Dixiecrat who made it possible for Spiro Agnew to get into office. He ran for Governor of Maryland in 1970 and got the Democratic nomination by running against Fair Housing laws. His slogan was simple.

Your home is your castle – Protect it.

It wasn’t hard to hear from what menace white folks needed protect their homes. It was black people who might want to buy a house.

In 1966, Mahoney became the Democratic nominee with 30 percent of the vote. Seventy percent voted against him in the Democratic primary, but that vote was divided, broken up among other candidates. He won the primary by one third of one percent. Non-bigots in Maryland voted Republican that year and Spiro Agnew became governor.

Yeah, Spiro Agnew was Maryland’s anti-bigot in 1966.

A year and a half later, when Martin Luther King was killed, Governor Agnew was furious about the riots that tore through Baltimore. Black leaders had walked through the streets all night long, confronting angry teenagers, trying to calm things down. When Governor Agnew called them to a meeting, many were still wearing clothes stained by soot and sweat from their all night efforts. Governor Agnew called them cowards.

And you ran.

He told them that they themselves were the cause of rioting, that they had cowered in fear.

You were beguiled by the rationalizations of unity; you were intimidated by veiled threats; you were stung by insinuations that you were Mr.- Charlie’s boy, by epithets like “Uncle Tom.”

Richard Nixon read about the tough talk and was impressed. Agnew had really told off those black leaders. So Governor Agnew became Vice President Agnew. Later on, convicted criminal Agnew.

Maryland had no Lieutenant Governor to take the place of ex-Governor Agnew. The legislature selected Democratic leader Marvin Mandel to be a sort of caretaker until a real Governor could be chosen in the next election.

But Mandel was no caretaker. He got into the nuts and bolts of government. He streamlined the way departments were organized. Efficiency was the word of the day. He got Maryland’s first Metro-rail system going. Pollution went down as commuters could leave their cars at home. Employment went up as hard working city residents found it practical to get to jobs outside their limited areas.

But most interesting to me, he stood up to all kinds of pressure for the sake of a medical theory. A close friend had almost died in an automobile accident. He should have died, but he didn’t. Mandel wondered if the fortunate fact that the accident had occurred very close to a hospital had something to do with his friend’s good luck. And that’s how Mandel came into contact with an American medical officer who had served in France just after World War II.

In post-war France, Dr. R. Adams Cowley noticed that survival rates in serious accidents went way up if medical treatment was administered within an hour. He called it “the Golden Hour.” When he got back to Maryland, he worked hard to get a system of fast, real fast, treatment set up for serious injuries. He wanted a network of helicopters ready and waiting for medical transport.

He couldn’t get anywhere. Lawmakers couldn’t see any constituency for helicopters. The medical establishment laughed at the idea. Helicopters! Everyone had an interest in keeping things the same.

But a close friend of Governor Mandel had survived in a medical miracle, and the Governor was ready for battle. He took on the political establishment. He took on the medical establishment. He took on every establishment. He beat them all over the head until they reluctantly went along with the crazy idea.

After the first helicopter turned out to be saving lives, more landing pads were set up near hospitals. More helicopters were put into action. The politician with nothing to gain had gotten it done. Today, Shock Trama units of hyper-fast medical transport form a network covering pretty much all parts of the country. There is no way of calculating just how many lives this very stubborn Governor saved.

The medical officer with the crazy idea has a hospital facility named after him. The R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center is located in Baltimore complete with helicopters.

Marvin Mandel became a hero to me. And it hurt when I found out he was a crook.

He was clever about it. Bribes? What bribes? Those were just gifts from a few close friends!

The so called gifts took a long and circuitous route. A favor in one direction circled around as financial benefits changed hands. One trade led to another and the Governor got a free suit from a new friend in another direction. An expensive new watch came from another pal from a different direction.

Marvin Mandel went through a spectacular divorce. He had fallen in love with a younger assistant, and his wife locked him out of the Governor’s mansion. He needed legal representation and got it for pretty close to nothing. A friend of a friend of a friend was owed a favor by another friend, who had a pal with a partial interest in a race track that had benefited from a piece of legislation.

My hero got pretty good at all this flow of legislation and money and gifts. Lots and lots of gifts. In one instance, he vetoed a race track bill, then quietly twisted a few arms to get his own veto overridden. All to cover his tracks. And the bribe came around the world and got into the gubernatorial pocket from a different direction. Okay, not a bribe, just a gift. Completely legal. Uh huh.

After all, he did nothing to directly help his close friends, the friends who liked him enough to buy him all those gifts. How was he to know they were also friends with other friends of friends he had no contact with?

Supporters of Marvin Mandel were angry when he was charged. Even forty years later you can hear small talk from us old folk about “the prosecution, I mean the persecution” of Marvin Mandel. He was convicted of stealing from the citizens of Maryland. What he had stolen and then sold was good government.

My hero the thief was pardoned by President Ronald Reagan. Presidents can pardon pretty much anyone except themselves.

A few years after that, the Supreme Court said the law under which Mandel was convicted was a bad law. You can’t steal good government. Good government is not like a stolen car.

Later, the man who saved lives insisted the court ruling proved he was innocent.

And I think the future will show that, during my administration, nothing was ever done to defraud the public of the state of Maryland.

Actually, the court ruling just proved he could get away with it. Kind of like those watches and jewelry and suits and divorce lawyers and cash that were not bribes, just gifts.

I thought about my hero when I heard the latest defense about the Russian efforts to throw the election to Donald Trump. The fact that Trump got stolen and distorted and edited information from a foreign adversary of our country did not mean that there was anything wrong. Journalist Ari Melber quotes Rudy Giuliani speaking on behalf of Donald Trump and asks Attorney and author Stephen Brill for his legal opinion.

It isn’t illegal… It was sort of like a gift. And you’re not involved in the illegality of getting it.

Brill offers the legal logic that makes you wonder why it doesn’t occur to the Trump team.

He’s basically admitting that that they took something of value from a foreign entity. That’s what the law says you can’t do … It’s a violation of the law. A gift … only thing that means is that the Trump campaign didn’t pay them for the stuff.

Marvin Mandel, the man who saved lives, died in 2015. I was saddened when he died. He remains my hero because of his courage and those who are alive because of that courage. As to the bribery?

It isn’t illegal… It was sort of like a gift.

Well, no. My hero should have died in prison.


Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS
to get episodes automatically downloaded.

 They weren’t bribes. There was no corruption. They were just gifts.