How the Left Became Murtha's Enabler

That quote by a nearly forgotten Southern liberal journalist – who covered the Scopes trial with H.L. Mencken – deserves to be etched on the back of the Blackberrys of all political partisans and framed in the green rooms of all the cable news networks. In a single sentence, Johnson explains why the bombastic, egocentric and morally flawed Rush Limbaugh has become the heroic embodiment of the disloyal conservative opposition to Barack Obama. And, before liberals start chortling, it underscores why a bombastic, scandal-scarred and earmark-loving veteran Pennsylvania Democratic congressman named Jack Murtha was lovingly placed on a pedestal by the antiwar left and championed by Nancy Pelosi after he dramatically turned against the Iraq War in 2005.

What gives the Murtha saga contemporary currency are the difficult-to-ignore signs that the Justice Department is taking an unusual interest in matters pertaining to the 76-year-old legislator's heavy-handed dominance of the House subcommittee that controls Pentagon spending. In November, federal agents raided the suburban Washington offices of the PMA Group, a lobbying powerhouse specializing in slipping earmarks (narrow congressionally mandated spending requirements) into appropriations bills. PMA just happens to be headed by a former top aide to Murtha on the Defense subcommittee. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, an advocacy group opposed to earmarks, PMA clients (presumably in a burst of gratitude for good government) donated $1.3 million to Murtha's last two re-election campaigns.

Proving a corrupt motivation to campaign contributions is legally tricky, which is why there are ethically challenged members of Congress who are anticipating their international junkets over the Memorial Day recess rather than working in prison laundries. But favors to relatives are just the sort of thing that prosecutors love to highlight in their closing arguments to juries. The Washington Post last week reported that a small firm run by Murtha's nephew (raise your hand if you suspect that federal investigators are leaking) just happened to receive a series of Defense Department subcontracts for warehousing and engineering services without going through the rigors of competitive bidding.

Little more than three years ago, Murtha became the least likely Iraq dove in the liberal congressional aviary. The first Vietnam veteran to be elected to Congress (in 1974), Murtha arrived on Capitol Hill with a Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts and the hawkish swagger of a Marine. An adroit backstage congressional power broker, who avoided the press rather than preening on Sunday morning talk shows, Murtha stunned Capitol Hill when he convened an unexpected November 2005 press conference to announce, "Our military has done everything that has been asked of them. The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It's time to bring the troops home."

The antiwar movement – feeling powerless with Bush's re-election and Republican control of Congress – reacted as if George Patton had morphed into George McGovern. MoveOn urged its members to send Murtha "a hand-written note or card" or call his office to say, "I want him to keep fighting. We need him."

Arianna Huffington and the entire Huffington Post turned into a high-decibel cheering squad, portraying the gruff Murtha as a cross between Pericles and Adlai Stevenson. As Huffington herself wrote after her newly minted hero's initial appearance on "Meet the Press," Murtha "had a good answer for everything. And in contrast to the usual poll-driven hairsplitting on the show, he offered one stand-up truth after another." John Amato, a musician and blogger, gushed in February 2006, "I had the chance to meet with Rep. John Murtha at a gathering of about 100 people over at Arianna Huffington's house...John Murtha is the embodiment of what the term a `true patriot' is."

Okay, antiwar zealots in their raptures over Murtha could be excused their tunnel vision and their lack of historical perspective. But to this day, it is difficult to decipher what Pelosi was thinking when she backed Murtha as her majority leader after the Democrats dramatically won back the House in the 2006 elections. As newspaper columnists and editorial writers obligingly reminded Pelosi, the incoming House speaker, Murtha was an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1980 Abscam scandal when FBI agents dressed up as Arab sheiks and attempted to bribe unsuspecting legislators. Offered $50,000 to help provide phony immigration papers, Murtha seemingly wrestled with his greed and his political caution. "I'm not interested – at this point," Murtha said as the FBI secretly videotaped the conversation. "You know, we do business for a while, maybe I'll be interested, maybe I won't....(But) it's hard for me to say, just the hell with it."

For the rest of us – left, right and center – Murtha provides a cautionary lesson in the dangers of draping a toga around a politician just because he or she says the right words about a single issue. Before you anoint a hero, at least check out how they sounded while being offered a bribe by an FBI agent dressed in Arab robes.