Jon Ralston offers some reasons why Chanos may be exiting attorney general’s race

Wednesday, March 15, 2006 | 7:08 a.m.

Finally, I have heard a reason that makes sense about why George Chanos doesn't want to be attorney general past the end of the year: the rubber chicken circuit.

"I went on a campaign trip with a bunch of other candidates, and everyone was speaking and giving the same speeches time and time again," Chanos said Tuesday on "Face to Face." "It just didn't feel like something that was right for me personally."

So traveling on a campaign bus with preternaturally amiable politicians such as Treasurer Brian Krolicki, reciting by rote the same blather night after night, making small talk with small people at small events didn't appeal to him?

My God - Chanos is a normal human being. So that explains why he decided to abandon his campaign after a few months and seven figures. Or does it?

The facile analysis here is that Chanos is a wimp, that he couldn't take the heat already administered by a partisan blow-torch by the name of Barbara Buckley and that he didn't have the asbestos covering to withstand the campaign flamethrower that the Catherine Cortez Masto organization was about to ignite.

But that is as simplistic as Chanos' notion that Buckley, the Assembly majority leader, is some demagogic, political hack, or as superficial as the idea that Chanos demoted himself from attorney general to private attorney so he could spend more time with his family and not on the Jim Gibbons Express campaign bus.

Unless there is some subterranean scandal about to be unearthed (Sayeth Chanos: "There's no item or items in particular I am concerned about."), I really believe this is a case of a man absent the temperament to survive in the political world, without self-combustion or homicide being the result.

There are politicians who are very smart. There are politicians who don't brook dissent. There are politicians who don't suffer fools well.

There are politicians who don't like to be challenged. And there are politicians whose nostrils can flare and whose invective can sear when they get angry.

But rarely are there politicians with all of those characteristics who are successful. And that is Chanos' problem.

Chanos simply cannot fathom a woman such as Buckley, whose prescription drug importation plan he legally eviscerated. Chanos took weeks to analyze the legislation and reached the conclusion that it was illegal.

But he somehow managed to miss two inevitable reactions to this finding, which I believe he arrived at honestly and apolitically.

One, there would be lawyers, including Buckley, who would disagree with his conclusion. And, two, Buckley, who believes passionately in the issue, would marshal whatever political forces she could to defeat his ruling.

One way to look at what Buckley did is that it was, as Chanos described it, disingenuous posturing to appeal to senior voters. Well, yes, there was some of that. But pandering in the name of a good cause is not a vice - or at least it's not if you believe the ends justify the means.

But instead of fighting Buckley with a political strategy or an inspired pitch to seniors about how to make the bill legal, Chanos was incensed with the majority leader and could not contain his fury. He was right on the merits and that should have been it.

But, of course, that is only true in a place called Utopia. And in the dystopian place known as Carson City - and for that matter most government venues - it is those politicians with principles, brains and, yes, political savvy, who are the most successful.

The late, great Assemblyman Marvin Sedway used to choreograph outrageous stunts such as "Bomb the Miners Week" and attack the industry every day (sometimes with demagoguery!) until the miners submitted to some of what he wanted. Others have used hyperbolic rhetoric to move from Point A to Point M, starting as if they want to get from Point A to Point Z.

Chanos didn't want to play that game and, in addition to spending much more time than he thought he would have to away from his family, he didn't want to face the coming onslaught from Cortez Masto. His approach, ironically, is similar to that of the man who appointed him, Gov. Kenny Guinn, who really never understood why people didn't understand his way was the right way and that he knew better than most.

Some wags say Guinn gave up after The Great Tax Increase of 2003. Now Chanos has surrendered after the Great Prescription Drug Debacle of 2005.

He may have to chew on fewer rubber chickens in 2006. But that bad taste in his mouth will linger because he really had no stomach for a game that, when played well, can have a tremendous payoff that he will never know.