Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
Stumble
By J. Patrick Coolican (contact) 
Tuesday, March 8, 2011 | 2 a.m.
J. Patrick Coolican
Prepared Remarks
The first time I encountered Sen. John Ensign, he was giving a news conference at the state Republican convention in lovely Mesquite in 2006.
At the time, the Iraq War was going badly. The media peppered Ensign with questions about mistakes made in the conception, planning and execution of the war. Reporters asked whether it was time to admit failure and change course.
His answer: Anyone criticizing the Bush administration was helping the enemy.
“Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy — let me tell you, I say this without reservation — they have hurt our military, they have emboldened the enemy.”
Remember those days? When criticism of the administration amounted to treason? Those were good times. That’s before a new president was elected and suddenly it became totally acceptable to accuse him of being history’s greatest monster. And probably a Kenyan spy.
Ensign, a Republican, continued his call for critics of the Bush administration to shut up. He quoted Dennis Miller: “I happened to believe in what we’re doing over there. But if I didn’t, I’d lie.”
No doubt he would. Still, it was a strange conception of participatory democracy.
But here’s what I found most striking: Through it all, Ensign was busy eating from a vegetable and dip tray. He was munching on carrots and Hidden Valley Ranch as he talked war. I’m sure the carrots were fresher than those in our soldiers’ MREs.
And in that performance there were subtle hints of the characteristics that were Ensign’s eventual downfall — his insouciant disconnection from reality, a belief that the rules of common decency didn’t apply to him because of his wealth and his status as a U.S. senator.
By now you know Ensign announced Monday he won’t seek re-election in the face of a tough primary challenge and a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into his relationship with a former staffer who was married to his co-chief of staff and friend, Doug Hampton.
This disconnection from reality was most starkly illustrated when it became clear that even as he mused of presidential ambitions in spring 2009, he was trying to clean up the mess he’d made of his personal life, enlisting the aid of his parents’ fortune to pay the Hamptons $96,000.
Even after he admitted to the affair, he charged on, much to the consternation of his former friends.
For a story on Ensign last year, I interviewed many prominent Republicans who had known Ensign for years, and they were angered and shocked that he was intent on taking down so many people with him, including loyal former staffers who were forced to lawyer up in the face of a criminal investigation into allegations that Ensign had set up his former friend Hampton with a lobbying job and lobbying clients. (The Justice Department announced Ensign was cleared in the investigation.)
And yet, seemingly ever more isolated from reality, he pushed on, claiming he would run for re-election, although it could have cost Senate Republicans a shot at majority status in 2012; Democrats would have probably beaten him handily even if he survived a primary.
It seems unreturned phone calls from big-dollar donors and ugly poll numbers finally dropped reality on Ensign’s head and helped him see that his career in elected office is finished.
This kind of deep isolation from reality on the part of elected officials is not without consequence. For if Ensign couldn’t see the political reality that was so clear all around him, if he couldn’t get the message from his friends and family that he was finished, how was he to see his constituents and their daily struggles, the unemployed and uninsured, the families who have lost homes to foreclosure, the neglected children, the homeless veterans, the untreated mentally ill?
Coolican’s columns appear Tuesdays and Fridays.
hey coolican...
congratulations...
you have just made it onto birdie's must read list...
keep up the good work buddy...
A complete waste, a disgrace and a self-centered cultist (C Street) who has failed Nevada and its residents that are hurting so bad because of him. The Bible Thumper cult that he was a member of told him that "he was selected" by God to have more power than others. He blamed his wife, he will blame the media, but he lost his place in history because he couldn't keep it in his pants.
"The war in Iraq is lost".
I would write he is the perfect Republican but he represents the average type...completely disconnected from reality on every issue and arrogant about being so, uninformed on the world, and anti-science. mred is right when he/she calls Ensign a "complete waste" but I would extend that to most who exist on the political right in this country.
don't you just these bible thumping frauds...
"i know that god has forgiven me"...
really johnny...
tell you what...
why don't you ask god to make such an announcement later today...
ok buddy...
we want proof...
his poor frickin wife...
did you see her...
standing there smiling...
and then johnny ran for the exit...
he ran like a little girl...
and left her behind...
that pretty much says it all folks...
he cheated on her...
she dutifully stands by his side...
then he bolts leaving her there to awkwardly smile...
what a frickin bum...
how big of a check do you think mommy and daddy would write darlene to go quietly into the night???
And yet, Coolican, it's somehow become acceptable to decry anyone who disagrees with our current President as a racist.
You can't have it both ways.
I hope all right-wing "Christian" Republicans who voted this guy into office are somehow held accountable for electing him. I don't even remember who ran against him, but whoever it was simply couldn't have been any worse than this guy. Name one piece of legislation that he was responsible for during his 6 years in office. And he calls it "retiring" to avoid an ugly campaign. More like sliding off with his tail between his legs etc......
Clueless to the bitter end...
Aside from the statement that "we all pay for our sins", he STILL has the "poor little Johnny" routine going on... and WHAT IS the deal with the way he treats the little lady?
He feels sorry for HIMSELF.
It's not a matter of John Ensign no longer ignoring reality. The guys not based in total reality because he has a delusional personality. This is a guy who really & truly needs some professional help & I hope he gets it. What's really frightening is that a guy with this kind of emotional defect was in a position of authority.
How could Mrs. Ensign find the forgiveness in her tortured heart to keep on with this cad?
He LIED to everyone, lost face at every turn, continued his deceptive shenanigans going and coming, and still she stood by his pathetic cheating weaselness.
Whatever she has in her soul is the good stuff he doesn't deserve.
Good article, Coolican man.
happyleper writes:
"And yet, Coolican, it's somehow become acceptable to decry anyone who disagrees with our current President as a racist.
You can't have it both ways."
This may be a topic worth discussing; however, in the context of the story, it is simply a non-sequitur. Coolican made no statement regarding the motives of Ensign criticizing Obama; he merely pointed out the hypocrisy of his saying that one must support the President when that President was Bush, but then freely criticizing the President when it is Obama.
I would argue that one has the right to criticize the President always, regardless of who is in office. There hasn't been a President in the last 50 years that I remember as being above criticism. But it was only G.W. Bush whose followers tried to convince us that he could never, ever be criticized because that was "un-American" and "helping the enemy". Pffft.
The bottom line here is that Ensign's own party had to convince him to fall on his sword - or else he'd be stabbed to death like Caesar.
"Et tu, Brute?"
So I see our amateur weather scientist mshaffer says all Republicans are against science, uniformed of the world. So mshaffer is that the classroom theory you live in at UNLV? As long as you don't leave the classroom you wouldn't recognize reality in the world. Many a business owners I know are Republicans and Democrats that know more about science than you ever dreamed of and they are living in this reality not some classroom theory like you. You are one stupid f'ing idiot.