In today's editorial, "McCaskill's missteps damage her image," in The Kansas City Star, a McClatchy newspaper, the paper can't bring itself to condemn their girl, the one they endorsed, for having run afoul of the law: Two things seem clear after a very bad couple weeks for Missouri's senior senator. First: Missouri and Kansas City continue to be better off for her decades of service. Second, if we are to continue benefiting from what she does so well, McCaskill has to get to work rebuilding her reputation and the public trust she worked so hard to earn.
The paper is whitewashing a serious breach, and from a former state auditor and former prosecutor (for Kansas City's county, Jackson). The Star should be calling for her to resign or to promise not to run in 2012, not running defense for her. (The paper also carried Sen. McCaskill's water in an editorial on March 16.) Kansas City's lone local newspaper compounds the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party, whose members have no problem in taxing others but won't pay their own taxes -- John Kerry, Charlie Rangel, Timothy Geithner, the list goes on.
However, The Star's reporters do a much better job of serving the public than their editors. David Goldstein, the paper's Washington correspondent, went into detail on McCaskill's problems in his report on Monday, "McCaskill to pay nearly $300K in back taxes on private plane," and his update yesterday, "McCaskill owes more on plane." Wouldn't it be refreshing if newspaper editorialists just admitted their mistakes in their endorsements? Don't hold your breath.
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