RIP Bert

Bert Lance predicted more than a quarter of a century ago that he would serve what he called “the living penalty” for the rest of his life. His passing Aug. 15, 2013 at 82 proved him right.

What Mr. Lance, former head of the Office of Management and Budget and a close advisor to President Jimmy Carter, called “the living penalty” is the purgatory inhabited by those the federal government fails to convict.

In Mr. Lance’s case, the government’s conviction failure was epic. Several federal agencies and ranks of government lawyers threw enormous amounts of mud at the wall, hoping that some would stick. But after five simultaneous lawsuits were tried in the court of public opinion – the front pages of the nation’s newspapers – the mud didn’t stick, not officially anyway.

As the lawsuits and headlines faded, Bert knew he’d won a pyrrhic victory. He told me so in 1987 as I was researching and writing the first draft of his book on the subject “The Truth of the Matter,” between newspaper jobs.

Shortly thereafter, life took me elsewhere and I never spoke to Bert again. Over the past decade though, I’ve come away from each Internet check-up on him increasingly convinced that he served the living penalty: Virtually everything about Bert in the public record since his tenure at OMB includes or is limited to the reef of allegations upon which the USS Mud At The Wall foundered.

Bert Lance was singled out as the target of a government “Shock and Awe” campaign, a very public spectacle in which there were no winners. After his post-Washington years he deserved, like the rest of us, to be left alone.

To Mr. Lance’s detractors who gnashed their teeth in print and private at his expense for the past 26 years, shame on you all.

Rest in peace, Bert.