McDonnell says he will use 'every available resource and advocate' to clear his name. The tragedy of Bob McDonnell

On Feb. 24, 2012, Bob McDonnell was in a fix. With Mitt Romney’s VP selection process looming and McDonnell viewed as a real contender, the Virginia Legislature had very inconveniently descended into a divisive debate about mandating invasive ultrasounds for women seeking abortions.

As McDonnell walked out of a POLITICO event at the Newseum in Washington, he faced a battery of local TV cameras that were there for one purpose: to pin down McDonnell on the culture-war battle riveting Richmond.


It was the kind of moment that sends many politicians racing for the exits, with aides shouting, “No questions!” But McDonnell seemed delighted as he bounded over to greet the press throng. “Are you guys here to ask about my education plan?” he joked.

( WATCH: McDonnell's political career from campaign to indictment)

He then patiently and deftly swatted the questions away — “You can’t believe everything you hear in the national press” — giving the impression of a man thoroughly enjoying himself. His smile and peppy manner seemed almost like a taunt, as if saying to the reporters: C’mon, can’t you guys throw any tougher punches than that?

McDonnell is no longer giving the impression of a man thoroughly enjoying himself, as he and his wife, Maureen, face down a 14-count federal corruption indictment. But his bravura performance two years ago still echoes poignantly, displaying the love of the game — and McDonnell’s unquestioned skill at it — that for a time made McDonnell one of the most promising leaders in Republican politics.

As that moment reflects, it has always been difficult to pin down McDonnell’s persona — or even to understand what made him tick behind his square jaw and perfectly combed hair. Now, as McDonnell faces the real prospect of ending his public life as a felon, it is harder than ever to answer the question: Who is Bob McDonnell, anyway?

When he ran for governor five years ago, the people of Virginia were introduced to Bob McDonnell the zealot: a religious extremist tutored at Pat Robertson’s university, a man Democrats warned would try to keep women in the home and make it easier for criminals to get guns.

( PHOTOS: Bob McDonnell’s career)

The labels didn’t fit. McDonnell won his 2009 governor’s race easily and avoided social issues in office.

Next, Americans met McDonnell, the modern-day Mr. Republican: a beaming politician of total integrity and boundless personal confidence, a man who governed more or less from the center, passing landmark transportation reform and writing the playbook for GOP swing-state victory.

That wasn’t quite right, either. By the end of his four-year term, McDonnell was snarled in a gift-giving investigation that was at least tawdry, if not actually criminal.

Finally, we met McDonnell the dupe: a well-intentioned man, pure of heart but weak in dealing with the people around him, led cluelessly into dangerous legal territory by an acquisitive and ill-tempered wife — Lady Macbeth with an Amex card.

The indictment handed down Tuesday against both McDonnells gives the lie to that portrayal, as well. In a 43-page document filed in federal district court, the former GOP governor is depicted by prosecutors as a man preoccupied with improving his family’s financial condition, going well out of his way to accommodate his financial benefactor, Star Scientific CEO Jonnie Williams, and communicating directly and often with the former first lady about various money-making enterprises.

( Earlier on POLITICO: McDonnell decries ‘unjust overreach’)

The federal justice system will have the final word on whether McDonnell broke the law and disgraced his office. Arriving at an assessment of McDonnell as a person, and as a political character of the times, may be a longer and even more complicated process.

Voters will have to weigh the McDonnell who wrote an incendiary Regent University thesis against the wedding-cake figurine who campaigned on an anodyne “Bob’s for Jobs” slogan, and to try to separate out the deft negotiator who crafted a landmark transit-funding deal from the cash-strapped dad who — according to prosecutors — reveled in having sudden access to luxury brands like Ferrari and Rolex.

There may never be a fully satisfactory explanation for why a politician of such promise behaved so recklessly. Though the indictments were not unexpected, some longtime McDonnell associates are still in a state of shock and disbelief. Republican fundraiser Bobbie Kilberg, a steadfast McDonnell ally, said she simply did not believe the charges leveled against her friend and called the indictments a “witch hunt.”

“It makes me want to cry. It really does. The Bob McDonnell I know is not the Bob McDonnell portrayed in that indictment,” she said. “I just don’t think those things happened. He said he showed some poor judgment and he apologized for that. To destroy his legacy of public service — it’s despicable.”

The common thread throughout McDonnell’s career is the “Just win, baby” determination of a born political competitor — an upbeat appreciation for politics as sport that set him apart from some of his most prominent GOP contemporaries, including characters as varied as Sarah Palin and Chris Christie, who have succeeded by channeling the rhetoric of anger and grievance. Instead, McDonnell’s sunny demeanor and personal drive propelled him from a Virginia Beach-based state legislative district to a razor-thin win in the 2005 state attorney general’s race and then to his landslide victory in a gubernatorial election four years later.

Even speaking to the press Tuesday, McDonnell eschewed outrage and indignation, speaking in a grave but level tone, reminding viewers that he was once a prosecutor himself and asserting that the charges against him amounted to a “misguided legal theory.” It amounts, he said, to the criminalization of Virginia politics as usual. By the standards of the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, McDonnell said, “nearly every elected official, from President Obama on down, would have to be charged.”

“For 37 years, I have loyally and enthusiastically served my country and my state,” McDonnell said, emphasizing his record of service and his bond with the public. “I have given my heart and soul working tirelessly for the people of Virginia.”

The people who have followed McDonnell most closely — working for him, donating to him, covering him and voting for him — have found the last year a bleakly disorienting experience, as McDonnell’s layers of legal deniability have been progressively stripped away. Allies who initially dismissed the federal investigation as a fishing expedition have come to terms with a much tougher reality. Friends who once believed that the problem was Maureen now don’t know quite what to believe.

One Virginia Republican, who asked for anonymity to speak about the former governor, calling the case “more nuanced and more complicated than people realize,” and predicting that voters — and jurors — would see through the charges once McDonnell and his lawyers can offer a more robust defense of his actions.

“When people see the other side of the story, they will see the Bob McDonnell that they liked, that they know, that they approved of at 62 percent,” the Republican said. “I am 100 percent convinced that he did not do anything illegal.”

If McDonnell himself seems unmoored from any particular political identity, he sounded Tuesday, for the first time in months, like a person with real fight in him. McDonnell kept quiet on the investigation for much of 2013 — for legal reasons and much to his personal frustration, friends say. When he began to break his silence last fall, the governor sounded a fatalistic note in an October interview, telling POLITICO that he was confident he had not broken the law, but adding of the investigation: “There are some things I just can’t control.”

Now, with not just his political career but his personal reputation in mortal danger, McDonnell said in his televised statement that he would use “every available resource and advocate, for as long as it takes” to clear his name.

A motion filed by his attorneys in federal court contended that McDonnell’s “predecessors engaged in indistinguishable conduct,” and that merely being a run-of-the-mill Richmond pol doesn’t automatically make someone a criminal.

“It is … routine for Virginia politicians to accept large gifts and donations, and the mere acceptance of such gift cannot support an inference of corrupt intent,” the McDonnell lawyers argued.

Peter Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor in the Public Integrity Section, said it remains to be seen how the public will react to the indictment of a politician whose image — however hazy or mercurial — was never “one of corruption and sleaze.”

“This is not Blagojevich,” Zeidenberg said, referring to the incarcerated former Illinois governor. “This is someone who’s well-liked by Democrats and Republicans and not considered a venal, grubby politician. The conduct is problematic, but is it a slam dunk? I wouldn’t say so.”

Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.

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