UPDATED: Kathleen Kane has been indicted. Is it necessary to burn her at the stake, too?
Kathleen Kane's been a trainwreck as attorney general, but now that she's been indicted people are practically calling for her to be burned at the stake. Why is that?
Wow, that was weird. More than 90 percent of the online commenters and emailers agreed with me about Mayor Nutter and the Papal Panic of '15. Stopped clock, right?...so you know I'm going to come back today with an opinion that virtually NO ONE agrees with, and so here goes. It's hard for anyone to disagree that Kathleen Kane has been a trainwreck as Pennsylvania's attorney general. But now that she's been indicted, I don't think she should resign. Let her have her day in court...and keep her job.
Three points:
1. One meme that's been spread far and wide is that Kane was only elected in 2012 -- the state's first elected Democratic AG, and the first female -- because she's a woman. That's neither fair nor true. In a state that has an embarrassingly dismal track record of electing females to high office, Kane's gender did seem a plus, but that's not why she won. As a junior county prosecutor with no experience to suggest she could make the huge leap to attorney general, Kane hopscotched over other, more qualified women (and beat, in a primary, maybe the most decent man in Pa. politics, ex-congressman and Iraq veteran Patrick Murphy) not because she's a woman, but because she was rich. Kane's campaign received more than $2 million from her then-husband, trucking executive Chris Kane...and that's how she won. If you're outraged by Kane's on-the-job performance, you should be fighting to get Big Money out of politics.
* Today's outdated cultural reference.