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The buck stops with Van Hollen
Someone had better inform Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen that his job entails more than making plans to attend the Republican National Convention this summer.
The attorney general, whose office has been bogged down for weeks with an apparently serious discussion of whether Van Hollen needs to be protected by Wisconsin law enforcement officers when he attends the party shindig in St. Paul, has gotten so lost in the details of his social schedule that he is failing to manage his office.
The latest fiasco involves an investigation of whether former Department of Administration Secretary Marc Marotta improperly influenced a building contract. Van Hollen admitted he was so disengaged from the investigation that he does not know whether a proper probe was conducted.
Van Hollen is suggesting that the investigation was mishandled.
But who, ultimately, was in charge of the investigation? J.B. Van Hollen.
Under whose watch was it shut down? J.B. Van Hollen.
In keeping with what may be the most disturbing of the many disturbing patterns that have developed in the Justice Department since Van Hollen took over, the attorney general is blaming his professional staff for the fact that he has failed to keep on top of even the most high-profile cases entrusted to the department.
What Van Hollen does not seem to understand is that the time to get concerned about the handling of a major investigation you supervise is before that investigation is closed -- not eight months after the fact. And certainly not when it looks as if you are griping about the failures of others because you feel the need to deflect attention from your own mistakes and misdeeds.
This newspaper was more aggressive than any other in Wisconsin in calling for investigations of the Doyle administration. We celebrated and encouraged former Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager's willingness to pursue the matter.
One of the things that encouraged us about the election of Van Hollen was the fact that, as a supposedly serious prosecutor and a Republican, we felt that he would be meticulous about pursuing allegations of wrongdoing within the Doyle administration.
Instead, Van Hollen dropped the ball.
And now he is trying to blame everyone but himself.
Harry Truman was right when he said that it is a top administrator's job to say "the buck stops here."
J.B. Van Hollen's determination to pass the buck does not pass the smell test. He even tried to blame his predecessor -- the woman who went against her own party, at immense personal and political cost to herself -- for gaps in the investigation.
The problem, for Van Hollen, is that the case was not closed on Lautenschlager's watch. She opened it and pursued it.
The case was closed on Van Hollen's watch.
Lautenschlager did her job.
She did it so well that her fellow Democrats determined to defeat her for re-election in the party's 2006 primary.
If J.B. Van Hollen is defeated in the next election, it will not be because he was too good an attorney general. It will be because Wisconsinites want the Department of Justice to be headed by an adult who takes charge and takes responsibility.
Andy Manis/Associated Press
Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen is trying to pass blame to everyone but himself.
