"Garcetti Goes Down With His Ship" by Daniel Guss
@TheGussReport - Had LA Mayor Eric Garcetti considered Dostoevsky's words, "above all, don't lie to yourself," he might already be in New Delhi with the title US Ambassador preceding his name.
Instead, Garcetti refused to participate in US Senator Chuck Grassley's recent investigation, which concluded that it was "extremely unlikely" that the mayor was unaware of alleged sexual harassment and racist comments by his aide Rick Jacobs that made his office a hostile work environment.
Garcetti had to stay silent during Grassley’s investigation because he had already claimed under oath that he knew nothing, saw nothing and had said nothing when questioned about the allegations during his Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
If only Garcetti recognized he had an escape hatch from this self-induced mess.
He needed to offer a simple mea culpa: I don't know how I missed it, but there are too many reports of misconduct in my office, so there must be an element of truth to them. I should have been more aware. I could have done better. But I failed and I am sorry.
Instead, Garcetti allowed accusers, and Jeremy Bernard, an Obama administration official, to further define him as untrustworthy and uncheck a lifetime of boxes that only the LA media and DC elites swallowed.
Do you think Senate investigators didn't notice Garcetti's outlandish claim earlier this year that "I held my breath" while posing maskless for photos with Magic Johnson and San Francisco Mayor London Breed during the NFL playoffs? It confirmed that Garcetti is willing to lie about anything to anyone, no matter how childish and irrational.
A few weeks ago, this column predicted that Garcetti or the White House would wait until late on a Friday to withdraw Garcetti's plenipotentiary nomination. It might as well be this week because Garcetti has also killed any chance of a future appointment to a Cabinet opening or Senate vacancy that he has no chance of winning in an election.
Before too long, Garcetti will disappear from the public eye until perhaps the 2028 Olympics comes around, at which point the LA Times will wax adoringly about what a great mayor it wants us to believe that he was, considering that it endorsed him for both of his mayoral terms, and dutifully floated him as governor, as president and as HUD secretary before his ambassador nomination went off the rails.
Just don't hold your breath waiting for a mea culpa from the Times, either.
But do you know what is so ironic about this for Garcetti?
On paper, he is sufficiently qualified to be an ambassador, like former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is, and former Boston Mayor Ray Flynn was, ambassador to Japan and the Vatican, respectively.
It's what we do with former mayors, corporate titans and children of presidents. They are rewarded with ambassadorships, while Garcetti managed to lie his way out of this one simply because he’s been doing it for so long without ever being held accountable.
Until now.
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(Daniel Guss, MBA, was runner-up for the 2021 Los Angeles Press Club journalism award in the Activist Journalism category. In 2020, he was runner-up for Best Online Political Commentary. He has contributed to Mayor Sam, CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star News, Los Angeles Downtown News, and the Los Angeles Times in its Sports, Opinion and Entertainment sections and Sunday Magazine, among other publishers.)