Keisling: Voters wanted an unpolished outsider, and with Kane that’s what they got

By Bill Keisling

Kathleen Kane: A spanner in the works

Let’s not forget what propelled Kane to statewide office: voters, nationally and in Pennsylvania, want to send outsiders in to shake things up.

by Bill Keisling

Last week Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane stepped before a podium in the state capitol building in Harrisburg and delivered one of the most memorable press conferences in years.

Reporters in the room nearly all expected Kane to say one thing: that she was resigning.

Instead, Kane took the microphone and told the press corps, which has thrown all objectivity overboard and aligned against her, in not so many words, “Up yours!”

She said she’d broken no laws, and would not resign.

Her legal troubles, she said, had been manufactured by a cadre of insiders and old boys, aided by their ethically challenged lapdog state newspaper reporters — many of whom, by the way, were sitting at this very news conference.

Many of these same men, she charged, had spent years on the state payroll chuckling over pornographic emails when they should have been going after Jerry Sandusky.

Kane’s main point was that she was doing the job voters elected her to do, and that there was no reason she should resign.

It was all quite delightful.

Kane’s press conference, I thought, was refreshing. It was certainly not your usual, sanitized press conference, hosted by a programmed politician.

It was something we’ve all been asking for: it was different.

Kane’s statement certainly was defiant and, some have complained, shrill, even ill considered, and off point.

But all those criticisms themselves are beside the point.

Many old hands have complained that Kane was not acting as a polished insider. But that’s precisely the point.

It helps to remember what put Kane in office, and why.

Kane after all did not run for state attorney general as a polished and experienced insider who was there to smooth things out, and cover things up.

To the contrary, state voters widely suspected that the polished insiders already in office — Gov. Tom Corbett had his cronies — for years had ignored the Jerry Sandusky child rape scandal, and God knows what else, so that they could skate to higher office.

When Kane ran for office in 2012, Gov. Corbett had hand picked another insider old boy for the attorney general’s job: Cumberland County DA David Freed. Freed himself was the son-in-law of another old boy insider, former state AG Roy Zimmerman.

In that election voters clearly wanted an outsider to come in and shake things up.

Kane is, and was meant to be, what the British would call “A spanner in the works.” That is, a monkey wrench tossed into the machine to stop its ceaseless and mindless churning and turning. To stop business as usual.

And that’s precisely what Kane has done. In the process, she’s driven the old boys in Pennsylvania government, the courts, and in the backwater state press, nuts. As she was supposed to do.

All this is bad news for insiders, like the pack reporters who filled the Kane press conference, and all others who spout conventional wisdom.

And we should expect more of this from voters, if what’s going on in national politics today is any indication.

As I write, two leaders for the Republican nomination for president are Donald Trump, a blunt-speaking reality show host, and a brain surgeon, Dr. Ben Carson.

On any given day, polls say, Trump and Carson are leaving their programmed and polished professional politician opponents in the dust.

A few days before Kane’s Pennsylvania press conference, Trump impoliticly and outrageously complained that a Fox News broadcaster had “blood coming out of her wherever.” (So there’s an element of political incorrectness and even misogyny at work.)

A few days later, Trump declared, “I wouldn’t care” if Ukraine entered NATO. “If (Ukraine) goes in, great. If it doesn’t go in, great.”

So much for traditional strategic thinking.

Trump then revealed he doesn’t have a military adviser. This, from a man who could find his finger on the nuclear button in a year and a half.

Yet Trump’s standing in the polls keeps rising. And yahoo voters by the droves seem to approve.

Who needs a military adviser? Who needs a speechwriter? Who needs political advisers? Just look at the mess all those insiders have gotten us into!

Voters, nationally and in Pennsylvania, clearly want to send unpolished outsiders in to shake things up.

Trump is “overwhelming” national journalism, traditional insider journalists complain. Insider reporters simply don’t know how to lay a glove on him.

In Pennsylvania — right or wrong, guilt or innocence aside — the same is very much true with Kathleen Kane.

Longtime state Democratic strategist Tony May appropriately hints at a backlash should insiders succeed in removing Kane from office, without so much as a trial, using insider tricks of the old boy network.

“Why should all of this matter to the average voter?” May asks.

“Because whether a criminal conspiracy exists or not – and it is a lot to ask of people to believe that such a widespread cabal does – there is a widespread network of voices calling on Kane to step down or some official action be taken to remove her from office before criminal adjudication of guilt or innocence.

“In other words, these individuals are calling for the nullification of the votes of more than 3 million citizens who elected Kane.”

There are a lot more outsiders where Kathleen Kane came from, and voters clearly are tired of business as usual.

Voters are tired not only of the insider old boys club, but the old media, insider reporters who want to see Kane gone without so much as a legal hearing.

They want to throw a spanner in the works.

In that respect, unlike many politicians these days, Kathleen Kane has kept her promise to voters: she has shaken things up.