Here’s what Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has to say about the scandal over Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., nominating his mistress to be a U.S. Attorney without disclosing their relationship:
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said there was nothing unusual about Baucus’s recommendation of his girlfriend and former director of state operations, Melodee Hanes, to become a U.S. attorney in Montana.
“You know plenty of wives have worked in administrations,” Kerry told POLITICO. “Was it a conflict of interest for Liddy Dole to [work as a Cabinet secretary in two Republican administrations] when Bob Dole was in the Senate? Please, c’mon. You don’t think he recommended her?”
“By the way, Mitch McConnell’s wife was in the [Bush] administration — don’t you think he wanted her to do that?”
Sen. Dole married his wife in 1975 before she first went to work in the Reagan administration. Similarly, McConnell married former G.W. Bush labor secretary Elaine Chao in 1993, long before his presidency. In both cases these men were married and their relationships with their high-powered political wives were well-known. To make such comparisons is simply dishonest.
