Drawing the Line: An Interview with Jeff Smith

When Jeff Smith walks briskly into my classroom, his charisma immediately lights up the room. It’s the same charm that once enlivened many students when Smith was a political science professor at Washington University just a few years ago. I immediately recognize his most famous characteristic: short stature (which never kept Jeff, a great point guard, off the basketball court). And next the voice: high and sharp. He wears blue jeans and a sweat-soaked oxford shirt—he had ridden his bike to campus on this muggy April Monday to speak to my public policy class.

A former Missouri State Senator, Smith is an unconventional politician. I should say former politician. Despite his once promising repute among state Democrats, where he was a leading voice in the Senate on urban school reform among other things, Jeff’s career in public service is over. In 2009, he pled guilty to two federal counts of obstruction of justice tied to his 2004 unsuccessful U.S. congressional campaign. He spent the majority of 2010 in a Kentucky federal prison.

Smith became a walking cliché—another politician upended by scandal and corruption. However, the subtlety and haziness of his crime is a cautionary tale for anyone with political aspirations.

The case revolved around a seemingly inconsequential, yet certainly illegal campaign maneuver. Smith authorized longtime friend and political ally Steve Brown to pay a third party, named Skip Ohlsen, to distribute a mailer attacking Democratic primary opponent Russ Carnahan. On the campaign trail, Smith had lambasted Carnahan for his absenteeism in the Missouri State House, but the story did not pick up. When Brown and Smith’s other aides approached him claiming somebody outside the campaign also wanted to question Carnahan’s voting record, Smith gave the implicit go-ahead. In campaign language, it’s called an independent expenditure. But when Smith’s campaign began communicating with Ohlsen about funding for the mailer, it was no longer independent, and no longer legal. By federal election law, Smith was required to attach his name to any literature the campaign paid for, but he did not.

This kind of shady campaigning is an unmistakable reality of today’s political system. And at the time, the decision did not have much significance to the Smith campaign. “I thought about the postcard for five minutes during the campaign,” he tells me in an email, “And about the same amount of time afterwards.” After all, Smith was working tirelessly to defeat the more recognizable Russ Carnahan for the House seat vacated by Democratic titan Dick Gephardt. Carnahan was a familiar name, part of a Missouri political dynasty. Smith was a nobody. To our class, he jokes about how his own grandmother would not donate to his fantasy campaign (Smith needed family donations to jumpstart his efforts and attract more lucrative donors). His improbable run became a youth-oriented, grassroots campaign that was even documented in a film, Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?, which was shortlisted for an Oscar. Smith lost to Carnahan by less than two thousand votes—an impressive beginning to an auspicious political career. Either way, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) went searching for the underwriter of that postcard. Smith presented a false sworn affidavit. He denied having any knowledge of who was responsible for the mailer or who provided its funding.

I asked Jeff about the psychology of that decision. After all, he could have just admitted it and paid a negligible fine. It would have been a slap on the wrist, a non-story—two sentences on the back pages of the St. Louis Beacon. Not even close to a headline that would bring him statewide or even national infamy, and certainly not the kind of misconduct that could end his political career. But as the maxim goes, it’s not the crime it’s the cover-up. “I wanted to protect my staffers who had dealt with Skip Ohlsen, and I wanted to turn the page on the campaign (I was about to leave town and go to New Hampshire to teach for a year). I had worked 18 hours a day for 12 months, spent much of my savings, and lost very narrowly.”

It’s surprisingly easy to sympathize with Smith. He ran an impressive campaign, committed (perhaps) just this one seemingly minor sin, only to lose in a photo finish. As Smith puts it, “I was exhausted.” It was inconceivable that the postcard could ever come back to bite him. He was ready to move on with his life. Now, I don’t mean to exonerate Smith. While he’s undoubtedly remorseful, he can come off as rather glib, which is perhaps why he has received so much flak for a lack of contrition. “I had doubted it would ever actually be mailed, since I didn’t trust the man who did it [Ohlsen] to follow through.”

Finding no tangible connection between Skip Ohlsen and the Smith campaign, the FEC closed its investigation in 2007. But it was reopened in 2009 upon Ohlsen’s strange indictment for gun charges and mortgage fraud, which led the FEC right back to Smith and friend Steve Brown. In Ohlsen’s paranoia, he had secretly recorded conversations with Brown. Backs against the wall, Smith and Brown (now both Missouri lawmakers) lied once again. This time, they wouldn’t be so lucky. Ohlsen’s tapes in hand, the FBI went to Brown and promised no jail time if he would wear a wire to incriminate Smith, and he agreed.

Over the next few months, Brown accumulated all the evidence the prosecution needed. “Don’t say anything that you wouldn’t want a federal agent to hear,” Smith warns my class. “Even if it’s to your best friend.” College is the time where we are supposed to make lifelong friends, and Smith’s grim moral brings silence to the room. He then tells us about his prison job, loading and unloading food trucks in the prison warehouse. Smith is maybe 120 pounds on a good day, so I’m not surprised that after lugging 50-pound boxes for eight months, he says his back still hurts.

When he finishes his own personal account, Smith switches back into professor mode with ease. He offers a clever analogy from his incarceration. In the prison yard, a line was marked where the inmates were not allowed to cross. If you cross the line, the guard in the tower can shoot you. No inmate even goes close to the line, because the risk of stepping over obviously increases with your proximity. The same goes for politics and life. At first, I took issue with Smith’s ethics metaphor. Did Smith feel that he himself was merely toeing the line, only to become haplessly martyred for what all politicians do? Was his metaphor really a tacit promulgation of blamelessness? Simply put, was he actually sorry, or was he just sorry he got caught?

Weeks later, I am less concerned with his level of penitence. Smith has been sufficiently vilified in the press as the poster boy for corruption, and that is not my goal. Smith did something that we all do: he made an inconsequential lie. I don’t think Smith is a bad person. I think he is a good person (and a great public servant) who did a bad thing. Mostly, I am troubled when I think about how many politicians make the same seemingly trivial decision that Jeff Smith did. It’s the same fear my mother has when she stops me as I grab my keys and walk out the door. “There’s a lot of drunk drivers on Friday nights,” she reminds me. “So just be careful.” But most of those “drunk drivers,” maybe even the ones who have only had one too many, make it home with impunity. Smith is their political equivalence: He had one too many and lied, but unlike most fraudulent politicians (and tipsy drivers) he got caught. So while my mother fears those drunk drivers who won’t be pulled over, I worry about the politicians who never get busted.

The true question is whether or not we can and should demand that our public servants do what we civilians often cannot. “I think that a non-elected official who does what I did would be unlikely to serve prison time. That said, I think it is reasonable to hold public servants to a higher standard,” Smith maintains. And I agree with him. When you are elected to public office, you forfeit the basic human right to do what all do: lie.

This is not to absolve Jeff Smith. But the fact is, we all lie inconsequentially as Smith did. But while we lie to family, friends, or acquaintances, Smith lied to the feds. Rightfully, that yields greater consequences. 99% of our lies don’t catch up to us. Smith, a numbers guy, factored his lie into that overwhelming majority. “No, I did not ever think that signing the affidavit would come back to haunt me.” And like most of our daily lies, he didn’t even give it much thought. “There was no existential moral dilemma. The decision did not weigh on my mind.” Smith’s lie was an afterthought. It wasn’t a calculated political decision; it was psychological instinct. There was just no way he could ever be caught, so telling the truth was completely out of the question. The lie was basic human nature. After all, he only thought about it for “five minutes.”

When I ask Smith what his advice is for young people interested in politics, he puts it pretty simply: “Don’t go anywhere near the line because you may inadvertently cross it.” Had Smith not been caught, he could have had a spectacular political career. To me, that remains the biggest travesty of the Jeff Smith saga. He took a giant step over the line and paid for it in federal prison. But we Missourians certainly paid too—we lost a real change agent and an incredibly promising public servant.