Marsha Coakley — she was attorney general before she wasn’t attorney general before she was attorney general.
After all these years as a “prosecutor,” Marsha is baffled by a mystery of her own making. In a one-on-one debate with her Republican opponent Charlie Baker yesterday, Marsha flatly stated that she was not the attorney general of the commonwealth in 2008.
But somebody named Coakley was.
Which raises the question, if she didn’t cash the checks, who did?
Was this a case of identity theft, which is a federal crime, at least if you’re a U.S. citizen? (If you’re an illegal, well, as we all know, technically it is not illegal to be illegal in Massachusetts.)
Could it be that Marsha Coakley is the first undocumented attorney general in the history of Massachusetts?
This enigma — “The Case of the Missing Attorney General” — unfolded Tuesday night, when she went after Baker for the $1.7 million that he made running Harvard Pilgrim in 2008. She was shocked, shocked.
But then one of the other candidates pointed out that as AG she had oversight over the contract. That shut her up, until yesterday morning, when the issue came up again. An exasperated Baker pointed out that “she was perfectly happy to sign off on it when I was the CEO there and she was the attorney general.”
“Except I wasn’t the attorney general then,” she said, smiling at the blinding brilliance of her retort. “Unless I’m wrong, Charlie, I wasn’t the attorney general when this happened, so I didn’t sign off on it.” She gave out that strange Joker-like laugh of hers, and then shrugged theatrically.
“2008,” said Charlie, like a cat toying with a mouse. “2008 — were you the attorney general then?”
“Yes I was.” The Jack Nicholson smile was gone.
“That’s when I made $1.7 million,” he said.
“But I don’t give approval to those — you know that Charlie.”
In other words, Excuse No. 1 was that she wasn’t the attorney general. When that one blew up, she pivoted to Excuse No. 2 —that she was the attorney general, but she couldn’t do anything about it.
Marsha Coakley — to a battle of wits she comes unarmed. But as dim as she is, even Marsha realized that it’s not cool to come down with amnesia in front of TV cameras and a live audience.
So she started babbling about how she first became interested in executive compensation. But the fact that she was talking about an affirmative-action hire left her as tongue-tied as a Kennedy. Being too PC to mention the black man’s name (Cleve Killingsworth) she struggled to describe “the issue with the uh uh, the golden parachute in the Blue Cross, uh uh, chairman’s uh when he left, the compensation in that contract.”
Eleven million bucks, to be exact. It was positively Deval-esque is what it was, Marsha. But you couldn’t say that, could you?
Here’s some free advice, Marsha. For the next debate, send an empty chair as your surrogate. It can’t possibly do any worse than you’re doing.