Farewell to the Luv GuvSHORTLY before Robert Bentley resigned as Alabama’s governor on April 10th, the television crews assembled outside the state capitol were joined by a group of visiting schoolchildren. Wisely their teachers hurried them along. “Cherchez la femme,” one passing tourist commented to another, astutely. For a year the governor had denied having an affair, despite the emergence of grubbily incriminating evidence, vowing to stay in his post. But after being booked into the Montgomery county jail, then pleading guilty to two campaign-finance misdemeanours, Mr Bentley returned to the capitol to announce that he had indeed quit.
He hadn’t seemed the type: either to combust in disgrace, or to become governor in the first place. A dermatologist and—before his fall—a deacon of the First Baptist church in Tuscaloosa, Mr Bentley was almost 60 when he was first elected as a state representative in 2002. He did not appear destined for bigger things. But his grandfatherly demeanour and family values shtick, plus a crowded Republican field, helped him to the governorship in 2010; his devoted wife Dianne baked cookies for the campaign...Continue reading
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