To his credit, perhaps, McAuliffe has never sought to conceal who he is. Rather, he has proven to be so startlingly candid about his sociopathy that he saw fit to compile the details into a book. Demonstrating an alarming lack of understanding as to how normal people operate, McAuliffe proudly recounted in his autobiography no fewer than five occasions on which he had left his wife in distress in order to go raise money — one of which, astonishingly, came while she was giving birth to his daughter. This, it seems, is par for the course. In consequence, even endorsements of him end up sounding like denunciations. McAuliffe is “the ultimate political insider” and “a self-described wheeler-dealer,” the Washington Post observed in the course of announcing its support for his candidacy, and “his stock in trade has been playing the angles where access and profit intersect.” Nevertheless, the paper proposed, he takes “sensible stands on key issues.” Among those “key issues” was Medicaid. Is anybody surprised that in pursuit of his goal, McAuliffe reverted to type?

In one sense at least, there is a perverse logic to McAuliffe’s tenure. If, as they routinely tell pollsters, American voters believe all of their politicians to be intractably corrupt, there is a refreshing honesty in their wishing to elect those who are the most upfront about their flaws. And yet, one suspects that McAuliffe is the product of something more than just mass electoral candor. As the United States becomes more politically divided, the scope for charlatans and hirelings will inevitably increase, character and judgment being less important in the age of Leviathan than ideological conformity and naked self-interest. Last year in Virginia, Republican Ken Cuccinelli evidently scared just enough of the electorate to permit McAuliffe to take charge, voters who were fully aware of how likely their charge was to embarrass them electing to return him anyhow. That such a man should be anywhere near a seat that, at various points and in one form or another has been held by Sir Walter Raleigh, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe, is, historically speaking, rather distressing. That he should be the second governor in a year to find himself embroiled in a scandal does not bode well for the future. But if the machine rolls on unchecked, this is precisely what we should expect: sure, voters and power-players will say, he’s as crooked as they come, but he’ll direct the behemoth in my favor.