Sigh

There seems to be some media play about the upcoming release of the Barrett Report, the result of an Independent Counsel's investigation into whether former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros lied about his taxes, including information about payments to his former mistress. Apparently, the report will be very critical of the Clinton Administration for attempting to stonewall Barrett's investigation for fear of the political blowback it might have caused to Bubba and Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham.

Frankly, I'm not all that interested in any of this. But the resurfacing of Cisneros' name always awakens an old sadness for me.

You see, I was living in San Antonio when Cisneros was elected mayor in 1981. In a city that was politically split along racial lines, the amount of popular support he garnered was remarkable. The Hispanics loved him because he was, well, Hispanic, the first Hispanic elected mayor of a major city. The Anglos trusted him because he was a Harvard man, smart and articulate, and had real vision for shaking the city out of its backwater cowtown mentality. Virtually everybody in the city had the highest hopes for him and even then there was talk of how far he could potentially go in national politics.

So when his character flaws finally could no longer be hidden, the general sentiment of the place might almost have been described as heart-broken. (For those of you who don't know the story, Cisneros started catting around on his wife. The local press knew all about it for quite some time but kept quiet. However, as Cisneros' excuses for making runs to his mistress's place got more and more outlandish, they finally felt they had to say something. If memory serves, what broke the camel's back was that Mrs. C had to be hospitalized for some reason or another. Cisneros would claim he was going to visit her and then scoot over to his girlfriend's. After that, it all came out - the cheating, the money, the lying. Such a shame.)

On top of the actual cheating, what pained people was Cisneros' apparent inability to grasp the reality of what was going on. We used to go to a popular restaurant in town called Paisano's. It was run by a guy named Joe Cosniak. (To be known by Joe Paisano was something of a social step in those days.) The story I heard at the time was that Cisneros would call Joe, saying he wanted to bring his girlfriend over for a meal and was there anybody there who would know him. Joe, exasperated, would reply, "You're the mayor. Everybody knows you."

So you see, when I see stories like this surfacing again, it just reminds me of what might have been.

Sigh.