From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Best friend who won't tell you isn't your best friend
by Pat Gauen

updated: 03/22/2003 10:42 AM

"Maybe it's a bluff," I told our son several days before the shooting started overseas. "Maybe we'll turn around and attack France instead." Chris laughed a little, then more when I added, "Two Marines with a can of Mace and a Humvee could take Paris."

Shame on me. I was no fan of the rude French years before they refused to support the war against Iraq. But France is now such an easy target for ridicule that there is no sport in the humor. And my shame runs even deeper.

If the people of France really think we're wrong, would they be better friends to blindly fall in line behind us? Is that what real friends do? Or is it better to give a pal your unvarnished opinion? And the benefit of your morals?

My mind is really on Chicago, not Paris, and a fellow named Scott Fawell, whose conviction Wednesday on federal racketeering charges might have been bigger news if the public's attention had not been occupied elsewhere.

Fawell was a top aide, campaign manager and trusted confidante for former Gov. George Ryan, as I suppose you may know. His predicament - their predicament - has a lot to do with not being honest friends.

"Friends don't let friends drive drunk," the safe-driving slogan says. Well, friends don't let friends run amok, either. But these two did.

When Ryan was secretary of state, some of his official workers did campaign work on the public's time, using materials paid for with the public's dime. Fawell knew it, a jury decided. Knew it and supported it. Supported it and hid it. Hid it and left his boss-mentor-friend Ryan holding ultimate responsibility in the court of public opinion if not also one day soon in a court of law.

For his part, Ryan either condoned or failed to notice widespread corruption under his nose. Or maybe he just didn't want to smell it. The George Ryan he claimed to be in the campaign ads darned well would have known and darned well would have kept his people straight. But those were just ads.

Fawell and Ryan let each other down.

Lots of Ryan's old friends did tell the truth over the past several years, or so they swore in court. They laid out a disgusting tale that included the sale of truck drivers licenses to unqualified people in exchange for bribes, some of which ended up in Ryan's campaign fund.

It was a story of crooks who not only shredded evidence of what they had done, but bought bigger shredders to keep ahead of the approaching FBI.

If it feels like a bunch of 10th graders flushing cigarette butts down the toilet of the boys' room, it was. This was as if the snottiest, sneakiest kids in the high school were openly wielding the power of a principal who either didn't notice or didn't care.

Fawell's defense was, more or less, that everybody does it. Yet prosecutors generally figure that's an excellent reason to nail the ones you can catch and hang their carcasses high to scare those who follow. Fawell's would be the 59th carcass, I believe.

The leaders we need are the ones who do the right thing despite fear, not because of it.

Glenn Poshard, the Democrat who ran against the GOP's Ryan for governor in 1998, was virtually out of money and well behind in the polls when I watched him one day trying to get an endorsement from the Illinois Farm Bureau.

Behind closed doors that to my surprise were opened to me, the group's leaders told Poshard they wanted him to work for removing local control over expansion of major livestock farms. Locals, they said, are too emotional about pollution.

Poshard said no. He said it politely, but he said it flatly: No. Not for a vote. Not for all their votes. He told them he was their friend, but he also made it clear that he was not the kind of friend who sells out his beliefs.

It's a shame for Fawell that he worked for Ryan and not Poshard. Oh, he wouldn't have gotten to be the ultimate insider at the Governor's Mansion. Or the chief power broker for the state's most important politician. But then again, he also wouldn't be headed for prison.

Pat Gauen can be reached by phone at 800-365-0820, ext. 8154, by fax at 314-340-3050, by mail at the Post-Dispatch, 900 North Tucker Boulevard, St. Louis, Missouri 63101, or by e-mail at pgauen@post-dispatch.com.