By Bill Britt
Alabama Political Reporter
Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard, R-Auburn, has been indicted on 23 Felony counts of criminal acts.
Anyone who has read this publication over the last two years should not be surprised at Hubbard’s fall.
For the better part of those years, we here at the Alabama Political Reporter have chronicled the various activities that led to Hubbard’s arrest on Monday. In many cases our reporting has laid the groundwork for this investigation, so meticulously carried out by W. Van Davis, Matt Hard and the team from the Attorney General’s white collar crimes unit.
Hubbard’s failings as a legislator, leader and man are due to a conscience seared with the belief that power grants a moral autonomy that supersedes the law. This failure to understand the basic tenets of human nature and moral law were his undoing.
Hubbard never understood that a “radio” voice, slick suits and arrogance do not equate to power. He has been an actor in a play in which his meager talents were dwarfed by the size of the role.
A country boy from a small town in Georgia, Hubbard rose to the heights of political power in Alabama, due to, in part, to his shrewd cultivation of personal relationships with powerful men, his ability to manage public relations campaigns and a growing dissatisfaction with the state of our union, especially after the election of President Obama.
What Hubbard failed to understand in his ascent to power, was that no individual is above the law, that political power does not equal immunity, and that in America, few bullies retain dominion for very long.
His vanity publication, Storming the State House, is filled with self-aggrandizement, solicited praise and the revelation that Hubbard is an imitator, not an innovator and not a leader in the enduring sense of the word.
He is organized, ruthless and deceptive, but his need and lust for money is greater than all of his skills.
If there is one thing that comes as a revelation about Hubbard in these indictments, it is the fact that he is a failed businessman who needed wealthy, connected men to prop him up. It also shows that Hubbard’s entire business model is built around him using his office as Speaker of the House to remain solvent. At his core, Hubbard is a weak man, whose every action is based on how he might best benefit from any given situation.
Hubbard is a PR man through and though, even at the hour of his arrest he stage-managed a campaign—with the assistance of the State’s media elite —to portray himself as a victim and a man being unfairly targeted in a political prosecution.
He will continue to scream political prosecution without ever naming who is working against him. Is it Luther Strange, the AEA or just me? This is the behavior of a deviant mind who seeks to deceive the public and manipulate justice. Aided and abetted by an unscrupulous attorney who will say anything for a dollar.
The only thing political about the process is that Hubbard used his political power to enrich himself personally.
Hubbard will go down in Alabama history as a carpetbagger, who came to our State and mercilessly pillaged the system.
Perhaps the only solace in this whole nasty affair, is that, so far, our system of justice is working.
