Jim Traficant, 1941–2014

Jim Traficant, who served 17 years in the House of
Representatives and then seven years in the federal pen, might be
the only congressman ever to start a prison riot. I can’t say for
sure that there weren’t any others, and for that matter I can’t say
for sure that the Traficant riot really happened. But here, for the
record, is what Traficant
told Greta Van Susteren after his release in 2009:

Traficant: Before long, I was in the hole.

Van Susteren: For what?

Traficant: Well, they said I caused a riot. I asked a question of
some jackass C.O. over there, some officer who was so dumb he could
throw himself to the ground and miss. But anyway…

Van Susteren: What was the question?

Traficant: I forget what it was.

Van Susteren: Like what? I mean, can you give me an idea—was
it…

Traficant: No. I said, “People can’t hear you. Speak up.”

Van Susteren: And you went to the hole for that?

Traficant: I went to the hole. But anyway, they said it caused
a riot. They shackled me and took me in front of the whole body
into some room over there and they put me in the hole.

Most of the attention that interview attracted focused on the
ex-congressman’s claim that his downfall had been engineered by the
State of Israel—and yes, that paranoid portion of the conversation
says a lot about Traficant’s worldview. But the prison-riot
exchange might be the ultimate Traficant tale, inasmuch as
different audiences can construe it as either the persecution
fantasy of a crooked loudmouth or the story of a man being punished
for little more than stating a simple truth. It is even possible to
read it as both, since crooked loudmouths have been known to state
uncomfortable truths from time to time.

Traficant’s years in prison, which followed a conviction for
taking kickbacks and for other sorts of graft, were not his first
time behind bars. As the sheriff of Mahoning County, Ohio, in the
early 1980s, he spent a little time in jail after he refused to
enforce some foreclosures, a populist gesture that endeared him to
a constituency with no love for banks. Elected to Congress as a
Democrat, he crusaded not just against bankers but against the IRS,
the DoJ, and the regulatory state. Apparently, his constituents
weren’t crazy about the feds, either.

That sort of rust-belt populism, which also included a strong
dose of economic nationalism, isn’t unusual in Traficant’s section
of the country. I certainly met many people with a similar
combination of views when I lived in Michigan. But their
perspective doesn’t ordinarily have a voice in Congress. Traficant
became that voice, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. He
was the sort of guy who’d spin loopy conspiracy theories in which
hidden forces were manipulating Attorney General Janet Reno by
threatening to reveal her secret dalliances with call girls. But he
was also one of the few congressmen to criticize Reno’s actions in
Waco in the
immediate aftermath of the assault that left dozens of
Davidians dead in 1993, well before it was widely accepted that the
government had screwed up. In the wake of those Waco comments, Bill
Kauffman
wrote that Traficant was “zany and frequently right-on,” which
was as good a way as any to describe a man who sounded like a nut
but at times really did speak truth to power.

Traficant wore a ridiculous toupée, made Star Trek
references on the House floor, spouted accusations that he couldn’t
back up, and ended up in jail. He was easy to mock, and plenty of
people mocked him. Even if you found his eccentricities charming,
you probably cracked your share of jokes about them. Here’s Matt
Labash, who profiled the guy 14 years ago and clearly enjoyed the
experience,
reacting to Traficant’s death:

Traficant…died as he lived: crushed beneath the
weight of The Machine. A tractor he was driving rolled over on
him.

The line is both tasteless and funny, not unlike the deceased.
The congressman himself might have gotten a chuckle out of it: Like
all the great flamboyant political figures, he was self-aware
enough to be in on the joke. “Why would you want to do a piece on a
jackass like me?” he asked Labash back in 2000. “Though,” he added,
“I am at the zenith of my jackasshood, I want you to know.”

Bonus links: Other Reasoners who have offered
their thoughts on Traficant over the years include Jacob
Sullum (“blunt, bizarre, and often hilarious”), Jeremy
Lott (“a total nut job, albeit a highly amusing one”), and the
anonymous elves who assembled
this.