01:00 AM EST on Thursday, November 10, 2005

The most striking thing about the accidentally (we assume) broadcast remarks about Governor Carcieri by casino promoters Guy Dufault and Michael Levesque is just how pulp-fiction these men are. Hungry for the fees that powerful organizations pay them to push their interests, and eager to look like big shots, they engaged in swaggering locker-room talk about destroying the governor through unsubstantiated innuendo about his private life. They came off as both menacing and pathetic.

The tough-guy remarks, especially Mr. Dufault's (the inadequately ruthless Mr. Levesque seems a hapless second banana), gave Rhode Islanders a nasty view into how politics is sometimes conducted: with personal attacks, in place of thoughtful, if impassioned, discussion of issues.

The saddest thing is that such incidents discourage good people from entering the hurly-burly of public life. How many honest and public-spirited citizens want to spend time in a world inhabited by the likes of Guy Dufault and Michael Levesque (who are, respectively, a Democrat and a Republican)? More Lysol, please!

Not that this should have been much of a surprise. Guy Dufault's arrogance, cynicism and ruthlessness are well known. Indeed, they have even been seen as entertaining in a state with an excessive tolerance for bad behavior in the political class.

Nevertheless, the angry governor, in denouncing the duo's remarks, unfortunately got carried away and charged the Narragansett Indian Tribe, the Harrah's casino company, and public-employee unions with supporting a Dufault-directed sleaze campaign against him. That's very unlikely, if only because such a campaign can so easily boomerang. The casino backers and union leaders were, we would guess, mortified by the Dufault-Levesque talk. Indeed, the Las Vegas-based Harrah's has canceled Mr. Dufault's lucrative lobbying-and-consulting deal. Killing its deal with Mr. Levesque would further benefit the state.

Rhode Islanders would also benefit if the public-employee unions stopped funding Mr. Dufault's activities. In particular, do the state's public-school teachers still want to be associated with someone like Guy Dufault? What a civics lesson! For that matter, why would any group pushing public-policy positions and concerned about its reputation have anything to do with Messrs. Dufault and Levesque?

Finally, Rhode Island's civic life would benefit if, in response to the attack on the Republican governor, the Democratic House Speaker William Murphy and Senate President Joseph Montalbano joined the Democratic Lt. Gov. Charles Fogarty and Democratic Party Chairman William Lynch in denouncing the politics of character assassination, as practiced by Guy Dufault.