Edwards is out, era ends "" or does it?

Edwards is out, era ends "" or does it?

Former Gov. Edwin W. Edwards signed papers this week that effectively ended his nine years of federal incarceration on a 2000 riverboat racketeering conviction. The last six months have been spent in house arrest with reporting requirements at a halfway house. That all ended Wednesday with the ex-governor's trip to a Cracker Barrel restaurant for breakfast without permission from federal authorities.

So ends a sorry episode in the life of a popular four-term governor and in the history of Louisiana. The entire Edwards prosecution, from the time he testified before a federal grand jury in 1998 to his release on Wednesday, spanned more than 13 years. We'd like to think that those 13 years might have provided a deterrent, or at least a useful lesson, to anyone tempted to stray from ethical standards of conduct in politics. Sadly, the evidence suggests otherwise.

The federal case against former Gov. Edwards was about corruption on a scale and with a brazenness that placed it in a class by itself. Former San Francisco 49ers owner Ed DeBartolo Jr. testified that he had paid $400,000 to Edwards in 1997 for the former governor's help in obtaining Louisiana's final riverboat casino license — only to feel another Edwards squeeze, a request for a $10,000-a-month retainer for Edwards' son, Stephen. A tugboat owner, Robert Guidry, testified that while Edwards was still governor, he negotiated a deal with a member of the Edwards administration to pay $1 million in cash, sometimes in $100 bills, for a hearing that might have let Guidry open a casino.

Edwards was already 72 by the time he was convicted. He is now 83. The book tour he plans to launch soon would have been a better way for the governor to spend retirement than being locked up for eight years in a federal prison.

If the crimes were brash and the prosecution well publicized, we'd expect other officials to notice and, maybe, to change their behavior. Sadly, the evidence suggests otherwise.

U.S. Rep. William Jefferson was convicted in a bribery scheme.

Locally, an audit found hundreds of thousands of dollars in questionable spending at the Opelousas Housing Authority, including money described as "severance" for former Executive Director Walter Guillory, even though it was paid by check to his consulting company. In Lafayette, the housing authority was criticized in an audit for throwing hundreds of thousands of federal dollars at employees who were supposed to be helping hurricane victims find a place to live. Back in Opelousas, yet another audit says that two employees stole from the city government for years before they were caught.

Some have compared the Edwards case to a Greek tragedy, in which a single flaw brings a great man low. But the purpose of a stage tragedy is to impart a lesson. And it's not clear that public officials learned anything from the tale of Edwin Edwards' crime and punishment.