Jim Lucas doesn’t get it. That’s not surprising.
The Republican state representative from Seymour long has taken pride in being clueless, insensitive and self-absorbed.
For other men, what happened to him on May 31 might have served as a wake-up call.
He was drunk that night. He got behind the wheel of his truck, lost control on a state highway and careened down an embankment onto I-65, taking out guardrails in the process.
His descent left him going the wrong way on the interstate. He continued going the wrong way, exiting the freeway by driving up the entrance ramp. His truck by this time had only one functioning wheel.
He hid it behind a local business, then began walking down the road. He was arrested and spent part of the night in jail.
His blood alcohol level was nearly 25% over the legal limit. Toxicology reports also found that he had significant amounts of THC — the active ingredient for marijuana — in his blood.
So, the lawmaker likely was both drunk and high while driving that night.
He received a sweetheart deal from the local prosecutor.
Lucas escaped jail time, paid about $3,900 in damages and had his driving privileges suspended for 180 days, along with his right to carry weapons.
Yes, he was armed with both a loaded gun — with a round in the chamber — and a knife on the night he was both drunk and high as he caromed across two different highways.
After he received his light wrist slap from the prosecutor, Lucas dismissed the whole thing as a “hiccup.”
Fortunately, a good local newspaper in Lucas’ district — The Republic in Columbus — did the digging the prosecutor should have done.
A reporter there found an earlier Lucas drunk driving arrest and guilty plea from 1988. He also reported on the toxicology findings.
Lucas responded to the first report by demanding to know if the reporter had proof — the reporter did — and then lashing out at the journalist for some unspecified transgression against the greater good. He also blasted the reporter for publishing the facts about the THC in Lucas’ blood that night.
Between the two Republic reports, Lucas returned to social media, taking a page from former President Bill Clinton by offering a non-apology apology and defiantly saying he was never going to discuss May 31 again.
If he had taken responsibility for what he’d done — and that he very likely could have killed someone that night — Lucas would have started by apologizing, humbly and with genuine contrition, to the citizens of his district for betraying their trust.
And he would take their questions about his conduct that night for as long as they had questions to ask. That’s his job.
As a state representative, he is their servant. Not their master.
Then there’s the issue of how he responded to the reporter from The Republic. The fact that he criticized another human being for telling the truth says an awful lot about Jim Lucas.
Lucas says his judgment was “horrible.”
It was, but that’s not the only problem here.
My grandfather, a lifelong Republican but of the Abraham Lincoln variety, taught me that lying to evade the consequences or criticism for my own actions, particularly when I was in the wrong, was a defect of character, not an error in judgment.
Lucas owes that reporter an apology, too.
It wasn’t the reporter’s fault that Jim Lucas decided to drive both drunk and high May 31.
But expecting Lucas to develop a conscience and a sense of responsibility this late in the day might be expecting a bit much. He doesn’t get it. Never has and never will.
Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fisher, and his GOP colleagues should be a different story.
If they continue to allow Lucas to sit among them, they can spare us any future lectures on personal responsibility and accountability. We’ll know they don’t mean a word of it.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students, where this commentary originally appeared. The opinions expressed by the author do not reflect the views of Franklin College. Send comments to [email protected].
