Our View: Bergson must come clean on details of DUI arrestMayor's personal tragedy shows perils of alcohol/driving mix, especially in holidays
Mayor Herb Bergson was supposed to have been big news Sunday, and far beyond Duluth. For its national story on the problem of health-care benefits for retired public workers, the New York Times sought him out to feature, complete with photo, prominently in its Sunday business section.
Bergson made the spread, but he also made the front page of this paper, as well as the top story on every local TV news show, with the report of his drunken driving arrest. Where the Times displayed his beaming, proud smile, the local media have made famous the worst mug shot since Glenn Campbell posed for the police in Phoenix. If ever there was an illustration of just how far, and how quickly, needlessly foolish and irresponsible behavior can sink someone from the heights of achievement to the gutter of embarrassment, this was it.
What, for Pete's sake, was he thinking - not just by the time he'd raised his blood-alcohol level to twice the legal limit, i.e., stumbling drunk, and got behind the wheel of what used to be his four-door Mercury -- but even earlier Saturday when he decided it'd be OK to pop a few, knowing he was driving solo nearly 500 miles to Chicago or, all right, Eau Claire? That no one was seriously injured or killed is pure luck, and while no drunk driving episode is acceptable, this one was hardly a candidate for pleading "c'mon, officer give me a break. I'm only going home around the corner."
That's especially true because as a former police officer and detective Bergson knows that line all too well. How could he have forgotten the consequences for those who utter those words?
His action also has done wonders to torpedo progress he had been making politically after his unceremonious firing of chief aide Mark Winson, with the New York Times story beginning to give the impression that maybe the mayor from Duluth knew what he was doing after all. Along with recent driving-under-the-influence inductees Minnesota state Rep. Tom Rukavina of Virginia, Wisconsin state Rep. Frank Boyle of Superior and Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, Bergson has helped round out a rogues' gallery of local politicians who have done damage to the reputation of the entire region, to say nothing of the Democratic Party to which they all swear allegiance.
Bergson can begin to undo, or at least put into some perspective, his troubles by immediately coming clean on the details of the debacle before rumors and innuendo finish the job of burying him that he himself started on the road. Where and how much did he drink before setting out? With whom? Why did he think he could make the trip?
If there is any good that can come out of this it will be with the complete disclosure of what goes on in the mind of one who would take so deadly a chance - knowledge that the public desperately needs to understand to end this very real danger.
Bergson can thank his stars that he is around to share this woeful story, and to vow that it never happen again.
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