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Marc Dann had a fool for a client.

Listening apparently to no one but himself, initially Ohio's attorney general thought he could do stupid things and then plead stupid and that the Democratic Party — and voters — would forgive him. Then, this week, he tried to negotiate the terms under which he would resign, apparently thinking he could dictate if and when the long arm of the law could investigate his office.

It's tempting to write the man off as stunningly arrogant. But he can't be that full of himself. Rather, he behaved like a cornered rat, one who can't think straight when he's in trouble. (If somebody told you, "I'll resign if you call off your dogs," wouldn't that make you even more worried about what was going on that you didn't know about? And this guy was the state's top prosecutor?)

Mr. Dann has been brought down not because he had to admit to an affair with a young staffer, or even because close personal friends he hired stand accused of being brutes and/or abusing their power. Those matters, of course, are important. But the bigger problem is the cumulative list of things that have happened in the less than a year and a half that Mr. Dann has been in office — his hiring choices, the ignorance he has professed and admitted to, the impulsive and reckless judgment he has shown.

Mr. Dann, undoubtedly, can convince himself that he had become sport for Republicans, the media and even Democrats. Unquestionably, Republicans have been plotting how to exploit every miscue that has ever happened in his office from now and until forever. Not shockingly, the media have staked out his every move. Meanwhile, Democrats are so humiliated they've been obsessed about making sure they appear even more outraged than Republicans.

There could have come a time when the Democrats would look bad for insisting on rushing toward impeachment, forgoing serious deliberation about how to approach a very big deal in a democratically elected government — even if you think that Marc Dann deserves to be run out of office. After all, they had their political motives.

But events overtook that concern. When, on Wednesday, May 14, investigators and State Highway Patrol officers were descending on his office and seizing equipment and restricting access, the situation had clearly become untenable. Having an attorney general's office subject to that sort of embarrassment and shame — well, you have to feel for the good people in the office who are doing their jobs in spite of the boss.

There is no silver lining to the sorry mess. An important office has had its credibility tarnished because of the person at the top and a few rogues. The Democrats, who wanted to be seen as the antidote to Republicans who had gotten drunk on their dominance, have swiftly had their claim to being reformers undermined. Republicans have spent an inordinate amount of effort figuring out how to take advantage of a situation without appearing hypocritical when Tom Noe of "Coingate" fame hasn't been in prison long enough yet to even ask for clean sheets.

If Mr. Dann had resigned sooner and apologetically, he still would be in a bad way and facing serious questions. But hanging on, in the face of so many criticisms that he had to know were valid, would have been about political lunancy, more than leverage.

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