Jim Black crossed the line – and fell off a cliff.

Like too many politicians, Black didn’t see that some old political plays are out of bounds today.

North Carolina politics has long been built on friends helping friends, as Rob Christensen pointed out in The News & Observer. But the rules have changed. Some politicians understand that, and some don’t.

There are two kinds of politicians:

• The ones who know where the line is between political friendship and corruption, and don’t cross it.

• The ones who are too busy, careless, clueless, overconfident – whatever – and go too far.

One thing is always true of those who cross the line. Like Black, they don’t understand the power of the press. Black never was comfortable with the press. He was an inside player, oblivious to how inside politics looks to the outside world. That made reporters and their editors suspicious.

What’s more, Black, like a lot of politicians, didn’t learn how an aggressive press could actually help him.

When a reporter starts sniffing, something stinks. And a smart politician cleans it up right away. Black didn’t have that sixth sense.

Had he acted years ago, Black might have forestalled all this. When the press first suggested that he was protecting the video poker industry in exchange for campaign contributions, he could – and should – have cut the cord. He should have told the video poker boys: I can’t help you anymore. Neither of us can afford even the perception of wrongdoing.

But he didn’t. So reporters kept digging. And the digging attracted the attention of powerful political appointees in the United States Department of Justice.

So now Jim Black is disgraced. His end will eclipse the good he did: the good bills and the good budgets he got through a fractious House – and his rescue of House Democrats after the 1994 debacle.

It is an epic, even Shakespearean tragedy. And a warning.

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