Marc Dann wasn’t always a buffoon.

He had no business being the state’s attorney general. Dann should have known that was too big of a responsibility for an irresponsible guy like himself, and Ohio voters shouldn’t have elected him.

But he could have been a decent legislator—maybe even a congressman if the opportunity had presented itself.

When Dann was appointed to the Ohio Senate in 2003, he looked like a man with a lot of potential.

“He had a lot of energy,” said Republican Sen. Jeff Jacobson of suburban Dayton. “He seemed to be equally enthusiastic about everything he got involved in, and he got involved in a lot of things.”

Republican Sen. Steve Stivers of Columbus said Dann was clearly something of a publicity hound—but one with a lot of genuine enthusiasm.

“He came in kind of like a bulldog,” Stivers recalled. “I certainly respected his hard work, and I think he came to the legislature with passion for the things he believed in.”

As a legislator, Dann was a populist and somewhat partisan. But he was also capable of thinking outside of the Democratic box.

In 2005, he teamed with fellow Democratic Sen. Eric Fingerhut to offer a creative counterproposal to the Republicans’ tax-reform plan. Rather than replace old business taxes with a new one, Dann and Fingerhut suggested scrapping the politically popular 21-percent income tax to make Ohio an even more business-friendly state.

“Imagine,” Dann said at the time, “going to Japan or Canada or Arkansas and saying, ‘Come to Ohio. We have no direct tax on business.’ That’s not necessarily what you’d expect from Democrats.”

The proposal was ignored by fellow Democrats as well as the Republicans, but it showed a nuanced approach to policy that Dann hasn’t otherwise been known for taking.

Jacobson said he made an effort to nurture a more measured political style in Dann.

“What he lacked was a sense of the give and take of the legislature, and I tried to help teach him how to settle for half a loaf,” he said. “And sometimes he was good about that, and sometimes he was less good about it.”

But while compromise is an important part of being a good legislator, it’s a lousy way to get press. And Dann craved the spotlight.

“He was willing to do what it took to get in the paper,” Stivers said.

Dann adroitly saw that the Tom Noe coin-investment scandal was a bigger problem for Gov. Bob Taft’s administration than many observers initially realized. When the Toledo Blade started running stories about Noe—a Republican fundraiser with strong connections to Taft and other GOP officials, Dann drew attention to the reports, putting them in the context of a larger “culture of corruption.”

At the same time, he also was drawing attention to himself, and that suited Dann just fine.

“He definitely wanted it all,” Stivers said. “He was focused on running statewide very quickly and moving up very quickly.”

By the end of ’05, Dann had become the state’s foremost authority on corruption in state government. He kicked off his campaign for attorney general, drawing comparisons between himself and New York’s AG—Eliot Spitzer, who successfully had cast himself as a crusader against corporate crime. As Spitzer was cruising to election as governor of the Empire State, Dann was promising to be Ohio’s version of Spitzer.

As everyone now knows, self-righteous politicians like Spitzer and Dann should come with a warning label.

For one thing, they’re insufferable. Nobody likes the tattletale in grade school, the overzealous RA in college or the morally outraged politician in state government.

In addition, outwardly sanctimonious people tend to have blinders on about their own faults. It’s not that they think they don’t have them, but they believe that the work they’re doing is so important they should be allowed to get away with a few personal foibles.

During the 2006 campaign, Dann’s opponents raised questions about his competence. First, Subodh Chandra in the Democratic primary and then Betty Montgomery in the general election tried to make an issue of a 2002 reprimand from the Ohio Supreme Court for mishandling an alimony case, but the issue never stuck.

Dann rolled to the nomination and then won an upset over the popular Montgomery that November.

But he wasn’t ready for the job. He hired friends from Youngstown with checkered pasts. He failed to project a sense of dignity, cussing out reporters and pimping out a state vehicle. And on the legal front, he looked sloppy. Even when he was taking on a legal fight that you might agree with, you had a nagging feeling that Dann didn’t really know what he was doing.

Dann agreed he was imperfect, but he made it clear he didn’t think his imperfections were a big deal. He insisted that when he was blasting Republicans every day in ’05 and ’06, his complaints were more substantive than the ones he was receiving as AG.

“Here’s what’s interesting,” he said back in January. “The criticism I got is highly personal and not at all policy oriented.”

You get the sense that he still believes that.

Dann knows he was wrong to carry on an extramarital affair with a staffer and that he should have done more to keep his buddy from menacing young women around the office. But he’s taking on predatory lenders and dishonest corporations as AG. Isn’t that what’s important?

Dann will resign sooner or later, marking the pathetic ending of what could have been a respectable political career. When the governor—and ultimately the voters—pick his replacement, one of the first qualities they should look for is humility.