That’s a lesson former state Rep. Bobby Badon (D-Carencro), who used to hold the seat our buddy Stephen Ortego now has, learned the hard way a couple of years ago. Badon was pulled over by a state trooper on his way home from a party, and he figured since he was in the Legislature he could BS his way out of the problem.

The trooper was, in a word, unmoved.

Badon managed to hire a DWI lawyer and beat the case, though shortly afterward he announced he wasn’t running for re-election – and for the time being his political career was and is over.

There’s no dashcam video of state Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater’s DWI arrest from back in December, and no indication Rainwater attempted to big-boy the local cop who busted him a few blocks from his house. Rainwater has handled the case with humility – he took his pinch like a man, and he didn’t lose his job over it.

But Jeff Perrilloux, who was the parish attorney in St. John, might wear the all-time crown for an unsuccessful attempt to pull rank on a state trooper when he got pulled over in late 2010. Lee Zurik has the story at WVUE-TV in New Orleans…

To be fair, Perrilloux clearly sounds like he’s embarrassed about the events of that night – which obviously, any respectable person ought to be; after all, we still don’t know how he ended up parked on the median on Airline Highway with his lights off, and dropping F-bombs on the state trooper when you’re handcuffed in the back seat of his patrol car isn’t exactly the best way to handle the situation. Getting a DWI ought to be an expensive inconvenience and a good way to learn a lesson about responsible behavior, as many of us have discovered. But it shouldn’t be the end of one’s life or the sum total of their value as citizens.

So we’re not going to beat up Badon or Perrilloux too badly over these videos. What we will say, though, is that it’s nice to see state troopers unmoved by attempts to intimidate or cajole them on the basis that the DWI suspects in question might be members of our political class.