Just as former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno reached down to our region for a lawyer and media consultant after the child sex abuse scandal exploded into the news in November, the university that formerly employed him has also handpicked a local legal heavyweight to steer it through the tough times.

The Centre Daily Times reported over the weekend that the university had hired Lanny Davis, a local attorney and former special counsel to President Bill Clinton to help manage its legal and public affairs. (Full disclosure: I went to Penn State). The Nittany Lions really couldn’t have chosen a guy better equipped to handle toxic clients — in the past, Davis has represented a Honduran coup government and the dictator of Equatorial Guinea.

Wrote The New York Times of Davis’ past in late 2010:

Many lobbying firms have clients with checkered records. Indeed, those are the people who need help the most in Washington. But many activists — and even some government officials — said the list of clients in Mr. Davis’s firm stood out.

“You look at who he represents, and the list is just almost unseemly, tawdry,” said Meredith McGehee, a lobbyist for California WIC Association, which represents agencies that serve poor women with infant children, and who faced off against Mr. Davis this year in the fight over baby formula, which his client won. “It is an illustration of what most of the American people think of as wrong with Washington.”

Davis says he offers services that everyone in a pickle is entitled to. That’s certainly true, and given the uphill battle Penn State faces in overcoming this scandal, Davis is probably the best local guy it could have gotten.