Culture of Corruption

Washington D.C. is a culture of corruption. I don't use the term "culture" in the sense of "society", I use it in the sense of "a medium in which a disease or bacterium grows". It is a veritable petri dish of self serving back room deals and political wrangling, and it's all because of an age old truism: Power Corrupts.

The thing is, because of the very nature of the power corruption principle, those who HAVE the power are the ones most likely to be corrupt. Not because they are less moral or more corruptible, but because they have the corrupting influence and the power to make their own agendas come true.

The sad part is that neither party has shown themselves to be free of this influence, which is why I so often argue that the country is best off when different groups (political parties, whatever) control the different branches of government.

But all of what I've just written is self obvious to just about anyone who has ever stood in a voting booth staring at the switches wondering if it will really make any difference, and then metaphorically held their nose while pulling one of the levers. So why do I write it?

Because I'm getting sick of BOTH sides' arguments about the Jack Abramoff scandals going on right now, and it gives me the opportunity to put some things out there for everyone to look at. Two important facts which contradict what each side is trying to say:

1. The Jack Abramoff scandal is ENTIRELY a Republican scandal. The closest ties anyone can point to between Abramoff and any member of the Democratic party is that some people who were clients of Abramoff also donated money to some Democrats. The money was not DIRECTED by Abramoff, there does not appear to have been any quid pro quo with/for Abramoff or his clients for those donations. There is just coincidental business dealings. Claiming this particular scandal is bipartisan is like saying that if a teacher is caught selling the answers to a final exam to a student, that therefore EVERY student in the class is implicated in the cheating scandal. After all, they ALL took the same test, right? The fact is, right now the Republicans control just about everything. There is no power for the Democrats to do anything, there is no real reason for anyone to try to bribe them. Plus, Abramoff was part of the “K Street Project”, a project by which lobbyists were told by members of the Republican majority that they would lose their access to Republicans if they did any business with Democrats.


2. On the other hand, this doesn't mean that Democrats are the party of nobility, even if at the moment (for lack of corrupting power and/or opportunity) they are not involved in any major scandals. One has only to look back at the Newt Gingrich era Congress to see that. In the early 90's, the Democrats held a long standing majority in the Congress, and there was some clear evidence of corruption among the Democrats. Newt and is fellow Republicans sold themselves as the party of morality. Heck, President Bush even ran in 2000 on a platform of restoring honor and dignity to the White House (and how's that going, anyway?). But back to Newt and company, they crafted the “Contract with America” and did everything they could to hold themselves up as paragons of virtuosity and light, and yet it took them hardly any time at all to become corrupt themselves. Gingrich himself turned out to be having an extramarital affair with an intern at the same time he was lambasting the President at the time for... an extramarital affair with an intern.

What we learn from this is simple, but also important: "Power Corrupts" is more than just a tired slogan, it is a factual and measurable phenomenon. Like any disease or disorder, some are more susceptible to its influence than others, but most people will succumb to one extent or another.

Which is why we need self interest to coincide with national interest, and why I implore everyone to, in the absence of a real, moral, honest person running for office (almost an impossibility in today's political atmosphere), always vote for the party that's out of power.

Checks and balances are VITAL to keeping our country strong and good. Self interest seems to be all that keeps most of our elected officials checking and balancing. So as long as they consider themselves and "the other guys" to be enemies, we can rely on their sense of self interest to keep the other guys on their toes.

And that, cynical as it is to say it, is really all that keeps our country strong.

Liam.