A Manifesto For Government Reform Part 2 of 4

This is the second of a four-part article being serialized over 4 days.

Problem #2: Good Old Influence Peddling

Money has always been the grease the moves the wheels in politics. However, the blatant corruption and level of congressional dancing on the fine line of ethical misconduct is reaching a point not achieved since the Democrats maintained majorities in both houses. Goes to show that corruption is about the only bipartisan phenomenon in Washington. What to do, what to do? Here we can take a page from the conveniently recent and numerous corporate scandals. One of the things they have reminded us is that all the laws in the world aren’t going to change things if no one follows those laws to begin with. Corruption is, by definition, a flouting of laws. It is especially unsavory when the lawbreakers are the very people who write them in the first place. The answer here is less obvious but no less simple. Clearly, corruption begets corruption. In any organization, individuals are going to take their ethical cues from everyone else around them. If you are driving on the highway and everyone is going 65 mph you are far less likely to speed than if everyone is driving 90 mph. It is for this reason that I put much of the blame on the Bush Administration and the Republican majority in congress. Now I know that Democrats have an equally pathetic ethical track record but they are not currently the party in power. Yes, Wright, Rostenkowski and their cronies were the Tom DeLays and Bill Frists of their day, but the Democrats aren’t running the show right now, the Republican’s are. If you want marquee billing you’re going to have to accept responsibility when the critics pan you in Washington Follies. Since Republicans control three houses, they are the ones who must set the tone for what is tolerated in Washington. Beginning with the obscene election of 2000 it’s been “anything goes” in the ethics department ever since. Unlike redistricting however, this is a problem that the system will most likely remedy on its own when a truly rip-roaring angry electorate throws the incumbent Congress out of office, en mass.

That being said, lobbyists are out of control and desperately need to be reigned in while still allowing constituencies to have fair and equal access to members of Congress. The concept of lobbying is a good one. However, well-heeled lobbyists shouldn’t have better access than anyone else. If anything, lobbyist access should be based on proportional representation and the size of the constituencies they represent, not the number of perks they throw at legislators. A better effort needs to be made to remove big money from the political process. When drilling in Alaska (something that polls have shown a huge majority is against) becomes a likely political outcome simply because those in favor are deep-pocketed corporations; you know the current system isn’t working. In fact, in the current money-driven system, when individual interests go up against corporate interests, big business is going to win every single time. So the simple prescription is to make tougher laws (something Congress wants us to think it’s really good at) and increase oversight of both lobbyists and legislators. The current laissez-faire or “hands off” philosophy of government clearly doesn’t work. Contrary to what conservatives would like us to think, government oversight is necessary and probably one of the only areas of government that has actually gotten smaller under George W. Bush.


So why are we electing people to write our laws who clearly have nothing but contempt for them? This is the catch-22. We are doing so because the system is broken. But we can’t fix the system until our election process better reflects the will of the people. But our election process won’t reflect the will of the people until we fix it. And that, my friends, is the lovely little quandary our democracy is in.

To be continued...