The Capitol Hill Corruption Dance
By Sean Aqui | Related entries in General Politics, Law, News, Partisan HacksRefocusing attention on Republican corruption, a former Bush official has been found guilty in the Jack Abramoff probe.
David H. Safavian, a former Bush administration official with close ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, was found guilty today in federal court of four of five felony charges against him in connection with the Abramoff corruption and influence-peddling scandal….
Safavian, 38, a former chief of staff of the General Services Administration and top federal procurement officer, was accused of lying about a 2002 golfing trip to Scotland with Abramoff and obstructing an investigation by the GSA inspector general and other investigators. He was also charged with concealing his efforts to help Abramoff acquire control of two federally managed properties in the Washington area.
He could get up to 20 years in prison, as well as a hefty fine.
It will be interesting to see how the various corruption scandals play out as we lurch toward the November elections. The Abramoff probe is sexy because it’s a many-tentacled beast that helped bring down Tom DeLay and could yet ensnare other leading Republicans, notably Bob Ney. It’s organized corruption that springs directly from Republican efforts to ramp up fundraising and both co-opt and embrace lobbyists.
The Democratic scandals, on the other hand, are a series of inidividual incidents. William Jefferson suspected of soliciting bribes; Alan Mollohan growing suspiciously wealthy in a very short time. It’s personal greed, which speaks to the broadness of the “culture of corruption” on Capitol Hill but doesn’t implicate the entire Democratic Party the way Abramoff implicates Republicans.
But will voters care? And should they? Is that a distinction without a difference? Will voters blame the parties or the individuals? Or might they decide “a pox on both your houses” and stay home?
I think the difference is important. Democrats aren’t notably less corrupt per capita than Republicans, but in this case the corruption is concentrated in the Republican leadership. The Democratic leadership has many problems, but systemic corruption a la Abramoff isn’t one of them.
One might argue that the GOP is simply more efficient and open about its ravenous pursuit of cash, but that’s still a reason to prefer Democrats: they’re simply too disorganized at the moment to manage truly harmful levels of greed.
As long as the Democrats feel corruption is a winning issue for them, it will have a salutory effect: they will police themselves more vigorously in order to retain that political leverage. And their efforts to spotlight Republican corruption will force some discipline on the GOP, as well as keeping the issue in the public eye.
It worked for the GOP in 1994, when they swept a sclerotic Democratic majority from power. In a demonstration of the truism that power corrupts, it is now the Democrats’ turn to return the favor. The GOP, knowing the electoral power of the issue, managed to maintain its anticorruption discipline for several years; we can only hope that if the Democrats regain power in part because of an anticorruption platform, the same will hold true for them.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 20th, 2006 and is filed under General Politics, Law, News, Partisan Hacks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:17 pm
“Culture of Corruption” will only sway the true believers, those who already vote Democrat religiously. Unfortunetely the Democrats still have to run on those obscure things called “real issues” and sadly their platform is so liberal, nonsensical, or undefined that to call it a “plan” more than a “bulleted list of broad strategic goals” is to decieve.
The Democrats, if they regain power, will only try that much harder to screw us all over like the did with Clinton and his covorting across the globe, achieving nothing more than a grand production of smoke and mirrors for use by the administration. We need LESS liberalism, not more.