Power Corrupts

I found this great editorial on the DeLay/Abramoff scandal from John Farmer of the Newark Star Ledger in my own paper this morning, Dishonest Abramoff talks, GOP trembles. He does a really good job of pointing out that the DeLay/Abramoff marriage was not what Newt Gingrich had in mind in 1994.

Most revolutions end badly. (See France, Russia and Cuba.) That's what's happening now to the vaunted Republican revolution that swept over Washington in 1994.

With Newt Gingrich delivering fiery denunciations of Democratic corruption and promising wholesale reform, Republicans broke the 40-year Democratic grip on the House of Representatives and swept into control of the Senate for the first time in eight years. A new era had dawned that would produce the most complete GOP control of the federal government -- Congress, the White House, the courts and the bureaucracy -- since the 1920s.

Republican power was absolute. And it did what absolute power usually does: It corrupted those who had it.

Gringrich points out that it's not about Abramoff as much as it is about Tom DeLay.

It took Gingrich, oddly enough, to put the scandal in perspective. "This is not one bad person doing one bad thing," he told a Washington Rotary Club luncheon this week. "You can't have a corrupt lobbyist without a corrupt member (of Congress) or a corrupt staffer at the other end. This is a team effort."

Abramoff was only the driving force behind DeLay's lust for power and domination.

DeLay wasn't content merely to control Congress. He wanted to institutionalize GOP power in Washington on a more or less permanent basis. His instrument was the K Street Project, named for the downtown Washington thoroughfare that houses many of the top lawyer-lobbyists who provide or steer much of the cash that funds congressional campaigns. His message to K Street was simple: No dealing with Democrats and no money for them if you want to do business in Republican Washington.

All too willing to help was the fixer, Abramoff. Together, they pulled off the most audacious power grab seen in Washington since ... well, the Teapot Dome oil steal of the 1920s comes to mind. They were Mr. Inside (DeLay) and Mr. Outside (Abramoff), so close it's unclear now who was the mastermind and who aided and abetted. Two of DeLay's top aides, Michael Scanlan (he's pleaded guilty to two charges) and Tony Ruby, actually went to work in Abramoff enterprises.

And in spite of the attempted spin this is a Republican scandal.

Some of the money went to Democrats, which GOP spokesmen have trumpeted in a ludicrous attempt to brand this a bipartisan scandal. But the bulk, about two- thirds, went to Republicans. Honestly, would any self-respecting seducer of Congress bother dealing with powerless Democrats when the ruling Republicans were there for the taking?

This is a Republican scandal, and the fallout, as Gingrich warned, will land most heavily on the GOP.

Some of those that Abramoff drags down with him will indeed be victims of a system that almost requires corruption.

If there is a bipartisan aspect to this corruption, it's the way the system compels members of Congress to beg for money. Some would take cash from a blind beggar. Many more took it from Abramoff, a poser who liked to mouth off like Don Corleone. They do so, unfortunately, because the U.S. Supreme Court, blind to the political reality of the day, insists on treating money in politics as a form of speech and thus limiting the legislative power to rein it in.

So in a sense it's the fault of the Supreme Court and that's not going to change with the likes of Roberts and Alito.


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