The difference between Randy “Duke” Cunningham and many of his
Congressional colleagues is one of degree, not kind. He is an
extreme manifestation of a corruption pervasive in Congress, a
crookedness that spreads with the size of the federal government.
Had Cunningham just waited a little while and become a defense firm
lobbyist, he could have received his Rolls-Royce, yacht, and
Louis-Philippe commode legally.
In Washington, D.C., cause and effect are never examined
honestly. Politicians are expert at bemoaning a troubling effect
even as they deepen its cause. So while the Democrats crank up
their “culture of corruption” campaign and Republicans express to
the press horror at their colleague Cunningham’s conduct, both
parties will continue to approve and strengthen the catalyst of
money-related corruption: the Leviathan-like size and power of the
federal government. This is the reason so much dirty money is
sloshing back and forth between them and lobbyists. The more the
federal government’s reach is extended, the more lobbyists’ money
is spent to stay or release its hand.
What will come out of the furor over Cunningham? A new crop of
politicians willing to reduce the size of government so that
lobbyists’ won’t bother to buy them off? No, the only change that
is likely to occur is the creation of a few more phony “ethics”
guidelines. Perhaps Congress will even hold another “hour-long
ethics briefing.” Remember that episode earlier this year? The
“ethics” briefing was to help Congressmen learn how to fill out the
proper forms after lunching with lobbyists.
Congress has become avarice writ large, taking more and more
money from the American people for projects the people never see,
use, or need but enrich pols and the special interests to which
they are allied. In any other context this would be called theft.
In Congress it is called outreach to constituents or government
services. The real crisis, in other words, is not this or that
avaricious clown (who is usually too inept to conceal his
corruption like his colleagues) but a widely held corrupt political
philosophy that normalizes avarice as a routine practice of the
federal government.
“Ethics” rules have been multiplying since the Watergate era.
Yet they never make politicians any more ethical, because they are
detached from any just political or moral philosophy that would
impress upon politicians the duty to exercise power modestly. The
money scandals of recent years are due not to the absence of enough
ethical rules but the presence of a widening federal trough that
attracts an absurdly large number of lobbyists to D.C. each
year.
The test of a politician’s commitment to getting “money out of
politics” is not whether he supports “campaign finance reform” but
whether he is willing to remove money from the federal purse and
return it to taxpayers. “Campaign finance reform” and big
government just cancel each other out. Any serious answer to the
question — what is proper for a Congressman to do? — depends upon
the answer to a more basic one: What is proper for the federal
government to do?
One of the glaring hypocrisies of the liberal outrage over Ken
Tomlinson’s tenure at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — in
numerous editorials, he has been castigated for spending $10,000 on
a lobbyist during his campaign to bring some programming balance to
PBS — is the indifference these same editorialists display when
PBS, a government program with no real federal imperative, uses
taxpayer money to hire much more expensive lobbyists to guarantee
its access to taxpayer money.
Robert Novak reported on this form of corruption in June, noting
that Tomlinson’s tiny expenditure was dwarfed by “public
broadcasting’s permanent payments to big-time lobbyists. Respected
Republican lobbyist Charlie Black’s firm has represented PBS for
four years at $180,000 a year…. Lobbyist Domenic Ruscio, a former
Carter administration official, for many years has represented the
Association of Public Television Stations, receiving $60,000 a
year. He has been trying to pack the nine-member CPB with four from
the public television community that the board presumably is
overseeing.”
Cunningham is a clumsy practitioner of a lobbying racket that is
ubiquitous in D.C., a racket that revolves around a federal
government that feels entitled to steal money from the taxpayer for
frivolous purposes. Had Cunningham waded more circumspectly into
the cesspool, he might have come up as clean as his colleagues with
his yacht and commode.
