Getting Real III: Bribability Without Liability
BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to be a lead story. Naturally it has engendered polemics over who is responsible and a broader discussion of whether offshore drilling should be continued or even increased. On these great issues that agitate NPR listeners and FOX watchers, I have nothing to say. I would, however, point to two little facts with which most people who follow the news are probably familiar. The first fact is that the Minerals Management Agency, which monitors offshore drilling and generates billions of dollars of federal revenue by partnering with companies like British Petroleum, granted BP a "categorical exclusion" from the routine environmental assessments required under the National Environmental Policy Act.
The second fact is that BP has showered its lobbying largesse upon leading Democratic political leaders, and at the top of the recipients list stands President Obama. BP is hardly alone: Goldman Sachs has been notoriously generous to the President.
I do not mean to suggest that Mr. Obama has brought Illinois' famous "play-to-pay" politics to Washington. He did not have to. Washington politicians have been playing this game on the grand scale at least since the palmy days of Martin van Buren, who first institutionalized the corrupt conspiracy now known as the Democratic Party. The Republicans, so far from falling behind in corruption, were such masters that when Republican James Garfield, ran against the Republican "stalwarts" on a reform platform, he was gunned down by a disappointed office-seeker who shouted out "I am a Republican stalwart." When Pat Buchanan first announced he was running for the Republican nomination, I reminded him of the fate of the last man who tried to clean up the GOP.
Then what is to be done? I have three quite practical proposals to make and will devote a brief column to each of them. The basic problem is that while our political leaders are all—or nearly all—bribable—they are hardly ever liable. Oh, yes, occasionally some outrageous scoundrel like Dan Rostenkowski, George Ryan, Rad Blagojevoch—or to be fair to Louisiana, Edwin Edwards—goes too far and has to be taken down a peg. But these poor guys are like Al Capone or John Gotti, mobsters who made the mistake of attracting headlines. Even their brother-gangsters are willing to throw them to the jackals in the press who are looking to pick up a Pulitzer.
But these are the exceptions. Most politicians retire into lucrative careers as lobbyists. They sit on the boards of corporations and non-profit foundations. They are like the Duke of Plaza Toro who boasts: "I sit by selection upon the direction of several companies bubble. As soon as they're floated, I'm freely bank-noted. I'm pretty well paid for my trouble." And, as Brutus Jones says when he explains in his theory of life, though small-time crooks land in jail, the fate of the big-time crook is far kinder: "They puts you in the hall of fame when you croaks." Anyone remember that poor schoolteacher Lyndon Johnson? He is like the Roman Verres, who as governor of Sicily was determined to steal, in his first year, enough to live on comfortably the rest of his life, and in the next to steal enough for his friends, and in his third year enough to cover the expenses of his corruption trial. But Verres actually got convicted and went into exile!
The first thing to fix, then, is the impunity of crooked politicians—please excuse the redundancy: Let us just say "politicians." Democratic Athens has the very solution we need. The Athenians were wise enough to know that most people enter politics in order to enrich themselves and their cronies. Thus every Athenian magistrate was hupeuthunos, that is, subject to a scrutiny. His records were investigated and witnesses summoned for a hearing in which the presumption was of guilt: The outgoing magistrate had to prove his innocence, and if he could not, he was subjected to a severe penalty. (I have deliberately simplified the description.)
How could this work for Congress? Every retiring politician would be subjected to the scrutiny—or perhaps it could be done every two years for a senator or governor or President. If convicted, jail should be the least of his worries. Because his crimes are committed against the taxpayers, he should be forced to compensate the taxpayer at, oh, say 10 times the level of proved corruption. He should also be barred from all public employment, forced to reside outside the Washington area, and forbidden to act as lobbyist or take any position of trust. In extreme cases—of the type that now come to trial—exile would be a fitting punishment or, better still, relegation to some American province like Haiti.
The possibility of severe penalties will never completely deter criminal minds from doing what comes naturally to them, but it is a start.
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Dr. Fleming, I would have thought Kosovo would be a suitable place to exile the most extreme cases but then it dawned on me that soon, "birds of a feather" would "flock together", and the punished would soon integrate themselves with Kosovo's criminal scene without missing a beat. Haiti does seem suitable. There is very little that is organized in it's criminal element. It beening more dog-eat-dog, than honor among theives, it would do.
Now being a bit more well-read on the history of the early political parties in America, its amazing how much of the rot in the Democratic Party came from the New York Democrats; in fact, the early corruption almost exclusively came from them. I believe Dr Wilson said it really started with 'Jimmy Madison', but there wasnt much of a corporate base in Virginia to form a true machine as there was in the Empire state.
We could send them to Kosovo but only if first we tatooed the crooks with Christian symbols. Then they would not be given even a moment to express solidarity. As I found on my first trip to Kosovo, the Albanians go on the attack as soon as they see a non-albanian. If my driver had not proved to be very eloquent, as he waved his Kalashnikov, I would not be around to tell the truth about such people. One Kosovo-Albanian came to a meeting we held in Rome, and--stinking like death from his mouth--demanded that I give him time to express the Albanian point of view. I told him to go to hell or Albania, whichever he preferred.
Madison was only a weasel, but Van Buren--as Dr. Wilson taught me years ago--was the one to organize the caucus as a means of disciplining any honest or independent Democrat.
Our politicians are not only not liable for bribery, they are hardly liable for any other crimes and failures.
Antarctica might do, rather than Haiti. (After all, we don't want to set the Haitians a bad example.) The only difficulty that might come up in sending our pols to Antarctica is that such a scheme might run afoul of environmental-protection laws.
I still think the idea's worth some thought, though.
CW is absolutely correct, which is why this is only the first of a three-part proposal. On the choice of location. I am reminded of the one and only time I had a conversation with Newt Gingrich. The irrepressible crackpot in those days was turning over the idea of sending welfare-dependents to Mars. I pointed out that Mars lacked certain amenities, like air, water, and a temperature range capable of sustaining mammalian life, while the Sahara and other great deserts were paradise in comparison. Even the Antarctic or the depths of the Pacific would be far less costly to maintain as holding tanks for the poor. The genius of the conservative movement was completely unimpressed. Deserts lacked the pizazz that would fire the imagination of the Tofflers' wackiest disciple. The first "politician" sent to Mars, obviously, should be Newt.
Oh man! I can't stop laughing at this scene just described by Dr. Fleming. To Mars!
"Anyone remember that poor schoolteacher Lyndon Johnson? He is like the Roman Verres, who as governor of Sicily was determined to steal..."
I just read, this morning, Kirk comparing LBJ to Caesar:
http://www.mmisi.org/ma/32_03/kirk.pdf
Disparagingly, I probably don't need to add.
That was unfair to Caesar who did much evil but possessed greatness of many kinds: he was a great soldier, a legal reformer, and as a writer he had a very distinctive prose style. What Lyndon's virtues were, I have never been able to find out.
He wore a hat pretty well.
"The Republicans, so far from falling behind in corruption, were such masters that when Republican James Garfield, ran against the Republican “stalwarts” on a reform platform, he was gunned down by a disappointed office-seeker who shouted out “I am a Republican stalwart.”
Though I long ago passed through the stage of "interested in Eastern Religions", I've got to say, there just has to be something Karmic in the fact that I've lived most of my life 2 blocks from Garfield Park, (name changed from Central Park after the assassination) while going full circle from Republican to Democrat and back (and now completely out of politics' orbit).
@11 TJF
But do you agree with Dante that his assassin is in the ninth circle of hell for all eternity?
I always found that to be much too harsh of a view.
Set aside the historical facts which can cut both ways--Caesar was a tyrant but he had forgiven several of the conspirators previously and given them their lives; he may have been Brutus' father. etc.--Dante's notion was that betrayal of a friend, leader, sovereign was a kind of parricide comparable with the sin of Judas. E.M. Forester has a wonderful discussion of this in Two Cheers for Democracy, which I have borrowed and (I believe) improved upon in The Morality of Everyday Life. By the late First Century BC, one might argue, the republic was an abstraction, while friendship, even with Caesar was real. Christian Meier's biography of Julius, by the way, is still the best and one of the few that tackles the Caesarian mythology that even today is used to lionize people like FDR, LBJ, JFK, and BO.
Thank you Dr Fleming. My knowledge of history only goes back to the War of the Roses; Im still completely green on ancient history, so I knew too little to form my own view without the modern biases of historians.
Speaking of LBJ, I recently saw Melvin Bradford's wonderfully eloquent review of Robert Caro's first volume of his LBJ biography. Bradford praises Caro, who apparently regards LBJ as a monster. I have long known it was a famous biography, but only now is it on my reading list.
Dr. Fleming, post #7 was the first thing that has made me laugh out loud in quite some time.
What still amazes me is "da peeple" who still play partisan politics and see virtue in these sociopaths. Yes, born in poverty and a public "servent" his entire career and we should not raise an eyebrow when Clinton moves out of the White House into a 12 million dollar mansion in New York. (Granted, with today's state of education perhaps even the simple arithmetic necessary to make sense of this eludes many people.) And his Republican successor, because he proved his immense skill in rhetoric while in office, is now regularly paid six fugure sums to give speeches.
Yes, the corporatist and socialist crooks are in charge, but why do the people continue to vote or bestow any legitimacy on them whatsoever? Reform is simply impossible in "our" system of majoritarian stupidity and minority enrichment.
With regards to Gingrich, my favorite story is how he went around, in the late '90s, trying to get in with the Hispanics by introducing himself as "Hablador Gingrich"; some other illiterate had told him 'hablador' translates into English as 'speaker', when it actually means 'big mouth', 'chatterbox', or, in some countries, 'charlatan'.
I read Caro's first book on LBJ. He was a superb crook and got funded by the Brown brothers of Brown and Root. They were famous public works contractors in Texas who in later generations went worldwide in defense work, and other large civil engineering projects. Mr. Caro also wrote a great bio of Robert Moses the man who ran most of New York state's large public works projects, for 50 years, for both political parties. I was in public works for many years and found his histories to be facinating
I still think that the Athenian practice of electing politicians by drawing straws would be a good idea. It should also be used to appoint judges and bureaucrats(if we are going to maintain a bureaucracy).
Perhaps judges should be rotated every couple years as well? Didn't the Romans have some such thing?
What are we to do with attorneys? Right now, there is one in our district who is running for office, who is as corrupt as his attorney father before him, and is likely to be another Verres, or at least a cheap imitation of him.
Although serious reform of our corrupt political system will never take place, I wonder whether a permanent ban on the lobbying of retired Seantors and Congressmen might be of some use in cleansing the system to a small degree. The nasty truth is that when these politicians come to Washington most never leave. The list of retired scoundrel politicians who lobby in Washington is endless- George Mitchell, Trent Lott, Dave McCurdy, John Breaux, Don Nickles, Steve Largent, JC Watts, Tom Daschle, Tom Downey, Dennis Eckert, Robert Dole.... By the way, was anyone gullible enough to believe Bob Dole's 1996 "The White House or Home to Russell, Kansas" speech?
Dr. Fleming,
" Every retiring politician would be subjected to the scrutiny—or perhaps it could be done every two years for a senator or governor or President. If convicted, jail should be the least of his worries."
I have read that debates at the University of Paris in the 12th and 13th century were very formal and solemn by today's standards and the loser was sometimes attacked and beaten for lieing, sophistry or using rhetorical quips (like our talking heads routinely use today) simply for effect. I have no objection to your suggestion of scrutiny but if it were reserved to the end of ones term of office, I fear the current crop of "Our Leaders" would demand the terms of congressmen to be necessarily "equal" to the Supreme Court and thus we would see lifetime appointmenst to congress as well. Their collective "Ah Huumm" reaction to the immigration law in Arizona and McCains new demands for a tight fence along the border should be evidence enough that they will stop at nothing to continue to "serve" the people they despise.
Caro's biography is in many ways quite positive, but Caro's bad habit of refusing to lie did not sit well with most leftist "scholars."
At this point I am only considering the exit of politicians. We shall get into their entrance into office in a future installment. I will say, though, that the Athenians chose some offices by lot for several reasons. The most obvious reason was to prevent politicians from developing a following or claiming, as they all do now, a mandate. Two clarifications: First, for really important offices, involving conduct of war or handling large sums of money, they did not choose by lot. Second, before a name could be drawn for an office, a previous winnowing had been used by the demes to prevent any notoriously unworthy person from getting in. Machiavelli could have predicted the result of this system: archons elected by lot become less important while elected strategoi, generals, became more important. Pericles was always a strategos. It also meant that what had been the conservative bulwark of the "constitution"--the Council of the Areopagus--was diminished in influence and then authority. When the Court consisted of elected former archons--men of influence, in other words--it functioned like a supreme court. Later when the archons were just anybody, the radicals were able to strip the court of much of its authority.
The previous paragraph is an illustration of what might be called Clyde Wilson's law that a people makes a constitution, a constitution does not make a people. Here is a corollary: constitutional changes may often make things worse. So long as the Athenian citizen-class eligible for office were sturdy farmer-soldiers, they prospered. When they opened up voting to riff-raff, the system succumbed to the demagogues who, it should be pointed out, held power by swaying the masses and not by holding office.
PS My response to Allen Wilson should also cover Robert. We'll deal with such things as term limits and entry rules later. In general, no reforms will change a system put in place by a corrupt people, but I am engaging, remember, in a thought-experiment designed to show what it would take to begin the healing. In fact, as we know, politicians are getting worse every couple of years and the pace will continue to accelerate.
Dr. Fleming, I didn't mean my comment as an attempt to dissuade you from what you are doing here. I do agree it is important to articulate what it is we would want to see happen if we are to voice what we are dissatisfied with in the current system. Mine was a voicing of exasperation with the gullible public.
Eagle, I quite understood your comment and agreed with it. I find that people with a knowledge of Balkan politics have a better grasp of the political realities here in the USA. Politicians are guilty until proved innocent--and even then be suspicious.
Michael Travis' anecdote even beats the true story of Rep. Steve Solarz, the Spanish or Portuguese Jew who tried to win PR votes by calling himself Esteban Solarz. I think he should have formed a committee, Puerto Ricans for Israel.
@7: "The first “politician” sent to Mars, obviously, should be Newt."
I suddenly find myself wanting to watch "Total Recall" just to see the scene where Schwarzenegger tells himself "get your *** to Mars".
It's amazing. Really. Newt? Without exageration, I have far greater respect for what my barber and bartender have to say on virtually any topic, other than how to pull off grand-scale theft, than I do for what any national- or international-level politician has to say on anything.
Nobel prizes to Gore and Athassari?! The Scandanavians should immediately institutionalize the committee that decided these and....well, just institutionalize them because it's so obvious why.
It's a world gone mad.
With regards to the late Roman Republic and realizing that history repeats itself and the similarities between the empires (Roman and American)eerily similar, is debating about a flawed and debase system of government a waste of our time and rather, should we focus on the inevitable evolution to dictatorship? Or, are we there already and has the coup d' etat by the plutocrats already happened and the charade called politics, government and impartial judiciary just a fairy tale for the masses to mask the robbing of the populace of its livelihood, history and morality?
BTW, Caesar, if he were alive today would not be a base politician but would be running News Corp......which his modern counterpart controls and has more power than Caesar ever dreamed of...
I don't entirely see the point of Patrick's questions. History, quite obviously, does not repeat itself except in the sense that the continuity of human nature tends to generate similar responses to similar challenges. There is little similarity between Rome's real and pragmatic and America's fictive and self-punishing empires. If one begins to think about a question, it is important, insofar as it is possible, to set aside what one think one knows. Otherwise, we are like Marxists, libertarians, and other leftists who always know the answer before the question is even asked. There is no modern counterpart to Caesar because there is no counterpart to the Roman character that is reflected, diversely, in the First Century, by Lucullus and Cato, Cicero and Caesar. Only Clodius, the phony plebeian gangster, comes to mind, but his brilliance and strength of will have no counterpart in the American character. My point in this exercise is to coax people into thinking straight about where we are. If we can stick, for a moment, to the point, we may gain insights we would not ever have if we cling instead to the false information we learned in history class.
Would it were all so simple as a conspiracy theory. Alas, too many members of the ruling class, whether they call themselves liberals or conservatives, actually believe without reflection the puerile platitudes they recite, whether those platitudes are contained in the Gettysburg Address, the Declaration of Independence, or the writings of Marx and Smith. Any dictator who comes to power will believe the same platitudes because they are the unassailable tenets ("we hold these truths to be self-evident) of the religion that has replaced Christianity.
Let us recall a few first principles: First, that political and legal systems reflect the character of the elite class that rules society and that this elite class in turn forms the character of most of the rest of the population. Second, that any form of legitimate and limited government reflects the character of an independent people. Third, that since a politician (at least in modern America) is "an arse upon which everything has sat except a man," we can scarcely expect men and women--whose sole purpose in life is to gain wealth and power at the expense of their fellows--to take a single step toward divesting themselves of their power to loot, much less of restoring limited legitimate government. If the people will not punish the criminals, whether they are ganbangers living in the projects or the gangbangers who hold office in Washington, then one should be content to live as well as one can in such a place and time.
Let us expand the term politician to include the lowest class of politicians, the cheap little scoundrels who make money writing columns or ranting on talk radio. The career of Al Franken is a good case in point. I run into all too many people who claim they do not trust the politicians but then tell me that they respect Sean Hannity and Glen Beck, who belong to the same class of liars but have never hit the big time except as the bugle boys, not certainly of Company B, but of F Troop.
All politicians should spend a minimum of two years in jail after serving in office......these political cretins, who lord everything on us.
My how men and women can never do a greater work in this world, what with there greed and selfishness, and the pursuit of their own pleasures. Depending on people like MMS to what is right, I might as well believe a freight train could sneak up on me.