CORRUPTION - Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase. ~ Charles Caleb Colton
As a lifelong resident of Illinois, I was brought up on corruption. One of my favorite examples comes from 1970. Paul Powell was Secretary of State. Two days after his unexpected death, $800,000 in cash was discovered squirreled away in his home/hotel room in shoe boxes, along with 49 cases of whisky, 14 transistor radios and 2 cases of creamed corn, presumably ill-gotten gains from his $30,000 per year position. I was fascinated that anybody could have that assortment in their closet. And at the lack of security – anyone could take off with that cash and who could he report it to?
Since then we have seen three governors end up in prison: Otto Kerner (conspiracy, perjury, income tax charges), Dan Walker (fraud), George Ryan (bribes), who may be joined by the impeached Rod Blagojevich who will be retried (pay to play, lying to FBI) next year.
How could this continue to happen, one wonders. The answers are especially easy to come up with in this political season that has shown us a world-class display of mud-slinging and a complete absence of rational discussion. We know that corruption thrives not just in Illinois, though we do appear to provide a particularly rich Petri dish for its propagation. We know that it lives elsewhere too because we have the opportunity to enjoy the most outrageous ads from other states on the evening news, night after night. Follow this link http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/29/2010-the-year-in-campaign_n_776270.html to see some examples (including the Carly Fiorina Demon Sheep ad) of where that money went. Typically, the news segment about outrageous ads ends with journalists shaking their heads in disapproval as if they were innocent in all this. Not so much.
Just like the Hollywood stars and the paparazzi who trail them, our politicians are involved in a host-parasite relationship with hangers-on who live off of them while providing what they can’t do without – attention.
Take the news industry. Venerated Meet the Press host Tim Russert explained his approach this way – he studied the positions of his guest, took the opposite tack in his questioning, and made an interesting show out of it. Nothing wrong there. We certainly want journalists to keep track of our candidates, but their increasingly rabid reporting of each and every unsubstantiated charge, misstep, overheard conversation, and personal peccadillo, as if they were more important than their positions on the issues, serves to stir the pot. They end up reporting on the frenzy their reports cause instead of the actual news.
At the same time, the advertising industry and TV and radio stations get their own stimulus packages with each political cycle. This year it’s as if it’s become a reality show: How Low Will They Go? The most outrageous charges, vitriolic attacks; the interviews with actors (or are they real voters, so well informed that they are outraged at the opponent’s very existence, when most people have trouble even remembering who their Senator is?) who scold and castigate.
Can you think of any better way to spend the $3 billion that was just spent on political ads this year? Like ending world hunger, reducing the deficit, or just spending it on consumer goods to jumpstart the economy?
At least the political season has an ending date. Imagine if the advertising folks applied this approach to their regular clients all year long. Burger King ads might end with, “Why does this Ronald Mc Donald continue to lurk around innocent children? Have you checked your local sex offender registry lately, for a guy with big shoes and red hair? And what’s with the red lipstick?”
Or Duracell on the Energizer Bunny: “Just how does that bunny keep on going and going? Ask Marian Jones, or Lance Armstrong, or Barry Bonds what they think. That is your battery on steroids. Is that what you want to run your children’s toys?” We’d finally have to turn off the TV for good.
Which brings us to the candidates themselves. Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune called this year’s candidates for Illinois Governor and Senate “as flawed and uninspiring a quartet of glad-handers as ever aspired to lead and represent our state.” Nicely put.
While their cause is being advanced by the amoral advertisers, behind the scenes the candidates sink lower and lower. The more they accuse and blame and threaten us with each other, the more anxious we all get, until we reach the current country-wide anxiety attack. The sky is falling, and we each get the chance to bet on one side or the other to stave off disaster. Oh no. What if we guess wrong? Catastrophe!
At least two corrupting influences operate here. First, what the candidates have to do to raise the money necessary to participate in this system. They may not be keeping it in shoeboxes, but what kind of promises do they make to come up with that $3 billion? And how will that keep them from doing what they should?
Some solve that problem by funding their own campaigns, like Illinois Lt. Governor candidate and pawnbroker Scott Lee (Not a Career Politician) Cohen who put $2.1 million into his race. After some revelations about his personal life, he was chased out by the party. Once he decided that leaving was a mistake, he dropped back in and siphoned an additional $3.8 million into his new independent campaign. In California, it’s worse. Ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman makes Cohen look like a penny-pincher. She has put up $141.6 million of her own in her run for governor (which sounds like a lot until you find out she is worth $1.9 billion).
What is the payoff for such extravagance? What is it about holding the office that would justify that investment? It must be the second corrupting influence, power. What sort of megalomaniac would make that tradeoff? Besides, if they spend like that to get elected, how will they spend our money once they get there? I can predict their outcome – elected or not, especially not, it won’t be worth it.
Wait, you say? What if it’s a desire to serve, an altruistic motive? Perhaps, but there are thousands of ways to help make things better that send resources directly to people who need them, not into a political system that yields nothing tangible in the end but a pile of receipts in a zero sum game.
As soon as we can look back on this election season with some distance, maybe we’ll find some pluses. While we have so much else to worry about with the economy and security, maybe the excess and vitriol we’ve just seen will finally be enough, and we’ll come up with some candidates next time around who can do better; candidates who won’t corrupt our open exchange of ideas with their fear-mongering and power-grabbing.
Maybe we’ll manage to ratchet up our own expectations for intelligent discussion of the issues instead of gotcha politics.
And maybe we’ll be able to recognize that things naturally run in waves, that power inevitably flows from one place to another over time, that no one side is ever entirely right or entirely wrong, and most importantly, that people who disagree don’t have to despise each other. Maybe we can convince our politicians that the rest of us want to see cooperation and problem-solving. Our communal anxiety would recede. The people who could pull that off would win, hands down.
CBH 09/10
