City of Rivals by Jason Grumet

Author:Jason Grumet
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2014-09-09T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Breakfast at Signatures

The First Law of Holes

There are few contemporary political figures more universally reviled than Jack Abramoff. Since the Watergate era, no single player has more completely epitomized the spirit of political corruption. From his booth at Signatures, the expensive restaurant he owned on Pennsylvania Avenue, Abramoff subverted the public interest with an uncommon proficiency. After a decade of repugnant schemes including a disgraceful effort to defraud Native American tribes, Abramoff’s house of corruption came crashing down. In 2006, he pled guilty to fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to bribe public officials.

Released from prison in 2010, Abramoff is now touring the country as a vocal critic of his own past deeds. But crookedness casts a long shadow in American politics. While Jack has moved on, the system he violated is still suffering in his wake. Abramoff’s deceit affirmed the public’s worst fears about Washington. For Congress as an institution, the scandal was bad; for the country as a whole, the over-corrections it triggered have been even worse.

Before and after Abramoff’s fall, advocates for good government have made real progress changing the way American politics works. Over the last several decades, Washington has imposed significant limits on campaign fundraising, substantially strengthened ethics laws, made sure no one has any fun on congressional fact-finding trips, and eliminated earmarks—the popular local projects once used to soften the political pain of hard votes.

Yet if, in the spirit of the late Mayor Ed Koch, Washington was to ask the country “how are we doing?” the objective answer would be “terribly.” Despite the string of “good government” victories, the director of CNN’s polling unit recently stated that “men, women, rich, poor, young, old, all think [2014’s] Congress has been the worst they can remember.” While it would be exaggerated to argue that recent reforms are responsible for the current state of affairs, it is pretty hard to claim that these restrictions have increased congressional productivity or enhanced public confidence.

The public naturally assumes that any effort to make Congress more ethical would only be for the good. But what we find when looking at the reforms of the last several years is that they’re as much a source of our frustration as the cure. Abramoff-style corruption, while egregious, simply isn’t that common. As a rule, it is ineffective to control rule-breakers by adopting more rules. All the proliferation of restrictions does is affect the vast majority of Congress already playing by the rules. If we want to get Washington working again, we need to embrace a different strategy. The truth is that the impulse to monitor and restrict Congress is actually driving us deeper into a ditch. So it’s time that we embrace what might be deemed the First Law of Holes—stop digging.

The Devils We Know

Among all the complaints leveled at American democracy today, none is more pervasive than the harm wrought by money that fuels political campaigns. As many have complained, not only do our elections often take place on uneven playing fields, the

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