When the Ideal of Public Service Is Corrupted, Public Servants Are Next

It is reliably reported this morning that a slight smile was observed to crease the ordinarily somber face of a former and now-decreased Boston mayor--one James Michael Curley--whose statue occupies a place of honor in the midst of my native city.

If rightly reported, the mysterious phenomenon could only have reflected the wry amusements of Curley’s departed spirit at the public agonies of House Speaker Jim Wright. Curley, after all, served two jail terms--one while still mayor--and acquired a reputation for corruption so flamboyant that it inspired both a best-selling novel and a movie, and ended up in statuesque honor.

Of course the good mayor could not totally lack sympathy for the embattled Speaker. Jail, after all, was no fun. More probably he was amused at how little has changed--that the use of public office for private gain has endured through new moralities and old, the fulminations of public crusaders and the barely aroused indignation of a largely indifferent public.

He might, however, could he speak, express some surprise at the dimensions attained by modern corruption within the federal government. Wright’s own offense was, of course, rather trivial; a few thousand dollars for a Speaker of the House is less than it takes--or took--to receive a substantial real estate development from a Boston mayor. Yet the amount is not the issue. Given the nature of the offense, Wright must go, slain by his own petty banality and the righteousness of colleagues who must punish this offense to help mask the extent to which private money now rules the legislative process.

On Wednesday, the same House of Representatives that now demands the career of its Speaker tried to lower the penalties, already ludicrously low, to be imposed upon those iniquitous savings and loan associations whose misdeeds will cost the taxpayers well over $100 billion. For years, these huge institutions have poured immense quantities of money into the campaign coffers of representatives and senators in order to protect themselves from the regulation that might have exposed their willful, personally egregious waste of money entrusted to them by depositors.

Yet the S&L; scandal--a conspiracy between government and private wealth--is only one manifestation, and not the largest, of the extent to which private wealth has come to dominate the process of government.

In the last presidential year, more than $200 million went to candidates of both parties. Surely, few are naive enough to believe that these huge “donations” are made from principled adherence to party platforms (especially since many of the largest donors gave freely to candidates of both parties). They are an investment. The actions of government can have a profound impact on the fortunes of big business, and the money is spent to help ensure that the future profits of the donors are not endangered.

A junior member of a powerful congressional committee has explained to me that the formal meeting of his committees are a charade. “The important decisions have been made, the deals are cut before you ever get to the committee room. The vote is meaningless, it’s a setup, and when it’s over, the result is exactly what the parties agreed.”

One cannot, of course, blame business for trying to make money. “That’s business.” But one can, and should, excoriate government for yielding to the heralds of private gains at the expense of the public interest.

There is scarcely an issue of large importance that is not affected. If the ozone is disappearing, it is to benefit chemical companies. If the Earth is getting hotter, it is to benefit the purveyors of fossil fuels. If we neglect the homeless, the poor, the drug-enslaved young, it is because we have chosen to keep our defense industries profitable by giving them the resources to pursue science-fiction weapons systems.

In the end, it’s all money--who gets it, who gives it and why.

This destructive collaboration between concentrated wealth and government is the direct result of the professionalization of government--a system that, contrary to the intent of the Founding Fathers--has transformed members of Congress into lifetime servants of the government agencies and private interests they were intended to control.

For the first four decades of national government, after each session almost half the members of Congress left Washington, never to return. It was thought that a brief period of public service was fulfillment of an obligation to the common well-being. We have now seen the rise of an entire class of professional politicians who find themselves irrevocably and perpetually attached to Washington and its kaleidoscopic illusions of power and wealth. Only by limiting the terms of representatives and senators can we make it impossible for large economic interests to establish the enduring relationships with the powerful that make the democratic structure an instrument of the few.

We can, through the process of law, limit both the time of service and the cost of obtaining what should be an obligation, not a credential entitling one to an enduring call on the credit of the rich.