Harm to Good Government Seen : Rush to Judge Politicians Held Damaging to Nation

“Do you believe what’s going on in Congress?” comic Jay Leno asked the “Tonight Show” audience this week. “Jim Wright is in trouble. This Tony Coelho guy resigns. And this Representative (Donald E.) Lukens of Ohio is convicted of having sex with a 16-year-old girl.

“Suddenly, old John Tower is starting to look pretty good.”

As Leno’s quip suggests, disclosures and allegations of ethical misconduct against prominent Washington figures are flying so thick and fast that watching politicians fall is rapidly becoming a national sport.

But there is growing concern among politicians and specialists in government ethics that the crusade now sweeping the capital--with its increasingly savage overtones of partisan exploitation and revenge--may ultimately do more harm than good to the cause of good government.

As a result, scholars say, it is unclear whether this period will be remembered--like Watergate--for its enduring reforms or--like the McCarthyism of the 1950s--for the lasting scars it inflicted on the nation’s political system.

“I do think there comes a time when we have to look closely at the way the Congress operates, and that’s what’s happening today,” former Rep. Jack Edwards (R-Ala.) said. “But I don’t think we ought to lose our perspective and go on a witch hunt, looking for everybody.”

Uneasiness about the character and direction of Washington’s biggest ethical binge since Watergate falls into several broad areas, including concerns that:

--Efforts on both sides to exploit ethics issues for narrow partisan advantage will make an already cynical public still more disillusioned and more mistrustful of government.

“I’m very concerned about the fact that the issues of personal ethics and public office are in danger of being politicized,” said David Hollenbach of Boston’s Weston School of Theology, a Jesuit seminary. “There is the danger that, given the tenor of the debate right now, it could lead to increased public cynicism about ethics.”

--Conflicts in the country as a whole about ethical and moral issues will be transferred to a political arena ill suited to determine standards and make judgments on such knotty questions.

Seeking to Uphold Standards

“The country has been going through a turbulent period, and moral standards have been up for grabs,” said Ed Vaceck, a professor of moral theology at Weston School. “What is happening is that we are looking harder to the behavior of public servants to establish and uphold standards we can rely on.”

--The rising level of bitterness and resentment among politicians over what they see as unfair allegations and rumors will make it more difficult to reach agreement on ways to achieve substantive reform.

“The way to deal with this very unfortunate but very real image that exists today that everyone in Washington is taking care of themselves rather than their constituents is to change the rules and eliminate what is causing the problem,” Fred Wertheimer, president of Common Cause, declared earlier this week.

But other supporters of good government contend that there are already enough rules, that making new ones will add confusion and, anyway, that experience demonstrates that politicians usually can find a way to get around most rules.

Atmosphere of Mistrust

“I think, by all these regulations and investigations, we’re distracting attention from real ethical questions and creating an atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion,” said Bayard L. Catron, a public administration professor at George Washington University who is organizing a national conference on ethics in government this fall.

Catron contends that there should be less emphasis on rules and regulations, which he regards as “negative restraints.” Instead, he urges, more attention should be paid to fundamental ethical issues such as accepting personal responsibility for making difficult choices.

Politicians have been accused of violating ethical standards and even criminal statutes since the birth of the nation. But Washington’s current obsession with ethics issues, reflected not only in formal investigations and carefully documented charges but in an appetite for even the most scurrilous and unsubstantiated rumors of misconduct, is extraordinary.

And the underlying causes, many analysts believe, can be traced to the special nature of the political environment that came into being during the twilight of the Ronald Reagan presidency. It is a period marked by ideological and partisan stalemate and moral turmoil.

Parties Deadlocked

Essentially, the two political parties have been deadlocked. The Democrats, with their traditional liberal credo, judged by many voters to be hopelessly outdated, have been unable to win the White House. The Republicans, with the Reagan Revolution running out of steam and voters equally unwilling to embrace its more extreme ideological precepts, have been unable to win anything else.

That stalemate led politicians in both parties to base their appeals to voters more and more on questions of personal character and conduct.

For example, the Democrats, unable to break the GOP hold on the presidency on policy grounds, sought to exploit misconduct by Reagan Administration officials, which they denounced as “sleaze.”

The Republicans were no strangers to “negative campaigning.” And, when Democrats brought up “sleaze,” congressional scholar Norman Ornstein says, “It was only natural for them to turn around and say: ‘We’ll get you guys.’ ”

Series of Jolts

This upsurge of nastiness on the political battlefront coincided with and reinforced the impact of a series of jolts during the 1980s that challenged some of the deeply held public beliefs of both liberals and conservatives.

Just as the scourge of AIDS mocked the sexual permissiveness championed by many liberals in the 1960s, the Wall Street scandals stained the image of the acquisitive entrepreneur that had been burnished in the Reagan era.

Moreover, in the early stages of the Democratic presidential campaign, two candidates were ousted from the field on issues of character and ethics: the front-runner, former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, who was suspected of adultery, and Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., who was accused of plagiarism.

For his part, Republican nominee Bush managed to survive the presidential campaign unscathed by ethics issues. But he was plainly conscious of public concern about the lax standards of the Reagan presidency, for no sooner had Bush entered the Oval Office than he promised to enforce high standards for his aides.

By doing so, some think that Bush may have opened the way for the attack on Tower on grounds of drinking, womanizing and conflict of interest that resulted in the first rejection of a presidential Cabinet nominee in 30 years. More than that, Tower turned out to be just the first in a series of victims of the emphasis on ethical behavior.

In addition to Wright and Coelho, others with apparent reason for concern are Philadelphia Rep. William H. Gray III, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. His office staff, it was reported this week, is the subject of a preliminary criminal investigation by the Justice Department.

Meanwhile, Georgia Republican Rep. Newt Gingrich, chief instigator of the charges against Wright that led to the Speaker’s decision to quit, let it be known that Republicans had at least nine other Democrats on a target list for ethical investigation.

Exploiting Ethics Issue

And the Associated Press reported Thursday that the National Republican Congressional Committee, which raises money, prepares statements and videos, does polling and research and other projects for House Republicans, has prepared a paper suggesting how they can exploit the problems of Wright, Coelho and other Democrats.

For their part, the Democrats have pledged to carry the fight to Gingrich himself by investigating a book promotion deal financed largely by his political backers, which critics contend sounds similar to the book royalty arrangement that contributed to Wright’s downfall.