Cranston: A Sad Tale of a Good Man Gone Wrong : Ethics: If only California’s senior senator had remembered the reasons he went to Washington, he might not have lost his way.

The “Keating Five” scandal reminds us that our democratic system, which has inspired freedom-fighters around the globe, has become an embarrassment at home. It isn’t surprising that an ever-larger percentage of the voters doesn’t go to the polls on election day, since, among other sins, even our best politicians seem susceptible to influence-buying.

California’s senior senator, Alan Cranston, provides the latest sad lesson in how far we have sunk and what we must do to get out of this quagmire. It was inconceivable to those of us who learned politics from him back in the 1970s that Cranston would end up in disgrace, lumped with the legions of politicians who have, throughout history, misused their public offices. Yet that is where he stands in the public eye now--accused by the Senate Ethics Committee of “an impermissible pattern of conduct” for his aggressive role in helping keep federal regulators off the back of his political benefactor Charles H. Keating Jr., the most notorious figure in the savings-and-loan scandals.

Back in the 1970s, Cranston was one of the most progressive, highly-regarded members of the U.S. Senate. He voluntarily disclosed his financial records for years before some disclosures became mandatory. Unlike many of this colleagues, he was candid and substantive, without tooting his own horn. As the number two Democratic leader, he worked effectively with Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia, whose notorious ego made the self-effacing Californian even more refreshing to his colleagues.

Instead of simply reading the public opinion polls and telling everyone what they wanted to hear, Cranston started early taking the bold steps that define leadership. In 1939, when working as a correspondent in prewar Italy for the International News Service, he read Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” and had the book translated into English to expose Hitler’s anti-Semitic and expansionist ideas. Cranston published it as a 10-cent tabloid, selling 500,000 copies before Hitler’s lawyer won a lawsuit against Cranston for copyright infringement.

After writing a book describing how Senate partisanship had killed the League of Nations, Cranston embarked on a political career designed to correct those wrongs. He helped found the United World Federalists in 1949, and then worked his way up through California politics, establishing, in 1953, the California Democratic Council, which revived a moribund California Democratic Party. The unabashed liberal went on to the U.S. Senate, where he earned a reputation as an effective behind-the-scenes operator before he ran quixotically for President and fell from grace in the “Keating Five” debacle.

Cranston understood he had to make trade-offs to be an effective politician. “The problem with President Carter,” he once observed early in the Georgian’s Administration, “is that he thinks the issues win on their merits.” For Cranston, the “merits” also had to include such practical considerations as the wishes of his big political backers. When I asked him, in 1979, what he went to the mat for politically, Cranston replied without hesitation: “Peace, SALT, human rights, civil rights, civil liberties. If there’s an issue between some very powerful people and some people without much power, my sympathies start with those who have less power. I may not wind up there, because I’m going to look at it on the merits.”

Cranston, however, secured a special tax break for the Gallo family, then California’s largest winemaker, but insisted it was unrelated to the Gallos’ $3,250 contribution to his 1974 campaign. And when Cranston defended large California agribusinesses’ federal water subsidies, also accepting a $1,000 campaign contribution from farming interests affected by the legislation, Cranston’s top aide, Roy Greenaway, said: “If we’d caught it, we wouldn’t have accepted it. We go out of our way to avoid that sort of thing.”

These special favors didn’t raise many eyebrows back then, partly because of Cranston’s reputation for integrity and also because the system didn’t seem so out of control. Campaign contributions were relatively small, such favors seemed relatively harmless and were commonplace among all senators. Cranston also balanced private favors with public initiatives. He fought to preserve the Redwoods National Park and the Big Sur coastline. He often joined Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) in initiatives for poor people and for minority and women’s rights.

Yet in the high-rolling Reagan era, Cranston seems to have lost that balance. Apparently the most active of the so-called “Keating Five” senators, Cranston personally contacted federal regulators at least 12 times on behalf of Keating’s failing Lincoln Savings and Loan Assn. of Irvine, Calif., according to evidence before the Senate Ethics Committee.

Why? Because Keating was one of Cranston’s biggest campaign contributors. The quid pro quo was clear: Cranston at one point accepted $250,000 in donations from one of Keating’s companies, spoke with Keating moments later and then called the Federal Home Loan Bank Board chairman to arrange a special meeting sought by Keating, according to evidence before the committee. Cranston’s staff memos include even more damning language that directly links Cranston’s political favors to Keating’s large campaign contributions.

Cranston’s is a story as old as power itself; he became ever better at accumulating influence, by meting out favors for those who helped him. Yet the point of having power is supposed to be serving the public interest--and that point, in Cranston’s case, got crowded out in the flood of special-interest favors.

Perhaps saddest of all, Cranston insists he has done nothing wrong. He says the favors he did for Keating were business-as-usual in the U.S. Senate. “A person who makes a contribution has a better chance to get access (to a senator) than someone who does not,” Cranston said matter-of-factly during the hearings.

Cranston stressed that none of the money benefitted him “personally” the way vicuna coats, fancy vacations and briefcases full of cash have seduced other politicians. But he overlooked the fact that Keating’s $850,000 contributions to his political committees were clearly designed to expand Cranston’s political influence and the partisan Democratic cause--and that happened to be the way to win Cranston’s sympathetic attention.

Should Cranston be held accountable, or should the system be blamed? Both. The Cranston story represents an insidious, subtle corruption, the kind that sneaks up on well-meaning people by the inch rather than the mile. Cranston must be held fully accountable for failing to recognize and serve the public trust. Americans must also take major steps to improve the political system.

The first step is to acknowledge that political parties have been effectively replaced by television, and to regulate the process so that the huge cost of mounting an election campaign through television is reduced. The average senator must raise $35,000 every 20 days to pay the $4 million minimum price tag of a competitive campaign, according to estimates by the Wall Street Journal. We should establish public financing of federal elections and, at the same time, require the networks to provide some free air time to serious candidates for federal office. We also should consider the possibility of limited terms for House and Senate members.

One might well conclude, given his history, that Cranston might have kept his priorities straight had any of these curbs on the need to raise money been in effect. Yet reforms often create new opportunities for scandal, so we must also hold individuals far more accountable for overstepping moral boundaries in pursuit of political power. We must vote against them when they distort the truth during election campaigns as well as monitor them when they serve in office. And we should not let the Senate itself off the hook; it simply must set clearer, stricter ethical standards for itself.

Cranston, of all people, should have known better. If only he’d remembered why he’d gotten into politics in the first place--to make a safer, better world for all of us--Cranston might have been able to keep his balance. But he focused instead on making a safer, more powerful political base for himself. The only positive aspect of this story is that such excesses often backfire, as they have in the “Keating Five” scandal. And that they may drive us to make things better. If we get to work.