THE NATION : ETHICS : When Is a Politician Acting Like a Politician?

Washington scandals and would-be scandals keep chugging along like an Energizer bunny on speed. Yet, the latest round of charges is a bit different. We--meaning people in this country who pay attention to politics --are approaching a dead end on the ethics road.

For a quarter-century, we have used increasingly tough reporting, regulations and enforcement to chase down and root out improper influence in government. This muscular system has, to a great extent, done its job. We know this because most influence-wielding we see in politics is hard to eliminate, or even to describe, using the old-fashioned tools and language of political ethics.

Take, for instance, the Bill Clintons’ well-known problems. The Whitewater scandal still has more secrets to yield, but it does not now seem likely that President or Mrs. Clinton will be found to have done anything criminal. It may even be hard to say what ethical principles they violated.

In the same way, there is something strange about how Hillary Rodham Clinton made her $100,000 in the commodities markets. But it’s not likely that she did anything as gross as take a bribe: exchange a concrete quid for a specific quo.

No, all the Clintons did was swim in the gelatinous, webbed sea of Arkansas politics. Did Clinton, when governor of Arkansas, do nice things for his campaign contributors, the Tyson poultry interests? If he did, there is no way to know whether his motives were corrupt, since Tyson is also a large Arkansas employer.

Indeed, it may take years for the independent counsel investigating President Clinton’s secretary of agriculture, Mike Espy, to disentangle self-interest from public-spiritedness in the duet between Tyson and Arkansas politicians.

Now, the critics are trying to pin a similar corruption charge on House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Until the last congressional redistricting, Gingrich’s constituency included Southwire Inc. Its owners have contributed to the congressman’s campaigns, his PAC, a book deal and his famous college course, “Renewing American Civilization.”

So? Nobody knows. It is alleged that Gingrich’s course is partisan rather than educational--but certainly no more so than thousands of courses at American colleges and universities today.

It has also been pointed out that Gingrich, once a more aggressive environmentalist than he is now, reconciled with Southwire even though the company had been charged with various safety, environmental and labor offenses.

To judge from news reports, Gingrich changed his mind about Southwire after nothing more complex than listening to the company’s side of the environmental story. The cynic might suppose that Gingrich listened extra hard and kept listening hard because Southwire was a contributor and is a large employer in his district. But are those good reasons for a politician not to listen?

Once again, it is hard to say clearly just what wrongdoing we have turned up.

As presidential politics get rolling, we’re starting to see similar revelations about other politicians.

There are stories about whether Texas senator and presidential hopeful Phil Gramm underpaid for home construction arranged for him by a builder who was a savings-and-loan malefactor. But we don’t know whether Gramm knew about either the underpayment or the fact that his buddy was a bad actor. Gramm doesn’t seem to have done anything underhanded on his friend’s behalf.

There are also stories asking why former governor of Tennessee and presidential candidate Lamar Alexander, when he was in private life and a consultant to Whittle Communications, was allowed to buy Whittle stock, which multiplied many times in value. But no one has offered any evidence that Alexander did anything wrong to earn the privilege.

This turbulence shows resentment of preferential treatment given either to or by a politician. But it does not tell us what improper favor was done, or what harm befell the public as a result.

The assumption in these stories is that if a politician or politician’s friend got treated better than other people, something must be seriously wrong; but we are never told just what is wrong in terms of public policy.

For instance, a politician may have ties to a corporation that is a player in his state or district economy. If he watches out for the corporation’s welfare, is he necessarily selling out the interests of the people? Nope. It depends on the particulars of the case.

Politicians, contrary to rumor, are like other people. They are not immune to the lure of a good meal, a pleasant place to spend a weekend, a job for the kid or a hard-to-get appointment with the area’s best back specialist. Often they never return the favor: They get so used to people doing nice things for them, they think it’s because of their innate charm.

Sometimes, these good turns create bad appearances, in which case it is undoubtedly stupid for a politician to be party to them. But appearances aside, should we be incensed even if these things fail to harm the public interest in any discernible way? Not usually.

In considering these questions, we move beyond issues of bribery or even classic conflict of interest. Instead, such situations bring us face to face with the political system created by Jefferson, Hamilton, et al.

These gentlemen wanted interests to be represented in American politics. There is no ambiguity or doubt about this. They thought--knew--that to create a society in which people could not pursue their interests through politics would require measures far worse than the dangers of garden-variety influence-peddling.

They did not want politicians quarantined against the contagion of a privately interested party. They thought the way to prevent private interests from harming the public was not to outlaw them but to pit one against the other--which they did with notable success.

After we have attacked bribery and conflict of interest, we will be left with the system the founders designed for us.

We have several choices: We can change the system to try to eliminate private interests, which, as they told us, is a bad idea. We can accept the fact that influence will be exercised in our politics and try to judge this influence--unless it is criminal--not by whether it exists but by whether it harms the public.

Or we can take the middle road: accept the theory that private interests are legitimate but express abhorrence every time they raise their greedy heads in the political arena.

We have chosen the stupid middle way, of course. For the foreseeable future we will stick to it, and, in the process, we shall continue to cannibalize our politics.*