Abramoff and the art of buying influence

Mark Twain said it many years ago, and it still is true today. We still have, in fact, the best lawmakers that money can buy. And if you doubt this, consider that once again, certain Washingtonians and money have crossed paths, again to the detriment of these powerful individuals.

The whole mess hit the fan when influential lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, pleaded guilty to three felony counts, all related to taking a small sum from certain Indian tribes (in the neighborhood of 20,000,000 dollars-quite a neighborhood, that) while employed by them to get an official okay to allow these tribes to set up casinos on their reservations, and then using the money to line the pockets of influential Congress members to, in essence, get them to jump whenever he cracked his moneyed whip.

There is a great short story entitled “The Devil and Tom Walker” by early American author Washington Irving. In Irving’s story, which concerns a miser by the name of Tom Walker who sells his soul to the devil, the author sets the scene by showing how certain highly-placed individuals in that era, who were outwardly respectable, were, in fact, inwardly corrupt.

When the Devil and Tom Walker first meet, they are in a thickly forested area, and the Devil has just chopped a tree down. Tom observes several things here. First of all, all of the trees in the immediate area have the names of prominent people cut into their barks. And the tree that has just been cut, which bears the name of an influential man from Tom’s own town, is outwardly healthy looking, but on closer inspection, Tom sees that the heart is gone, that it has rotted out.

When Tom gets back to his home, he hears of the death of this man, and the talk is all around that “a great tree has fallen in Zion”. The reader and Tom alone know better.

Irving also describes these individuals, and their view of life when he tells how an earthquake in New England (an unusual event) “shook some might tall sinners to their knees”.

It is remarkable how the events that surround the Abramoff incident mirror Irving’s short story. For, as with those powerful individuals in Irving’s tale, the politicians who make their reputation and fortune in D. C. often wind up selling their political souls to the powerful, moneyed interests that helped them keep their seats in
Congress.

And, as with the wealthy man represented by the felled tree, you are seeing political careers die a similar death. Tom “the Hammer” Delay, for instance, who stepped aside temporarily from the House Majority leader’s job after being indicted in Texas for violating election laws there, has, because he was so closely tied to Abramoff, been forced to abdicate his throne for good, this time.

And Congressman Bob Ney, R., Ohio, chairman of the powerful House Administration Committee, has been forced to “temporarily” step aside from this position because he, too, was closely allied with Abramoff. The Republican majority, it would seem, are now remembering, perhaps for the first time, their promises made in their infamous 1994 “Contract on-er-with America”, and are now busy trying to set them into law before the American public remembers it as well, and before they cancel this contract at the ballot box because of the failure of the parties of the first part to live up to all the fine print.

Yes, this “political earthquake” is having the same effect as the real earthquake had in Irving’s tale. For far and wide, some “tall sinners” have taken that plunge to their metaphorical knees, and Congress members everywhere are doing the unthinkable. They are taking money from their re-election accounts and GIVING IT BACK! You know times are desperate whenever you see something like this. Next thing you know, they’ll take to keeping their hands in their OWN pockets.

We can only hope the if reforms are enacted in Congress concerning lobbyists, Members of Congress, and the money (money is to Congress members as slop is to a hog) that so often taints their relationships, these reforms will not be the window dressing that such attempts normally turn out to be.

Still, I’m not holding my breath. To ask a politician to give up his source of campaign cash is not unlike Barney Fife’s attempts to get Otis, the town drunk, to disclose the location of the stills from which he purchased his libations. These attempts, as well-intentioned as they were, were never successful. No more successful than Congress’s attempts have been, after each of many such scandals, to rid itself of the corrupting influence of money.

I suppose we’ll have to do what Andy and Barney wound up doing. We have to expect such things, and learn to live with them. Because when you come right down to it, love might make the world go ‘round, but money greases the wheel.