It is hard to find a guilty man in Washington. Whether the offense is cheating, lying, sexual harassment, adultery, influence peddling, even lying to Congress, no one is ever wrong, at least in his own mind, even if he goes to jail.
To many, a conviction in court is a technicality to satisfy some overambitious prosecutor. A resignation is viewed as a blood offering to the media. Pleading guilty is described as a sacrifice to the legal system. But in statements that continually reinforce the cynicism about Washington, the offender then quickly absolves himself of responsibility.
So it was last week on the federal courthouse steps as former Rep. Dan Rostenkowski invoked the “changing times” defense after pleading guilty to two felony mail fraud charges.
Despite those admissions of guilt, which bring 17 months of jail time and a $100,000 fine he negotiated with prosecutors in exchange for dropping more serious charges, Rostenkowski transformed his pleas into complaints of unfairness.
A Gulliver beset by Lilliputians, the former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee insisted he was more victim than culprit.
Whether the punishment is jail, resignation or thwarted ambition, the transition from miscreant to martyr is swift among the political set. But getting beyond such chutzpah, the things that were always wrong are still wrong. Ethical standards do not change. Without being finger-wagging moralists, there are some benchmarks.
Michael Josephson, who heads a center for ethics in Marina del Ray, Calif., suggests that one way to understand the difference between following rules and being ethical is to recognize that there is a difference between knowing what you have a right to do and what is right to do.
Former senator and presidential contender Gary Hart also believed he fell victim to social change when his extramarital affairs knocked him out of the national limelight. If it was OK to wink and nod at John Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson, why did Hart’s peccadillos bother anybody?
The prisons are full of innocent men and women, according to the inmates, but few defenses may be as inventive as that of former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams. After making false statements to Congress, he claimed he did that because he wasn’t authorized to tell the truth.
Instead of admitting guilt, they have an ineluctable desire to see themselves as victims or fall guys. Oliver North tried to convince the pub’lic that his lying to Congress made him a hero. He succeeded, not enough to be elected senator from Virginia, but enough to become a wealthy radio talk show host. Just like, say, convicted Watergate felon G. Gordon Liddy, who also sought and won a degree of public rehabilitation.
To understand North’s justification for his actions, it may be helpful to note that his boss at the National Security Council, John Poindexter, once declared it was his duty to mislead the public.
The same was true among the politicians and staffers who begat the Watergate scandal. OK, those who got religion, Chuck Colson and Jeb Stuart Magruder, did time and found redemption.
Facing indictment for having taken envelopes filled with cash, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned from office and pleaded no-contest to a single count of income tax evasion. He denied wrongdoing.
Former Sen. Bob Packwood said he would be sorry if he did many of the things people accused him of, but he didn’t remember. Jimmy Carter’s friend and senior adviser Bert Lance resigned in a financial scandal contending that he was just a country banker who helped out his friends.
At the moment, Republicans are hoping that President Clinton and the first lady’s defense that they were only passive investors in the Whitewater deal will become their downfall.
But for truly inventive rationalizations, there’s former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese: He resigned amid allegations of influence peddling, declaring his innocence and, as proof, offered the fact that a special prosecutor hadn’t indicted him.
That is what happens when politicians depend on rules rather than ethical standards to guide them.
Another defense common among public officials–you might call it the 2nd-grade defense–is that everyone else is doing it.
After he was censured by the Senate for helping Charles Keating loot a savings and loan association in exchange for campaign contributions, Sen. Alan Cranston of California declared, “My actions were not fundamentally different from the action of many other senators.”
Or, as Rostenkowski said on the courthouse steps: “Having pled guilty, I do not believe that I am any different than the vast majority of the members of Congress . . .”
Times do change, and as Rostenkowski found out two years ago when he lost his re-election bid, so do constituencies. His fall from grace came at the same time many of his colleagues failed to be re-elected as a result of an anti-government fervor. What these voters rejected was an arrogance of power and an entrenched elite.
Some see this reaction as part of a global trend. From Italy to South Korea, former officials are on trial for influence peddling, abuse of power and conflicts of interest.
Powerful public officials can become big, appealing targets for prosecutors, as Rostenkowski insisted.
To understand the allure of bringing powerful officials to heel, look at how fast prosecutors dropped investigations once Rep. Tony Coelho, the House whip, and House Speaker Jim Wright resigned from their respective offices.
Laws also change: The highway speed limit was once 70 m.p.h., then it was 55 m.p.h. and now it is 65 m.p.h. It would be a foolhardy defense to tell the cop you were following the old speed limit.
Admitting that many Americans are willing to shortchange the government, underreport or overdeduct on their tax returns, it still is not a very compelling defense to take to the Internal Revenue Service.
Is it fair? Police used to spend a great amount of time and resources on arresting numbers runners and others for illegal gambling. Now many states oversee their own gambling lotteries, reaping enormous and legal profits.
Rules, which represent only minimum standards and do not describe moral or ethical obligations, are subject to change. Until the last several years, there were no restrictions on lobbying after serving in Congress and no strict regulations on the use of campaign funds.
But even the existence of such rules doesn’t compel ethical behavior. “The once-clear legal standards established in the post-Watergate era have been almost completely eviscerated,” contends Larry Sabato, one of the authors of a new book titled “Dirty Little Secrets.”
Josephson promotes five principles of public service, a simple but comprehensive list:
– Do not use public office for personal gain.
– Make independent judgments in the public interest.
– Make sure there is open and visible accountability.
– As a principle of democracy, abide by the letter and spirit of the rules.
– Respectability–avoid actual or the appearance of conflict of interest.
If Rostenkowski had heeded these principles, he might not have needed lawyers to advise him, as he put it on the courthouse steps, that his conduct “could be legally sufficient for a jury to convict me of some of the charges in the indictment . . .”
