Things settle on people in the strangest places. I was thinking hard about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the troubling Republican from Texas, last week while visiting the Milwaukee Art Museum. I wanted to see the building lower its astounding white wings at high noon.
DeLay is at the center of controversy at the moment, much of it reflected in news media accounts about him being at the center of controversy, which is what happens when the information on record falls short of illegal acts but slips deep into the pond of dubious ethical behavior.
There’s a lot to ponder there.
There were golf trips to Scotland and Moscow (golf in Moscow? Lenin would spin in his glass container) paid for by others, hefty salary payments to family members, questions about spreading campaign contributions around to encourage votes. Not to be too technical, but it has all the earmarks of a mess, with DeLay stuck right in the center of it.
I was thinking about whether DeLay would fall to the same pressures that forced former luminary House Speakers Newt Gingrich, the Georgia Republican, and Jim Wright, the Texas Democrat, out of office before him, with a little thought that he might fall into the same kind of pit that trapped Chicago’s own Dan Rostenkowski, the former House Ways and Means Committee chairman, a Democrat whose largesse with federal money ended up sending him to jail on a guilty plea for a while.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, another Republican, went down, after all, for an unpleasant comment about how things would have been different had the Dixiecrats won back in 1948. He was just trying to be kind to the very first Dixiecrat, South Carolina’s GOP Sen. Strom Thurmond, on his 100th birthday. Segregation was the Dixiecrat battle cry in 1948.
Even as a tribute to a very old man, the thought that it conjured up just didn’t play well. After many apologies and lots of heat, Lott stepped down.
Of course, DeLay is not the speaker, but there is no doubt that the former Texas bug killer has wielded more clout in the leader’s position than many of his predecessors.
These thoughts were all bubbling away in Milwaukee when I ran into Manius Curius Dentatus and one of those clarifying experiences that puts questions of political corruption and influence peddling in their place.
At the museum, Dentatus stands in the center of a 16th Century Flemish tapestry, a gift to the museum from, of all people, the William R. Hearst Foundation. Hearst, of course, was no stranger to political corruption of his own and of those around him. Fortunately, he left behind lots of clean money to distribute.
Dentatus, we are told, was born with a full set of choppers, which is why he was named Dentatus. But it wasn’t his teeth that put him in the center of that tapestry, and Pliny’s account of that miraculous birth is a little dubious anyway.
It was his behavior that put him there.
In the 3rd Century B.C., Dentatus was responsible for the defeat of the Samnites, warlike Italians who finally were brought under Roman control. In the tapestry, he is staring into the distance, oblivious to the people around him, the emissaries of the Samnites, who came to bring him lots of booty and graft. There are gold chains, spectacular animals, money, sculptures.
Dentatus doesn’t want any of it.
The Roman general was a simple man. He is depicted in literature and art as a lover of nothing more grandiose than turnips, which he boiled for his meals.
He learned, centuries before the modern U.S. House came along, that it was best to just say “No!” He said he would rather rule over people who possessed gold than possess the gold himself. That makes him one rare bird in the world of war and politics.
Dentatus is a good character to keep in mind as the DeLay problem plays out.
Thus far, DeLay has been cheered by the House Republicans who love him and the largesse he has spread around, sort of backed by a timid White House, and resolute in claiming this is all a conspiracy cobbled together by the Democrats and the vile liberal media who love them.
Perhaps.
The problem is that the record of unsavory behavior in the House has shifted across party lines many times. Wright and Rostenkowski are just two modern examples of Democrats who stepped over the line. That Gingrich and DeLay are Republicans may well be immaterial. These things, it seems, are about power and how it may corrupt the people it embraces, not at all about political ideology.
It’s why Manius Curius Dentatus stuck to his turnips.
The defense that many of DeLay’s supporters are echoing these days is that nothing he has done was illegal and it all fell within the boundaries of House ethical rules, apparently a shifting set of standards frequently adapted to the times and maintained by a shifting set of House members, recently adjusted to include DeLay supporters.
But that’s not the point.
The point is how it looks to those who live outside the U.S. House. There are no fat cats in their lives to finance anything. They pay as they go, generally with their own money.
A brief visit to the DeLay file, compiled by Nicholas Thompson at Slate.msn.com, shows this:
– The redistricting kerfuffle.
DeLay joined in setting up the Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee in 2001 aimed at getting more Republicans in the Texas Legislature. He wanted them there to help force redistricting that would give the GOP more U.S. House seats. The plan worked, but the PAC apparently collected lots of corporate money, which is not allowed in Texas state races. In question is $190,000 that made its way from the PAC to the GOP National State Elections Committee. The same amount was distributed two weeks later to favored state candidates.
DeLay says that he didn’t know about that and, besides, he found out that later the money was for administrative costs, which is legal. Three DeLay associates and eight corporate donors have been indicted back home. No one knows where this is leading, but Texas prosecutor Ronnie Earle is an aggressive district attorney and is pursuing the case with vigor.
– Three questionable trips.
In 1997, DeLay went to Russia at the expense of a Bahamas company connected to Russian oil interests. In 2000, he went to Britain, a journey paid for in part by a lobbyist. In 2001 he went to South Korea on a trip funded by a recently registered foreign agent. Not much is likely to come of this because the House is just full of characters who have participated in the same kind of behavior.
– Now-ancient embarrassing history.
Last year the ethics committee, which has since been reconstituted to include three DeLay supporters among its Republicans, admonished DeLay for appearing to offer a bribe to a fellow Republican to get support on a Medicare reform bill, for soliciting donations from Westar Energy as the House was considering a bill important to the company, and for using the Federal Aviation Administration to track down Texas lawmakers who had fled the state to avoid a vote on redistricting.
– Family business.
Two weeks ago, The New York Times revealed that DeLay’s wife and daughter have been on the payrolls of several of his organizations. That’s not unusual, but the amount of money involved is. They were paid $500,000 over four years. In his defense, there is no doubt that the wife and daughter are instrumental and work long hours for the House member from Texas. Still, in the “death of a thousand cuts” world of Washington politics, it can’t help.
The question is how much of this kind of stuff does it take before the House Republicans, despite their affection for DeLay’s efforts and the role they played in building the Republican House majority, say, “That’s enough” and send the majority leader packing?
DeLay’s problems take on more weight when they are viewed in light of the kind of trouble that preceded him in the House.
Rostenkowski must stand as an exception because he was brought down not by House members who tired of shenanigans but by a federal prosecutor with a big staff and a passion for measuring how House money was spent.
Jim Wright and Newt Gingrich provide better bad-behavior models.
In his explanation to the International Academy of Trial Lawyers of his role in leading the Wright investigation, Richard Phelan (now a Chicago litigator) noted that ethical standards are what makes a professional a real professional.
“Political ethics serve much the same purpose by preserving the politician’s independence from improper influence. … At the most basic level, political ethics prohibit the blatant purchase and sale of influence,” Phelan wrote.
Sounds like Dentatus, doesn’t it?
Moving on a complaint from (how is this for irony?) Gingrich and strange bedfellow Common Cause, the House ethics committee reached out in 1988 to hire Phelan as its special outside counsel.
All of Wright’s statements were accepted as true, Phelan reported. All of the committee’s own findings were rigorously challenged.
The outcome?
The speaker, the special investigation showed, broke House rules of conduct on no fewer than 116 occasions. Phelan was questioned for eight hours. He and Wright’s lawyers argued for 18 hours before the committee. They all whittled down the bill of particulars to 69 violations. The committee vote was 12-0.
It amounted to this. Wright had received improper gifts from a person with direct interest in legislation, failed to report them and schemed through sales of his book “Reflections of a Public Man” to evade limits on outside income, then failed to report the income as honoraria. The accounting gave him a pass on charges he meddled with the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. Wright resigned the speaker’s job and his seat.
Gingrich’s problems flowed from his admission to the ethics committee that he had used tax-exempt money for political purposes and supplied inaccurate information to the committee during its investigation. He admitted violating House rules and accepted punishment, a $300,000 fine, and apologized to the House and the American people.
On the surface, that wasn’t what brought him down. But it undeniably had poisoned the waters in the House Republican caucus and set the stage for his resignation, which came after Republicans saw their majority trimmed by five seats in midterm elections in 1998. The election results sparked an uprising, and in short order Gingrich resigned.
That history may likely be on the minds of a lot of House Republicans.
Gingrich, full of himself as House speaker and promising to be tightly connected to the people, unlike the arrogant Democrats, may have put his party well beyond what Republican voters wanted. There already are signs that Republicans are unsettled by DeLay’s behavior.
Elections aren’t that far off, and the House GOP obviously doesn’t want to face losses in their majority.
Rostenkowski’s collapse reflected a plummeting from power that seemed unlikely, if not impossible, just a short time before it happened. At his 1996 sentencing, U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson tongue-lashed him for “shamelessly abusing your position” and bringing “a measure of disgrace” on the House.
Rostenkowski pleaded guilty to two felony charges of the 17 federal corruption counts he had faced on indictment in May 1994. Under his plea, he rejected any claim that he had pocketed money for himself. He went to prison for 17 months after admitting to mail fraud and misuse of taxpayer money. President Bill Clinton later gave him a pardon.
Originally Rostenkowski had been accused of conspiracy to defraud the government, mail fraud, wire fraud, embezzlement and concealing a material fact. The feds alleged that his behavior had cost taxpayers $600,000 over 20 years. Four of the charges were dismissed.
It may be that Rostenkowski’s case doesn’t even belong in this listing. He would insist he did nothing wrong, that he just got caught doing what members of Congress had always been doing, spreading all manner of things around to constituents and friends.
Still, there is that image of the Roman general hanging in Milwaukee.
In its ancient silence, what it says is that, for public officials, appearances are important.
Manius Curius Dentatus satisfied himself with the honor of his office and with his turnips.
The spoils he left to lesser types.
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Charles M. Madigan is editor of the Tribune Perspective section and writes “The Rambling Gleaner,” an Internet column at chicagotribune.com/gleaner
