Capitol Minds

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Capitol Minds
Why Pols Think They're Above It All
Norman J. Ornstein

Observing House Majority Leader Tom DeLay battle questions about his ethics, I feel as if I'm in the middle of a movie I've seen before. Call it "Groundhog Day Part II." Or "Back to the Future Part IV." The plot: Top leader makes it onto the front pages because of allegations of ethical transgressions. Heated denials are followed by suggestions that no laws and no specific rules were violated -- and that, in any event, everyone does it. Then come dark hints that partisan payback or conspiracies are to blame. Finally, the fall. Before the credits roll, there's foreshadowing of a sequel in which the virtuous chief accuser becomes the corrupted prime accusee.

(snip)
It is especially baffling because the Republican leaders recently tarnished by ethics issues had come to power as ethical scolds of their imprudent Democratic predecessors. Wright fell after charges levied by Gingrich, then a mere rank-and-file member, triggered an ethics investigation that led to Wright's resignation from the speakership and the House in 1989. Then in 1996, in a sequence eerily reminiscent of the Wright case, a flurry of allegations made primarily by House Democratic Whip David Bonior and originally centering around a Gingrich book deal, led inexorably to an ethics committee investigation, reprimand and fine in 1997. Gingrich survived as speaker, though he faced an attempted coup months later by unhappy Republicans. And after Republicans lost seats in the 1998 elections, he too resigned from the speakership and the House. One of the ringleaders of the rebellious GOP members: Tom DeLay. Now DeLay --righteous point man for the Republicans in the impeachment drive against President Bill Clinton -- is in the hot seat.

(snip)
Why have these lawmakers forgotten one of the commandments of leadership: Thou shalt not do anything that would look bad on the front page of the morning newspapers? One part of the answer is hubris -- a perhaps incurable affliction of the powerful, a belief that you are different, and a conviction that the worldly rules of politics do not apply to you. All the men listed above were full of hubris, sometimes verging on arrogance (some would say meanness) that exceeded even The Hammer's. Few matched the ultra-powerful Democratic chairman of the House Administration Committee Wayne Hays, who once called me a "little pissant" to my face for no reason that I could discern other than that I then worked for a member he didn't like. Several years later, in 1976, he got into trouble for putting his mistress, Elizabeth Ray (the one who could not type), on his office payroll as a secretary. He too resigned.

But if hubris is a necessary part of the equation, it does not equate with ethical insensitivity or larceny; lots of members of Congress, including party and committee leaders, are hubristic, arrogant and mean and never get tripped up on charges of sexual misconduct or misuse of office.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/30/AR2005043000104.html