The Genial Grafter

The genial grafter, long a strategic, if not an integral part of Massachusetts politics, has come in for an unprecedented amount of New England fire in recent months. Recent Boston newspaper headlines have fully advertised the frequency of corruption in high (and low) places. Even as Rudolph G. Bessette, director of the state Waterways Division, stood trial this week for alleged "sweetheart deals," scandals in two areas came to light. Yesterday the Boston Finance Commission began investigation of charges that there were rigged bids in a proposed $400,000 purchase of new fire engines. At the same time, the BFC also discovered possible price rigging in the sale of six acres of land in Hyde Park; this property is now owned by City Auctioneer John J. McGrath of Dorchester.

According to a former U.S. attorney, these scandals are the product of a political favors system carried to the point where the favors themselves dominate governmental action. In a recent Atlantic Monthly article, aptly titled "Poisoned Politics," Elliot L. Richardson '41 asserts, "The most striking feature of the Massachusetts political scene...is the subordination of programs and principles to personal relationships. Friendships and enmities...courtesies and slights have an importance in determining political alignments that is exceeded only by the pocketbook."

Underlying and responsible for the graft, Richardson thinks, are apathy among the wealthy burghers and self-disrespect among individual politicians. "No longer an esteemed benefactor, and not yet a respected public servant, the politician, in the eyes of all too many citizens of Massachusetts, is a mere errand boy, remembered only when there is a ticket or a sidewalk to be fixed."

Although he has offered a very feasible explanation for the dilemma of Massachusetts, at one point Richardson carries his thesis too far. "Where political careers are built on favors and rewards, recriminations and reprisals," he writes, "it is natural that the political careerist should attach only secondary importance to the merits of issues. Instead of expertness in municipal finance or public transportation, he is more apt to acquire expertness in determining whether a given back calls for scratching or the knife."

Richardson neglects the necessity for compromise and negotiation. He almost falls into the trap which has rendered many political reformers useless. By his description of a political career in Massachusetts, he implies that politics per se perpetuates its own corruption. Rather, as he indicated earlier, it is the complete subordination of issues to personal interest, not the favors system itself--an essential lubricant in the wheels of government--which has allowed graft to flourish in this state.

Finally Richardson touches the core of the matter. He lays the blame for political corruption in the area of public morality, "in the same shoddy category as the priming of television quizzes, the rigging of commodity prices, and the fixing of college basketball games." He places the dirt before the man who in the last analysis makes the system work--the voter.

Massachusetts Attorney General Edward J. McCormack also blames the voter. In a short discussion after the WHRB Radio Forum yesterday, McCormack emphasized that when the moral standards of the community are low, the political standards will approximate them. The speeder who hands the arresting officer a $5 bill folded in his license is the same man who protests at corruption in government, McCormack said. Where Richardson places primary blame on the Massachusetts political structure, McCormack is more realistic.

"This is a government of laws, not of men" he quoted. Because the Commonwealth can prosecute only according to the existing statute concerning outright bribes, it has little jurisdiction in the realm of political ethics. McCormack felt that a code of ethics, such as the one presently under consideration by a special state committee, might be more to the point. If political evil were clearly and legally defined, McCormack predicted, there surely would be less corruption. Graft could no longer be genial.