Lessons of Tom DeLay

It came as no great surprise when House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was indicted last week by a Texas grand jury on charges of criminal conspiracy. After all, a cloud of suspicion had long hovered over the Texas Republicans head in relation to alleged violations of campaign finance laws. Whats especially troublesome about last weeks development, however, is the fact that ethical violations such as DeLays are by no means extraordinary in todays Washington. Indeed, several other key political figuresincluding Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, presidential adviser Karl Rove, and Thomas Finneran, the former speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representativesare also current targets of investigation for unethical practices. DeLays indictment only further illustrates the growing presence of corruption and dishonesty within the most powerful circles of our nations government; and the time has come for politicians to work together to address this urgent issue.

Formally, the Texas indictment accuses DeLay of transferring donated campaign funds from one of his own sources to another arm of the Republican National Committee, an action that violates campaign finance law. The scope of DeLays unethical behavior, however, spans far beyond the indictment itself. DeLay has already been formally sanctioned by the House Ethics Committee for promising a retiring congressman to endorse his son for election to his seat if he voted for President Bushs Medicare plan. That same sanction also admonished him for improperly attempting to use the Federal Aviation Administrations resources to locate Texas lawmakers who had holed up in Oklahoma to protest DeLays aggressive redistricting plan. DeLay also allegedly accepted trips to Britain, Moscow, the Pacific Mariana islands, and South Korea that were paid for by private interestsand, in the latter case, by a foreign interest. DeLay is certainly one of the most powerful politicians in Washington, but he seems increasingly to be one of the most corrupt as well. His indictment is long overdue and only begins to address his ethical lapses.

But DeLays case is far from an isolated one. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is currently under investigation for allegedly filing false reports with the Federal Elections Commission that failed to accurately indicate how poor the financial condition of his campaign was. Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove is being investigated for the leak of the identity of a CIA operative to the media. Democrat Thomas Finneran, the former powerful Speaker of the House in Massachusetts, is being investigated for committing perjury when he was questioned about his own aggressive redistricting plan. John Rowland, once the Republican governor of Connecticut, is now serving time in federal prison after being convicted of conspiracy. The list could go on, but the trend is clear: unethical political practices are evident throughout the government, not just in the case of Tom DeLay.

The response of other politicians to this issue, however, has been amazingly misguided. Consider, for example, President Bushs reaction last spring when the storm clouds were beginning to collect around DeLay. Even after the majority leader was formally admonished by the House Ethics Committee and details about his other serious ethics violations were beginning to emerge, Bush pointedly offered DeLay a ride on Air Force One and referred to him repeatedly as my friend. Other conservatives maintained that the questions about DeLays ethical behavior were part of a liberal conspiracy designed to deviously topple the influential Republican lawmaker from his seat. Unfortunately, this type of counterproductive response to legitimate questions of ethics has become the norm in Washington: rather than allowing the legal process to address such questions efficiently and thoroughly (as it ultimately did with DeLay), politicians twist them into partisan shouting matches that, in the end, only further damage the integrity of our government.

This type of response is unacceptable. The long litany of recent ethics abuses committed by some of the most powerful individuals in our governmentincluding, most recently, the indictment of Tom DeLaydemonstrate a fact that cannot be ignored any longer: there is an intolerable lack of honesty in our government. The people of the United States want and deserve a transparent government that is free from corruption, and the time has come for politicians to take this demand seriously.