A POX ON BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, the following piece points fingers from the political right at the political left for a lack of ethics. Ethics in politics? Please! 'Ethical politician' has become the ultimate oxymoron.

Neither party practices ethics as an enduring value. In fact, members of both parties violate ethical standards regularly, sort of like eating three meals a day.

Here is the nub of the problem: the longer a politician serves in Congress, the more likely it becomes that said careerist will be tainted by graft, corruption and influence pedaling.

We voters consistently make the mistake of voting for these professional pols and they, in turn, begin to devote most of their time and energy into being reelected over and over again. What becomes front and center to such people is prolonging their careers in Congress. The best interests of the nation and the welfare of the people get permanently pushed down their priority list.

As everyone realizes, getting elected to national office is a very expensive proposition. Courting and securing donations from special interests, unions, identity groups, lobbyists and the very wealthy takes up most of the time that our "public servants" spend in public office. Another large chunk of time is devoted to "recess" breaks where they theoretically go back to their home states to meet with constituents. Truth is, they go back and do more fund raising. It is true that some of their time in office is devoted to the business of government, but it is usually the business that exclusively benefits their donors which occupies most of that time.

The more committed one becomes to remaining in office, the less time is spent doing the work that our representatives are sent to Washington DC to accomplish. Worse yet, that drive to be a career politician forces them to immerse themselves in raising cash. That focus is what leads to graft, corruption and the abandonment of anything resembling ethics. No profiles in courage here.

Anytime a voter returns an incumbent to office, that voter becomes part of the problem. More importantly, if that incumbent has been repeatedly reelected in the past, the voter becomes personally responsible for the failure of our federal government to function properly. Continually returning incumbents to office is, in the final analysis, a failure to exercise common sense as well as a real misunderstanding of human nature.

To clean up government, we the people must regularly send new faces and names into public office. We must be smart enough to move away from the tendency to vote for professional politicians. They are of no special value. Any dedicated and committed patriot can do at least as well if not, in all likelihood, much better.

Send educators, mothers, executives, small business owners, pilots, trade workers, nonprofit leaders, military veterans, retirees and all manner of others to serve one or two terms in office and thereafter go back to their former lives. Send everyday Americans, the one's that make this country successful, to serve in Congress and thereafter send them home so that they do not become permanent office seekers.

The career professional politicians who are in Congress now and have been there for a long time have, after all, gotten us to where we are today. The rest of us could do not worse and, in fact, would do a way better job for the country and for the people.

If you believe, for even one second, that the clowns in Congress now are worthy of your vote, you are not in possession of your faculties. They are the problem and will never be the solution.


Democrats Are the New Ethics Story
Blagojevich is just the tip of the iceberg.
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

A note to all those visitors who will soon flood Washington for the inauguration: Be careful of the "swamp."

That would be the swamp Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed to drain when she led her party to victory in 2006. The GOP had been rocked by scandal, and Mrs. Pelosi and Democrats won, in part, by promising to clean up the "culture of corruption" that pervaded Washington.

Instead, Democrats now have an image problem. The real issue isn't so much Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's Senate-seat auction, as it is the focus that his scandal has directed toward a wider assortment of Democratic troubles. This isn't great timing for Barack Obama, who campaigned on cleaner government.

The Blagojevich drama is titillating enough, and local Democrats' dithering over how to fill Mr. Obama's seat guarantees it will remain a storyline longer than is comfortable. But the Illinois drama has also thrust new light on the ongoing ethical controversies of House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel. At the rate the House Ethics Committee is receiving complaints -- over Mr. Rangel's real-estate problems, tax problems, his privately sponsored trips to the Caribbean, and donations to his center in New York -- this too will make headlines for a while.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune published a new story about Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez, who racked up $420,000 through a series of suspicious real-estate deals. Texas Rep. Silvestre Reyes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, came under scrutiny this fall for questionable earmarking. West Virginia Rep. Alan Mollohan has been under investigation for a separate earmarking mess. And then there's Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, who has yet to answer questions about the sweetheart mortgage deal he received from Countrywide.

One unfortunate side effect of Mr. Obama's long coattails was that they helped the party's more ethically challenged members get re-elected. Pennsylvania's Paul Kanjorski and John Murtha, who both struggled to keep their seats because of earmarking travails, will continue to answer questions about their actions. Mrs. Pelosi lost a problem when Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson -- with his $90,000 in freezer cash -- lost in November. Yet she has potentially gained a new headache with Illinois Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who may have wanted that Obama seat a little too much.

There are more. Shockingly, this has happened despite all those campaign-finance laws, and Congress's legislation to ban lobbyist lunches. The members took credit for those publicity stunts, and went right back to their "culture" of earmarking.

The speaker's reluctance to tackle these problems is odd considering she is a seasoned pol who surely knows nothing sucks the life out of a party more quickly than a good round of tittle-tattle. The Republican crew of Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham and Bob Ney sank the GOP easily enough, quite aside from its other problems.

Mrs. Pelosi must also know Republicans are belatedly getting their own house in order, at least in terms of optics. The GOP is lucky that most of its worst offenders, such as Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, have now been dealt with by federal prosecutors or voters. To further inoculate his side, House Minority Leader John Boehner also recently moved to strip Alaska Rep. Don Young -- allegedly under federal investigation -- of his top slot at the resources committee. He intends to turn Democratic infractions into a political story. He knows how easy it is to do.

Mrs. Pelosi's problem is politics. Her refusal to temporarily remove Mr. Rangel from Ways and Means is in part a reticence to further anger the Congressional Black Caucus, which remains steamed that she worked for Mr. Jefferson's ouster from his seat on Ways and Means. Worse, next in line for Mr. Rangel's slot is Rep. Pete Stark, an off-the-charts liberal who Mrs. Pelosi would struggle to leash.

Is Mr. Obama taking notes? The president-elect is discovering the limits of his campaign strategy of ignoring inconvenient questions. One of his great achievements this year was to convince voters that his meteoric rise was unconnected to the Chicago political machine. His silence in the Blagojevich scandal has mainly served to make people wonder if that was true.

His Clinton-era appointments threaten to unleash their own round of stories, from a rehash of Eric Holder's role in the Marc Rich pardon, to Bill Clinton's foundation donors. And Mrs. Pelosi's congressional problems threaten to become his own. Mr. Rangel, Mr. Reyes and Mr. Murtha -- to name but a few -- all head bodies that will be central to Mr. Obama's agenda.

One of President Bush's mistakes was his refusal to police the spending and earmarks that led his party to temptation, or to push his party to quarantine its liabilities. If the president-elect wants to avoid the same error, he might consider what his promises of good government mean in practice, especially as regards his own party.

Write to kim@wsj.com
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