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Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Change? No. Same old corruption.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Here’s the story, so unreal that it makes Saturday Night Live skits where performers speak lines that the clueless then ascribe to the real people (Tina Fey as Sarah Palin: “I can see Russia from my house.”) seem to be reality.
In this spoof, an attractive politician from the ward politics of Chicago rises to prominence promising to bring about real change — in this case promising to change the notoriously dirty politics that had sent the former governor, George Ryan, to federal prison on corruption charges.
Rod Blagojevich, son-in-law of well-known Chicago Alderman Richard Mell, wins the governorship. And now he, fully aware that the feds are investigating him on suspicions of corruption, is caught on wiretaps, investigators say, scheming to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s vacant U.S. Senate seat for cash or appointments that will position him for great wealth or — get this — to be elected President of the United States in 2016.
Questions whirl. Underlying them all, though, is this: Why is it that some cities and states develop and retain cultures of corruption in politics? Chicago seems to be one of the worst. My guess is that group identity promotes loyalty to politicians who then trade votes for patronage jobs and for services. Over time, generations grow up believing that the way to get a pothole filled is to call the politician rather than public works. The loyalty is not to the city or to the public good, but to the neighborhood or to an ethnic group.
Georgia has for the most part escaped that kind of political corruption. Though political machines came and went, there was never the underlying conditions for corruption to take root and therefore permanence. Too, prosecutors and the media, led by this newspaper, have been vigilant in policing the kind of wrong-doing that gives birth to the corrupting of institutions — vote-buying, greed in public officials, abuse of prisoners and the like.
In systems drifting to corruption,prosecution or media exposure that wrong-doing has occurred is dismissed by voters as an effort to single-out a popular political figure unfairly — think U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who came within a hair of winning reelection despite having been convicted of corrupting his public office.
In systems that are reasonably free of institutionalized corruption, whistleblowers step up and voters and prosecutors deal with the isolated abuses.
Illinois Governor Blagojevich was so audacious in what he’s accused of doing that the distant observer has to conclude that the state is hopelessly mired in a culture of political corruption.
