[Mb-civic] McCain's Day to Crow - Richard Cohen - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

McCain's Day to Crow

By Richard Cohen
Thursday, January 5, 2006; A15

John McCain had a very good day this week. It was Tuesday, when 
superlobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to various charges of 
corruption and when, across town, the Department of Homeland Security 
announced it would henceforth depart from its customary procedure and 
award its anti-terrorism grants on the basis of merit. Here, in a single 
day, was Washington as McCain always said it was. It could make you sick.

Abramoff, of course, is the personification of the Washington McCain has 
long railed against. Not elected, appointed to no government office and 
unknown to all but a handful of Americans, he nonetheless was at the 
center of a vast influence-peddling apparatus that took in and 
distributed the sort of money that, in a more innocent era, compelled 
the cartoonist Thomas Nast to render Tammany Hall's Boss Tweed with a 
moneybag for a head. Abramoff, as had the equally rapacious Columbus 
before him, discovered Indians.

 From one Mississippi tribe, the government charged, an Abramoff 
associate took in nearly $15 million, of which Abramoff got a $6.4 
million kickback. From a nearby Louisiana tribe, an Abramoff associate 
got $30.5 million, of which he kicked back $11.5 million to Abramoff. 
The numbers are astounding, and, even more astounding, sometimes they 
bought the tribes nothing at all. In one instance, Abramoff and his guys 
took money from competing tribes in Texas and Louisiana, one for 
reopening a casino in Texas and the other for keeping it and others closed.

What's stunning about Washington -- as opposed to, say, Las Vegas in the 
bad old Mafia days -- is how open the whole process was. Abramoff had 
his own restaurant, a place called Signatures, and supplied skyboxes for 
sporting events the way old-time political bosses used to send over coal 
in wintertime. Abramoff could send a cooperative and worthy congressman 
on a golfing trip to Scotland or to a day at the beach in Florida. He 
liked to quote from "The Godfather," but Don Corleone was a model of 
discretion compared with Abramoff. The Godfather's olive oil business 
was a front. Abramoff skipped that step. His fake business and his real 
business were one and the same -- influence peddling.

A similar, although inadvertent, acknowledgment of the sheer squalor of 
things was on display over at Homeland Security, too. There, Secretary 
Michael Chertoff announced that grants would be awarded by merit. This 
was a stunning admission that, up to now, they had not been. In other 
words, states like Wyoming -- not exactly high on anyone's list of 
terrorist targets -- got a piece of the money, along with such past 
targets as New York and Washington. Chertoff, a good man made to play 
the fool by a system not of his making, said, "We've looked at what 
happened over in London with the terrorist attacks on the rail lines, 
and that has reinforced the idea that we have to consider consequences, 
vulnerabilities and threats." Imagine that! Homeland Security 
considering "vulnerabilities and threats."

Back to McCain. For years now, he has been fulminating against the 
system -- the outsized role and influence of lobbyists and the 
parochialism of senators and representatives who, like the ridiculous 
Ted Stevens of Alaska, have turned selfishness into a matter of high 
principle. But more important, McCain has tried to rein in campaign 
spending, which is a root of the problem. The sad fact is that the 
average member of Congress has his hat out for campaign funds most of 
the time. Lobbyists know that. They go see a member and in a heartbeat 
they are hit up for a donation.

It does the heart good to note, as I must, that some of those implicated 
in the Abramoff mess were among the foremost faux moralists of the 
Clinton years. Two of those are former Tom DeLay aides Tony Rudy and 
Michael Scanlon, both of whom went on to become satellites of Abramoff, 
sharing in his largess and, now, his infamy. It was Scanlon who wrote a 
poetic e-mail to Rudy during the Clinton impeachment proceedings 
beginning, "God bless you Tony Rudy," and suggesting that instead of 
mercy, Bill Clinton be beaten "over the head with a baseball bat." The 
bat's now in other hands.

So much needs to be done: campaign finance reform, an ethics committee 
with teeth, the insistence that lobbyists report whom precisely they are 
lobbying -- the name, please, not merely this entity called "the House 
of Representatives." But what's needed most of all is indignation on the 
part of the public, a cold fury about being ripped off and taken for 
granted. This, as it happens, has been the grimaced and often solitary 
face of the indignant McCain. He hardly had a mention in yesterday's 
newspapers, but it was his day nonetheless.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/04/AR2006010401588.html
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