Do politicians train for corruption?
This question is generated by the goings-on in New York now. The leader of the corrections workers union was just indicted. Several cops in managerial positions in the NYPD were indicted. Two state legislature VIPs, one from the Assembly and the other from the Senate, are going to jail for taking bribes. Bill de Blasio’s mayoral campaign has been accused of illegally channeling donations to candidates for that state legislature to try to ensure a Democratic legislature that is favorable to the mayor and his policies. I won’t name names, except for the mayor, who figures prominently in the discussion, because these cases haven’t been decided, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them were partisan motivated.
The question also has a NJ motivation, Bridgegate. How much did Chris Christie, ardent Trump supporter, even of his latest racist attack on a judge born in Indiana, really know about the payback plot against a NJ mayor not supporting Christie in an re-election bid? Two Christie confidants are already indicted. Someone on the list of suspects not indicted has filed a motion not to release that list. Again, partisan motivation might be suspected, first for coming up with Bridgegate scheme, and second for going after Christie.
Tip O’Neill stated that all politics is local. I would suggest there’s a corollary: politicians train for corruption locally. Corruption can include unethical but not illegal behavior—state legislators carving out congressional districts that guarantee one party’s dominance falls into that category. Corruption can include perverse or sketchy actions by a politician in the public spotlight. Wiener and Spitzer fall into this category—again, not illegal actions, but something that makes the general public wonder about a politician’s other ethical choices. And corruption can also include numerous illegal activities, often for personal gain. The media often can’t distinguish these types of corruption and declares them all scandalous; the majority of the electorate just follows what the media says, at least that particular brand of media they read, watch, or listen to.
If a politician gets away with stuff at the local level, he often continues as he ascends the political ladder from local to state and national, even international, politics. Sometimes it catches up with him, as in the case of Representative Hastert or UN Secretary Waldheim. In Representative Weiner’s case, he was caught and then became a repeat offender, as documented in the film Weiner. Some people, like Bill Clinton, are caught at the highest level and manage to escape unscathed. Lady Justice is blind, you know, so results may vary, depending on the politician.
Why does this occur? I have a theory. We recently saw the movie Weiner (it was first shown locally in the Montclair Film Festival, but we missed it), and I began to form this theory. As an author, I feel a need to understand human behavior as well as portray it. An author must be an amateur psychologist at least, no matter his actual background. My theory stems from an analysis of what motivates a politician. There are three basic motivations: a desire for change; a desire for power; and a desire for public adulation.
The first two are often linked. Bernie Sanders felt a desire to change things and sought the power to make it happen. That’s almost Plato’s ideal of the philosopher king. That coupling spurs many revolutionaries, peaceful, as in Sanders’s case, or otherwise, for example, Castro. The Clinton dynasty has no real desire for change—they’re happy with what Bill and Barack achieved in service of the 1%, and decry that little Bush glitch–so they want the power to maintain their faux-progressive status quo. That’s a wee bit more dubious in the ethical sense, but still not illegal. The desire for public adulation, what often drives caudillos worldwide, is more narcissistic, but the consequences aren’t necessarily negative either, but one wonders what action will be taken when push comes to shove.
Indeed, many human leaders are narcissistic. Politicians have to be narcissists, I suppose, to even want to play on the public stage. Mrs. Bill Clinton has tried to pretend that she doesn’t like to be in the public eye as much as her husband, the epitome of narcissism, but that photo with her arms spread wide to her crowd of admirers in Brooklyn belies that claim. Politicians are narcissists. It’s in their blood. Some of that emotion I can write off as enjoying it when the good times roll. And that’s only bad if it leads to a sense of inevitability and entitlement, or worse, corruption.
Those first successes in politics start some politicians thinking that they can do no wrong in the public eye—their public adores them, always will, and therefore they can get away with anything. The movie Weiner showed how fast the public can turn on a politician, though. Adoration can be short-lived. Any politician in the public eye must walk a tightrope, balancing between championing causes that aren’t necessarily popular and a fickle media and electorate ready to pounce when any sign of scandal occurs. When corruption is added to the mix, whether stemming from a narcissistic attitude to self-perceived cleverness—“I can get away with anything”—all bets are off.
But I think it all starts locally when the politician first ventures onto that tightrope. The higher he—or she!—goes, the harder the fall, unless they manage to get away with it. I guess all politicians know this and are willing to take the risk expressed in Lord Acton’s adage “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” When people die as a consequence of falling off that tightrope, from the Bolshevik Revolution to Benghazi, a simple person like me tends to ask, “Is there some way to control all this?” The world would undoubtedly be a better place if there were.
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