Political Corruption--the American Role Model

Dr. Sarfaraz K Niazi (e-mail: niazi@niazi.com)

"Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Politics is as inseparable from corruption as soul is inseparable from body. Are we the unique soul and body? It turns out that we are not unique; we are simply following the path to salvage through a history that has been vividly played in the corridors of the American political scene. The morality of politics in the recent times in the US is best represented by the Watergate scandal. But it seem quite innocuous as we look at the history of politics and such well known scandals as the Tweed Ring, the Credit Mobilier, the Teapot Dome, the Sacco-vanzetti Case and the Pumpkin Papers in America. So, let us examine how the American morality has traversed and survived its politicians.

The Tweed Ring. The mid 1800s saw the gang of crooked politicians run New York City, led by William Mary "Boss" Tweed; they had sheer political clout and uninhibited criminality. Conservatively, they bilked out $30 million and Tweed himself got $40,000 as a bribe for awarding the contract for Brooklyn Bridge. The ring was broken by the incessant campaign of the New York Times and Harper's Weekly cartoon caricatures. Tweed died in prison but many think that without the Tweed Ring there would not have been enough incentive to build the American morality.

Credit Mobilier. Congress mistakenly over-funded the building of the Union Pacific Railroad. Oakes Ames, the director of the company, spotted the error, formed Credit Mobilier and routed the funds to skim off about $23 million in 1869. To squash a congressional wrath, he gave stocks to congressmen and even the vice president. In a foolish move he wrote a letter to his friend boasting how he had done it and the letter somehow leaked to the newspaper brought the down fall of Credit Mobilier. No one was prosecuted.

Teapot Dome. The US Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall secretly leased out the oil fields in Teapot Dome, Wyoming for $185,000 bribe that included cash, stock and a herd of cattle. The US Senate investigated and could not prosecute Fall. The 1920's era was the era of deal making and the public took sides with Fall and got outraged why the government wanted to fell Fall, who was later found guilty on a lesser charge and became the first cabinet member ever to go to prison.

The Sacco-Vanzetti Case. Sacco and Vanzetti were the Italian immigrants accused of armed robbery and killing two people in Massachusetts in 1920. The celebrated trial created animosity against "funny talking" immigrants as the judge blurted out his biases. Both were electrocuted and later became martyrs to present the liberal cause. Poetry was written about them. In 1961, the ballistic tests showed that indeed the bullet came from Sacco's gun. Vanzetti may still be innocent.

The Pumpkin Papers. Richard Nixon as a young lawyer took on the case of accusation by Whittaker Chambers, a senior editor at Time magazine and a former spy that in 1948 Alger Hiss, a senior former high official at the State Department, delivered secrets to Russians. The incriminating evidence was microfilms (not papers) hidden in a pumpkin that rested the case. Nixon pushed hard to bend government laws since the statute of limitation had run out and Hess went to jail and Nixon to presidency. Now there are doubt about Hiss's guilt but there is no doubt about Nixon's.

The Watergate Scandal. Nixon's men broke in the offices of Democrats in the Watergate Hotel, Nixon was told and he tried to bury the issue. He did it clumsily by erasing the 18 crucial minutes of the audiotape that had recorded conversation in his office. Nixon also regretted installing the secret recording system in the first place. In a deal made with Ford, Nixon resigned and saved the nation an agony of a president's impeachment.

The Whitewater Scandal. Clinton was a shareholder in a real estate deal gone sour when he was the governor of Arkansas. He disavows any wrong doing, like every other accused in the past political American history had done; the trial goes on and chances are he will be well out of the presidency before the dust settles.

The history of American political corruption is indeed colourful. The world's best run democracy, the world's best economy, the world's director of the world order is also not immune to political corruption and moral turpitude of its lawmakers. Politics and corruption are inevitably intertwined because when individuals can, through their decisions, change fortunes, they prefer to include them in these fortunes. It is as inevitable as all other basic human desires. The issue of morality of politicians, long debated from the ancient Greeks to the modern philosophers, is now resolved. Politics and morality are mutually exclusive. What we need to learn from the American history is that with accountability, the impact of corruption can be subdued. From the Tweed Ring to the Whitewater we see a major shift in the definition of morality, from outright unabashed stealing to questionable judgements--and that took about 150 years. Today, in the rest of the world, we have only just begun and hell bent on making sure the history repeats itself.