Corruption Matters

Political corruption has always been with us — as American as apple pie perhaps. But are the bad apples poisoning our democracy? And is there a better recipe?

By Aaron Smith

In April, the special inspector general for the federal government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program revealed that there were “20 preliminary or full criminal investigations” underway into fraud and public corruption. But he wasn’t talking about inquiries into the shady dealings that created the banking crisis — he was talking about corruption within the months-old, $787 billion program to clean up the mess.

Amid all the political corruption scandals in the news in recent months, the troubling, but vague TARP announcement elicited little more than a collective shrug in the public square. To quote that fictional New Jersey citizen Tony Soprano, no stranger to moral or monetary shenanigans, “Whaddya gonna do?”

Between the ready-for-prime-time sensationalism of bribes caught on tape and the more pervasive distortions of democracy caused by campaign financing, most Americans believe that corruption is a major problem in politics. Unfortunately, many people also feel powerless to do much about it.


THE GREEN CONNECTION
“Corruption is persistent, ubiquitous and vexing,” says Michael Genovese, professor of political science and chair of LMU’s Institute for Leadership Studies, which sponsored a conference called “Political Corruption in America” in February 2009.

As ubiquitous as political corruption may be, it’s not always easy to put a finger on. Accepting a bribe is illegal; accepting a campaign contribution isn’t. But both can “buy” the same result.

“In a country likes ours, you won’t have much explicit bribery as a condition for basic government services,” says John Parrish, assistant professor of political science. “On the other hand, you can’t run for president without raising $100 million to $200 million.”

And the danger of using money as the lubricant in the political system’s engine is clear not only to academics.

“We have made it prohibitively expensive to run for political office and, as a consequence, candidates spend more and more of their time raising campaign dollars. To raise those numbers, they’re dependent more and more on special interests,” says Rudy deLeon ’74, senior vice president of National Security and International Policy at American Progress in Washington, D.C., and former deputy secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton. “That’s not a crime, but that’s a huge distortion of the current political process. For me, that’s the biggest concern.”

Chris Shortell ’97, assistant professor of political science at Portland State University, who spoke at the LMU conference, agrees that corruption can go beyond individual wrongdoing in the system. “Corruption of the democratic process is distinct from public officials receiving bribes, but it is perhaps more insidious,” he says. “When you don’t have transparency in the decision-making process — for example, when legislation occurs entirely in a closed process — it becomes difficult for citizens to know the reasons for policies.”


CORRUPTION = A CHRONIC ILLNESS?
Regardless of the form corruption takes, from pay-to-play schemes to misleading advertising about political opponents, the root cause is human nature, says Steve Napolitano ’90, field deputy to Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe and former mayor of Manhattan Beach. “Some people are just prone to breaking and bending the rules for themselves,” he says. “It has always been thus, and thus it will always be.”

Through the 17th century, Parrish notes, the term corruption meant a failure of virtue. “To be corrupt, in essence, was to have an illness in the citizenry,” he says. “So, sure, these things happen because citizens partly let them. On the other hand, citizens can more effectively prevent these things from happening when they have effective institutions.”

Orange County Supervisor Bill Campbell ’64 says he never observed corruption while he was a California Assembly member from 1996 to 2002, but he can imagine how hubris leads to problems. “All these lobbyists and supporters tell you you’re bright and funny; it goes to [your] head. Is it greed or arrogance or sloppiness?”

Campbell says there was always a rumor that the FBI was working to entrap someone in the Assembly. “Frankly, those are good rumors — they keep everybody on their toes,” he says.

Yet Campbell left office with confidence in his peers. “I served with 120 people, and we differed philosophically,” he says, “but I think we were all there for the right reason.”


SHINE A LIGHT
There is consensus among political scholars and public officials that corruption can never be completely eliminated. But much more can be done to diminish the damage it can wreak on democracy. The weapons against corruption, they agree, are: transparency, laws with teeth, institutional watchdogs, and an informed, engaged citizenry.

One benefit of the current economic crisis, Parrish suggests, may be agreement about the need for tougher regulatory oversight. “The question is whether we build institutions that are capable of exercising oversight that is resilient against pressure from private interests,” he explains. “It’s not whether you can react in the short term when things go bad, but whether you can build institutions that hold firm when things get relaxed again.”

As one who has worked in federal government, deLeon knows that eradicating corruption isn’t easy.

“If we know someone is accused of accepting a bribe, we know how to investigate and identify wrongdoing,” deLeon says. “But on those broader issues of conflict of interest, the remedies aren’t as clear-cut. … I would argue that conflict of interest is much more at the heart of today’s political agenda than is legal misconduct.”

If corruption seems to get murkier the longer one studies it, then perhaps it is no surprise that the public’s commitment to fighting corruption seems ambiguous. For example, a January 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press that ranked Americans’ views of the nation’s priorities placed reducing the influence of lobbyists 18th of 20 issues.

“There have been informed populations that weren’t so vigilant against corruption,” Parrish says. “It’s true that we have more technology that would make transparency possible, but that’s gone hand in hand with things getting a lot more complex. I’m speculating that Congress passes more pages of laws in a month than Ancient Rome passed in its whole history. Citizens in modern representative democracies have more external concerns … and when laws are voted on by people we hire, and wars get fought for us by people we hire, we’re in more danger of not being alert.”

The onus, ultimately, is on the people. “You can’t be asleep at the wheel in a democracy,” Genovese says. “If we drop out of the system and lose our trust, politicians figure nobody’s watching. Democracy isn’t easy. It can be time-consuming, and it demands something of its citizens. But it also promises great benefits.”

Aaron Smith is a Los Angeles-based writer. His interview with David Mirkin ’78, writer, director and producer of “The Simpsons,” appeared in Vistas (Spring 2009).