Posted on 08/16/2002 9:27:28 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
EVERY now and then, we get to see public officials wrestling with moral conundrums. This is one of those times, and it is a reminder of how political ethics can amount sometimes to an oxymoron. (Some would say the same of journalistic ethics, but let them get their own column.)
Over the last few days, leading New York politicians have renounced contributions that they took — eagerly took, one might add — from businesses executives now caught up in corporate scandals. These political figures hoped to show high-mindedness. But if anything, their ethical parsing is a puzzlement.
Consider a couple of examples.
Gov. George E. Pataki has returned money that he got from WorldCom but is keeping campaign cash from Adelphia Communications, even though both companies are now in disgrace. H. Carl McCall, the state comptroller and would-be governor, is holding on to his WorldCom money but giving up thousands that he received from ImClone Systems.
What's the moral calculus here? Are some corporate misdeeds more equal than others?
The Pataki campaign chose not to explain its decision, despite the fact that criminal charges have been brought against Adelphia's founding Rigas family.
A McCall spokesman, Steven Greenberg, said that no one from WorldCom has been indicted, while ImClone's former chief executive, Samuel D. Waksal, has been formally charged with insider trading, bank fraud and other forms of wrongdoing. "In this case, there was an indictment, and we felt we should not keep that money," Mr. Greenberg said.
O.K. But hasn't WorldCom (not to mention Enron, Tyco International and the like) devastated millions of Americans, laying waste to retirement plans and college-tuition accounts? Even if Mr. Waksal turns out to have been as naughty as prosecutors say, he has not caused damage of that magnitude.
One of his problems may be that Martha Stewart is a friend, hardly a plus in this age of Marthagate. To watch television or read the tabloid headlines, you would think that Ms. Stewart was only slightly better than Ilse Koch, the sadistic wife of the Nazi commandant at the Buchenwald concentration camp.
His association with a widely unloved celebrity, as much as anything he himself may have done, possibly explains why Mr. Waksal lands on the front pages far more often than WorldCom's Bernard J. Ebbers or Tyco's L. Dennis Kozlowski. It certainly helps explain why elected officials are suddenly treating him as if he had a communicable disease. Nothing scares a politician like an unfavorable headline.
Both of New York's senators, Charles E. Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton, said thousands of dollars in contributions from Mr. Waksal, once gladly pocketed, would be given to charity. Yet there is no reason to assume that the money they got was tainted. Mr. Waksal gave to their campaigns long before his alleged misdeeds took place.
"This is more about the power of the 24-hour or the 36-hour news cycle," said Blair Horner, legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group. "It's not about fundamental change or the public policy question of campaign contributions."
Aides to Senators Schumer and Clinton said they had yet to pick the charities for the windfall. Mr. McCall plans to turn over $25,000 from Mr. Waksal to the New York chapter of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, the group sponsoring the Sept. 15 "Race for the Cure." The foundation says it will gladly take the gift.
Unanswered was one question. If you take money deemed too dirty for politicians and pass it along to charity, is there a difference between that and what some might call money laundering?
The NYC column last Friday told of the dismay in an apartment building on East 70th, where someone had stolen an American flag that was displayed out front after Sept. 11. The flag belonged to a building resident. It had draped the coffin of his father, a World War II veteran.
Early this week, a woman on a neighboring block, Margot Durrer, was moved to offer a replacement for the flag that was "so heartlessly stolen." Her flag had covered the coffin of her husband of 41 years, Dr. Gustav Durrer, a dentist and World War II veteran who died last year at age 90.
"I hope this will help the building heal its wounds," Mrs. Durrer said, adding that perhaps the gesture would "encourage people to do something nice once in a while." One can always hope.
How about the Boy Scouts?
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