Speaker Pelosi's Ethics

Wall Street Journal ^ | December 5, 2007 | Editor

[yoe]

Ethics in politics is not the same as ethics in real life. Ethics in politics is a martial art. The biggest mistake you can make is thinking that the ethics package proposed by new Speaker Nancy Pelosi is mainly about "cleaning up" politics. Maybe. But it's first of all about cleaning the clocks of the Republicans.

The House Republicans got lazy. Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, earmarks, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney. When Nancy Pelosi saw the Republicans had developed a compulsion to flagrantly throw their weight around, she grabbed them by the lapels of their Hickey Freeman suits, hoisted them into the air and slammed them onto the House floor, shrieking "the most corrupt Congress in history!" That's right. In history.

Ms. Pelosi started the long road to earning a black belt in political ethics (again, not to be confused with ethics as taught at, say, Aquinas College) back in 1987 by studying the Master -- Newt Gingrich. That was the year Nancy Pelosi entered the House as a California freshperson. And that was the year Newt Gingrich turned ethics into a weapon against the imperious Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright, who left in disgrace two years later. "We currently have the least ethical speaker in the 20th Century," said Grandmaster Gingrich. Nancy noticed.

Aficionados of the sport of political ethics will recall another name from that era, Fernand St Germain, then the Democratic chairman of the House Banking Committee at the time of the infamous Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s, arguably the greatest source of congressional ethical lapses in, well, history....

[spintreebob]

it's a committeeman thing.

The only way to run an ogranization.

A person who volunteers for the organization should be allowed to ask questions. Any questions from a person who lives outside the township and has not volunteered for the organization should be deferred to the end of the meeting when everybody wants to leave.

There is no value in a person embarassing our friends like Ruth or putting a Mark Kirk type on the hot seat if that person isn't going to do anything about it. Itis no different than the UN passing dozens of resolutions with no plans to enforce them.

Speak softly. Carry a big stick. Let the stick do the talking ... if it has credibility.