Democrats Promise Honesty, Integrity and Bipartisanship

George C. Landrith

Since winning slim majorities in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) have promised bipartisanship, cooperation, and a new level of honesty and integrity in Washington. Nancy Pelosi said, “Democrats pledge to make this the most honest, ethical, and open Congress in history.”

This is not the first time Americans have heard such promises. Immediately after his inauguration on Jan. 20, 1993, Bill Clinton promised that his presidency would be “the most ethical administration in American history.” With the benefit of hindsight and having witnessed scores of indictments, convictions and plea deals, that proclamation of new high ethical standards now seems laughable. So the question is – will current Democrats be able to deliver on their promises of honesty, integrity and bipartisanship any better than past Democrats?

If past performance is any indicator, and it usually is, the answer is unfortunately no. Immediately following the election – when the Democratic leaders were promising ethics, cooperation and bipartisanship – their actual behavior gives little evidence that they meant anything that they said.

For example, the day after the election, President Bush placed a courtesy call to Nancy Pelosi telling her that later in the day he would be announcing that Donald Rumseld would be stepping down as Secretary of Defense and that Robert Gates would be nominated. The conversation was cordial and confidential and showed Bush was reaching out to the new House leadership. However, within minutes of hanging up the phone, Pelosi went to the press and demanded that the President fire Rumsfeld so that when the President made the public announcement a few hours later, it would appear that he was capitulating to her demands. So much for bipartisanship and cooperation!

Additionally, Nancy Pelosi set off a firestorm of controversy by endorsing John Murtha (D-Pa.) to be her chief lieutenant despite his well-known and long history of skirting ethical standards. While Murtha lost his bid for the number two post in the House to Steny Hoyer (D-MD), that Pelosi would break with well-established tradition and endorse Murtha and then aggressively twist arms and do all in her power to sway votes to Murtha, only highlights the ethics gap.

Dating back to 1981, Murtha has battled accusations that he uses his position on the powerful Appropriations Committee to obtain federal dollars for those who give him big campaign contributions. Even worse, videotapes of Murtha talking with FBI agents posing as wealthy Arab businessmen reveal that Murtha was willing to consider possible bribery schemes in the future. Murtha is an unindicted co-conspirator in the ABSCAM scandal. Melanie Sloan, the Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a Left-leaning ethics group, said, “Pelosi's endorsement suggests to me she was interested in the culture of corruption only as a campaign issue and has no real interest in true reform.”

On the Senate side, newly elected Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has his own ethical problems. He collected $1.1 million in a shady land deal which he did not disclose as required by law. To complicate matters, Reid’s business partner in this secret deal is a former casino lawyer whose name surfaced earlier this year in a major political bribery trial and who according to media reports has been involved in a number of organized crime and political bribery investigations since the early 1980s. Reid also violated campaign finance laws by using campaign funds to pay for personal expenses. Even worse, sources close to the Jack Abramoff investigation now say that Harry Reid has been implicated in the biggest political bribery scandal in almost a century.

It takes a lot of nerve to campaign against a “culture of corruption” when you’ve been implicated in the biggest political bribery scandal in recent memory and pocketed a cool $1.1 million from your business partner whose name is linked to the mob and who has been involved in numerous bribery investigations.

It also takes a lot of nerve to promise the most honest and ethical Congress in history while endorsing and actively supporting one of the most ethically-challenged Members of Congress in modern history for a major leadership post.

Nonetheless, these are the folks who promise America a new and higher standard of ethics, openness and bipartisanship in Washington. I hope they were serious, but somehow I get the feeling that they had their fingers crossed.

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Mr. Landrith is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was Business Editor of the Virginia Journal of Law and Politics. He had a successful law practice in business and litigation. In 1994 and 1996, Mr. Landrith was a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia's Fifth Congressional District. He served on the Albemarle County School Board. Mr. Landrith is an adjunct professor at the George Mason School of Law. He is recognized as an authority on constitutional law and jurisprudence, federalism, global warming, and property rights.

george@ff.org