Two Views on Corruption

Two Views on Corruption
Three years ago, after U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald indicted Mayor Richard M. Daley’s patronage chief, Robert Sorich, for circumventing a federal ban on political hiring (Sorich was convicted a year later), David Axelrod, now a senior adviser to President-elect Obama, wrote an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune that might have been titled “One Cheer for Patronage.” Although it’s no longer available at the Tribune’s Web site, NBC’s Steve Rhodes dug it up and posted it in October, after a McCain operative brought it up in a TV appearance.

Here’s Axelrod in 2005:

The decades-old Shakman federal consent decree proscribes hiring and firing for political reasons. But as I listened to Fitzgerald’s news conference after the government brought charges against the city workers, I realized he was saying something much more.

Fitzgerald proclaimed his vision of a day when the recommendations of elected officials, business, labor and community leaders will no longer count–a day when we entirely remove politics from government. And he seemed to be declaring his intention to use the criminal code to enforce that vision.

It is this system, free of political influence, I had envisioned as a young man. But after a lifetime of observing government and participating in politics, I wonder if such radical “reform” is really desirable.

The democratic process is often messy. Diverse constituencies fight fiercely for their priorities. Their elected representatives use the influence they have to meet those needs, including sometimes the exchange of favors–consideration for jobs being just one.

When a congressman responds to the president’s request for support for a judicial nominee or a trade deal by replying that he’d like the president’s backing for a new bridge in his district, he’s fighting for his constituents. If the money for that bridge is approved over a worthier project elsewhere, should the deal between the two officials become a crime?

How do presidents, governors and mayors govern without the ability to help those upon whom they are counting to support their programs? Is this a prescription for reform, or gridlock?

It is the meshing of often-conflicting interests through the political process, using the levers of power afforded to elected officials, that has characterized our experiment in democracy for the last 229 years. And, it has worked reasonably well. . . .

We have an idea of what the alternative looks like. The federal bureaucracy, sheltered from politics by law, has not always been known for its responsiveness and efficiency. Yet that seems to be where we’re headed in Chicago.

Although Axelrod’s argument may be defensible, it is not our impression, even three years later, that the pendulum in Chicago has swung too far in the direction of avoiding political influence.

Axelrod’s views make a fascinating contrast with a speech his boss, then the junior senator from Illinois, gave in August 2006 in Kenya:

Corruption is not a new problem. It’s not just a Kenyan problem, or an African problem. It’s a human problem, and it has existed in some form in almost every society. My own city of Chicago has been the home of some of the most corrupt local politics in American history, from patronage machines to questionable elections. In just the last year, our own U.S. Congress has seen a representative resign after taking bribes, and several others fall under investigation for using their public office for private gain.

But while corruption is a problem we all share, here in Kenya it is a crisis–a crisis that’s robbing an honest people of the opportunities they have fought for–the opportunity they deserve. . . .

We know that the temptation to take a bribe is greater when you’re not making enough on the job. And we also know that the more people there are on the government payroll, the more likely it is that someone will be encouraged to take a bribe. So if the government found ways to downsize the bureaucracy–to cut out the positions that aren’t necessary or useful–it could use the extra money to increase the salary of other government officials.

Of course, the best way to reduce bureaucracy and increase pay is to create more private sector jobs.

If President Obama makes downsizing the federal bureaucracy a top priority, he can set a powerful example of good government, one that will resonate from Nairobi to the North Side.

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