Wow. One lone House Republican voting for the reviled Democrat healthcare bill.  Talk about conscience! Talk about courage!

Well, maybe. The vote by Louisiana Republican  Anh “Joseph” Cao could have been a truly ethical act, or a completely  cynical one. The fact that it is almost impossible to tell which explains a lot about the funhouse mirror version of “ethics” in use of Capitol Hill.  Cao is a fluke, a previously unknown  turned GOP winner in a solid Democratic district ( Obama won the district with 75% of the vote) because he was running against Rep. “Dollar Bill” Jefferson, he of the $90,000 in his freezer. Jefferson, who was facing indictment, would have lost if the GOP had run a lawn chair against him. And a Democratic lawn chair would have a good chance to defeat Cao in 2010.

Cao has shown some principles and spine. He was one of the few Republicans who voted to issue a formal rebuke of  South Carolina’s Joe Wilson for shouting “You Lie!” during the President’s speech. But his vote for the health care bill was a matter of survival. Many of his  constituents are poor and uninsured; the bill is favored overwhelmingly in his district. His best chance to continue his political career, at least in the House of Representatives, was to vote “Yea” in the highest profile vote he was likely to cast before facing off against that pesky lawn chair.

Was it an act  of conscience? Cao waited until the measure had passed before he cast his vote. In other words, he made a stand when the stand, rather than the result of the stand, was all that mattered. His vote meant nothing, except that he was theoretically showing his solidarity with his constituency’s interests. And if the GOP had actually needed his vote to defeat the bill…would he have still had the courage to vote “Yea”?  I wonder. I even wonder if all the harsh talk from GOP leadership that Cao is a turncoat is subterfuge. The more it looks like Cao bucked his party for his district, the better chance the GOP has of holding onto his seat.

Funhouse mirrors.

Even when it looks like a politician is being ethical, it is hard to be certain. One of the examples of political heroism celebrated in John F. Kennedy’s ghost-written book, “Profiles in Courage,” was Edmund Ross, the Kansas Republican Senator whose vote stopped Senate Republicans from convicting and removing President Andrew Johnson in his impeachment trial.  As explained by David Greenberg in a 1999  essay in Slate, as well  as, more recently, the excellent study of Johnson’s impeachment trial by Michael Les Benedict, Ross was hardly motivated by anything but self-interest. Like Cao, his vote was not essential to acquit Johnson: several other Republicans—-the Caos of their day—waited to see if their votes were needed to rescue the unpopular but unfairly impeached President, then voted with their party once their votes were meaningless.

There are ethical members of Congress, I’m sure. They are far harder to identify than the unethical ones, however. And Anh Cao?

I have no idea what he is.