“It was a violation of the rules of the House. It was not something that jeopardized our country in any way.”
—–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) on ABC’s “This Week,” discussing the House Ethics Committee’s ruling that Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel violated House Ethics Rules, with far more serious violations still being considered.
Recall that Pelosi memorably promised to “drain the swamp” and make the House of Representatives under her leadership the most ethical in history.
Recall also that all of the other ethics violations attributed to Rangel are not really in dispute. All that is in dispute is whether the corrupt and politicized House Ethics Committee will have the integrity to say so.
Now that we know Speaker Pelosi is applying the “jeopardizing the country” standard of whether a House member has behaved unethically enough to warrant sanctions, rather than the less stringent “so crooked that he has to screw his pants on” standard, we know what to expect. After all, how many bribes, conflicts of interest, lies and episodes of influence-peddling and self-enrichment actually “jeopardize the country”? Mighty few, I’d say. Rob taxpayers, degrade public respect for the law, undermine trust in our institutions, create rampant cynicism, discourage civic participation, disgrace the institution of democracy, perhaps, but jeopardize the country? Nah! We Americans are tough!
And really: what was the big deal about Rep. Mark Foley a few years back? Oh all right, he was stalking teenage House pages, but he sure wasn’t threatening the Republic, now was he? Or Duke Cunningham, now Federal Prisoner #5784409. OK, he was taking bribes, but you can’t say he threatened to bring down the U.S. Of A.! We’re a lot stronger than that, you can count on it! Same with William Jefferson. He accepted $90,000 in an influence scheme, but “Dollar Bill” never, never would have done anything that destroyed the whole country!
I’m glad Nancy Pelosi cleared up what she meant about an “ethical Congress”: one that doesn’t destroy the country. Luckily for her and us, hypocrisy, dishonesty, a blatant lack of integrity and cowardly leadership by a Speaker of the House doesn’t jeopardize the country either. At least it hasn’t so far.
Ethics Alarms 
Pelosi is using the Big Jule standard of ethics. Check it out at my blog. But tonight–finally–she looks like doing the right thing–after exhausting all the other possibilities.
Oh Bob,Bob,Bob- don’t you think when you have no choice but to do what you have been forced to do, you forfeit credit for “doing the right thing”? I sure do. It may happen to be right, but Pelosi isn’t doing it for anything approaching the right reason. She gets no gold stars or Brownie points in my book. I’m pretty sure the definition isn’t “ethics is what you do because everybody IS looking and there’s a gun to your head.”
Oh, Jack, I agree that this is forced virtue, and Pelosi gets no cheers from me. Well, maybe half a cheer: she COULD have continued longer to do the wrong thing. Paterson would get half a cheer from me if he resigned today. The half a cheer is NOT for being an ethics hero, it’s for doing the right thing under duress–better than not.
Jeez, exactly where would ol’ Nancy put Abscam (anyone remember that?).
Any elected official engaged in unethical activity ipso facto “jeopardizes the country.” What’s so hard about that? Little lies and scams become bigger ones, and bigger ones, and bigger ones. If you’re FBI or CIA or NSA you’re OUT for the tiniest infraction. Why not Senators and Congressmen, too? They hold the reins, and if they can’t control their basest instincts, or rein in their unethical considerations, they simply shouldn’t be there.
Pelosi protects her party, not her country. I don’t trust her to make change in a 7-11.