Ethics Relativity

In Dems Should Dump Ethically Challenged Harry Reid the case is made that Senator Reid has personally benefited from favors in exchange for promoting special interest legislation.

I suspect that with enough investigation many legislators may be guilty of promoting self serving policy. And it would be appropriate for their constituents to vote them out of office as ethically challenged. But this is just not likely. Graft is an inevitable consequence of wielding great power and influence over the treasury. The best we can hope for is keeping the abuse relatively modest.

I am less concerned with Harry Reid’s scheme to make a few hundred thousand bucks off of a land deal than I am about the Billions made by Halliburton and others in no bid contracts in Iraq and Katrina. I am less concerned about a President lying about an affair than I am about lying to get us into war and causing the potential loss of millions of lives.

Political ethics are relative. So my hope and focus is on helping to elect those candidates who are incrementally more likely to support more rigorous ethics standards, more transparency, more competitive elections and more favoritism to the middle class. I hope it is that kind of candidate who is recruited by the Congressional campaign committees of both parties. How nice it would be to have a continuing competition between the parties to prove which is the least tolerant of self dealing.