One sentence in Bill Curry’s Salon article on the obstacles facing Hillary Clinton in her march to the White House caught my attention: “Corruption, not the chimera we call partisan gridlock, is what makes our government so inefficient and ineffectual and our politics so empty and vicious.”
I guess, depending on how you define “corruption”, that’s true. If you define something broadly enough anything can mean anything. I think we’d all agree that when a Congressman or other elected official takes a bribe it’s corruption. When an individual or organization gives a contribution to a politician whose policies the individual or organization agrees with, is that corruption, too? If you think that, isn’t any system in which each candidate isn’t allowed to spend precisely the same amount inherently corrupt? Such a system would give an enormous advantage to incumbents. Isn’t that inherently corrupt as well?
When everything is corrupt, nothing is.
If I had to single out our most important problem, I think it would be a toss-up between the collapse of the rule of law and that there’s a consensus on most issues in Washington, the consensus position is unpopular, and nine times out of ten it’s empirically wrong.
Is corruption really our most important problem? Or is what Mr. Curry characterizing as “corruption” actually just human nature and inevitable?
“If you think that, isn’t any system in which each candidate isn’t allowed to spend precisely the same amount inherently corrupt?”
You are the guy who always says forget the money, just give em a business card, and we know it goes well beyond that. Good paying jobs, access to cheap loans, making sure the politician’s kids get into the right schools, etc.
Steve
Corruption is, I think, best defined as use of entrusted power for personal gain. As corruption is A) endemic on a grand scale and B) by definition a method of extracting rents feom the productivity of others, it’s quite possibly the singularity at the heart of a failing political system.
A virtuous person doesn’t succumb to the desire for self-enrichment at the expense of those who have given them authority. Endemic corruption is a symptom of a society in moral and ethical decay.