excellent opinion piece in the AJC:
OUR OPINION: DeLay's, Reed's pride preceded Abramoff's fall
Cynthia Tucker - Staff
Sunday, January 8, 2006
Back when he was House majority leader --- before he lost that post to indictment in a Texas political scandal --- Tom DeLay was among the chief moralizers of American politics. He was a grand high potentate of the "culture of life" crowd that championed intervening in the tragic case of Terri Schiavo. He vigorously opposed abortion. He could be counted on to whip up a frenzy against gay marriage.
Yet, DeLay's sense of morality was never troubled by the business practices of one of his "closest and dearest friends," Jack Abramoff, who bilked Indian tribes, set up sham enterprises and bought the votes of powerful congressmen. Indeed, DeLay was among those on whom Abramoff, a highly paid Capitol Hill lobbyist, lavished expensive gifts. As just one example, Abramoff paid for a pricey golf excursion for DeLay and his wife to Scotland.
Nor was morality any brake for political consultant Ralph Reed, former cherub-in-chief for the Christian Coalition, now a candidate for lieutenant governor in Georgia. Reed has a long-standing public record of conservative religious views, and he used that record to promote his consulting practice to conservative religious groups. But that didn't stop him from working with Abramoff to promote gambling interests, including pushing for an online gaming company.
Politics has always been a dirty business, prone to a disproportionate share of hypocrisy, back-stabbing and dissembling --- even more than can be commonly found in corporate boardrooms. Still, the level of hypocrisy exposed by the Abramoff scandal is hall of fame stuff --- the sort of outsized arrogance and disregard for law and decency that make it a benchmark against which other scandals will be measured for decades to come. In a strictly amoral universe, Abramoff and his cronies would deserve medals for sheer gall.
Reed and DeLay are the sort of men who believe the rules don't apply to them, that the morality they preach to others is not meant to contain their own grubby ambitions, that they are somehow exempt from the common decency that ought to apply to all. In other words, theirs is the sin of pride --- a human failing that doesn't merit as much attention from today's public moralizers as it should.
Little wonder, since so many of them are guilty of it.
> Cynthia Tucker is the editorial page editor. Her column appears Sundays and Wednesdays.
cynthia@ajc.com
http://www.ajc.com/search/content/auto/epaper/editions/today/opinion_340c3a3ad20ce11b00d0.html