Rosa Brooks: Blagojevich's corruption: a warning for Democrats

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-brooks11-2008dec11,0,3681669.column

Rosa Brooks
Blagojevich's corruption: a warning for Democrats
Power corrupts, and ruling parties often lose their way.

December 11, 2008

snip//

Idiocy and greed aren't just for Republicans. For every Larry Craig, there's an Eliot Spitzer; for every Ted Stevens, there's a Rod Blagojevich.

In our heads, we Democrats know that. It's just that in our hearts, we don't want to believe it. Because we're the good guys, right? The ones who honed our progressive values during years in the political wilderness and who finally saw those values vindicated in November's electoral victories.

But it's precisely when a party achieves power that its members need to start worrying the most about idiocy and greed. When you're in the opposition, you're already down and out, so what difference does it make if your side's idiocy leaves you -- temporarily -- a little bit more down and out? And being in the opposition offers fewer patronage opportunities.

But power really does corrupt.

I'm not predicting a rash of new Blagojevich-type scandals plaguing the new administration. The Obama transition team has already issued unusually stringent ethics rules, and Obama's track record of supporting tough ethics legislation (including an Illinois state ethics law) suggests that he'll continue such efforts as president.

But illegal corruption isn't the only thing Democrats should be on guard against. Gaining political power also corrupts in far more subtle ways.

Members of political majorities succumb easily to smugness and complacency, to the conviction that explaining and justifying ideas is no longer necessary, to the temptation to dismiss critics as so many irrelevant cranks. "Groupthink" is mainly a disease of the powerful and complacent, not the fractious opposition.

Never mind Blagojevich. Majorities can get very dumb indeed -- and what the new Democratic majority most needs to resist are those more subtle forms of intellectual and moral laziness and corruption. For in the end, arrogance and groupthink can prove far more lethal than even the most scandalous financial shenanigans.

Just ask the thousands dead in Iraq.

n/t

and government -- whether totalitarian or democratic -- invariably is associated with power. To remove the corruption, you must remove the power of those who govern.

That is: Government should be more like jury duty, or civil service. Something you do not as a political career, but as a service to society at large. It should not be glamorous, it should not be a career path, it should not be profitable. It should facilitate the basics: health care, housing, education, etc in a functionary manner, not a political one.

Just my two cents.

the public, just gather up the support of their various constituencies.