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Diverting the river: Abramoff and the politics of money

Ross Kaminsky - 1/25/2006

Imagine homes atop a canyon just above a river with a large waterfall. The waterfall makes plenty of noise and spray which the homeowners decide they don’t like (although many visitors are jealous of their view.) They commission engineers to stop the river and diminish the flow over the falls to the point of quiet invisibility. The engineers go to work and the homeowners soon find themselves living above a trickle of water and a silent few drips down the former waterfall. How quiet and peaceful, they muse.

For a time, they enjoy their apparently tranquil surroundings, but soon they notice the mountainside below them losing trees. They call the engineers who say “Well, the water had to go somewhere. You demanded that it no longer flow over the waterfall, so diverting it through the mountain was the only place it could go. The erosion under the surface is causing the trees to fall.”

The engineers further tell the homeowners that the forced river diversion may do enough structural damage to the mountain to cause their homes to collapse into the river. It could happen in a few years, or a few decades, but it will happen eventually.

Should the homeowners leave the diversion in place or undo it, allowing what was nature’s way of releasing the river’s massive pressure with the least damage to the surroundings? Though the right choice seems obvious, we still don’t know what they will choose.

This is the modern story of money and politics. To get rid of the noise and the spray (the chaotic but strangely beautiful political activity of a functioning republic), one must try the impossible: stopping the river of money. As water is one of the great eroding forces on the planet, diverting it does tremendous damage when forced through important structures rather than allowed to flow freely, visibly, audibly.

In case it isn’t clear, the meddling homeowners are John McCain, Russ Feingold, and other proponents of “Campaign Finance Reform” who diverted the river of political contributions in a predictably destructive way.

Jack Abramoff was a sleazy lobbyist before McCain-Feingold, but the degree of his influence and the reach of the scandal --- like the new power of 527 groups --- have been magnified by the river’s diversion.

Congressmen and Senators spend a huge percentage of their time raising money; they must if they want to keep their jobs. In the age of McCain-Feingold, the exposed river of contributions by citizens --- politicians’ natural source of funds --- has been diverted. Politicians are forced to go to the few technicians who know how to get the water out of the mountain. In other words, politicians must go to lobbyists, special interests, and other groups with access to their own wells of cash.

The end result is that just as much money ends up in politics, the same way that just as much water could be taken from the river, but without the ability for the public to view or participate and with much more damage to the critical structures which would otherwise naturally regulate such a flow.

As the water in a river running through mountain would come from a few high-pressure private wells, the money after McCain-Feingold comes through relatively few sources, each of which is much more important than it would be if there were a free-flowing river of individual contributions with plenty of places where one could go for a drink.

If you need water to survive, and if the sources of water are suddenly limited, you will guzzle at every opportunity. The similarity to money in politics is obvious. Thirsty politicians take as much as they can when they find a gusher; while they might try to control it, it assuredly ends up controlling them.

There is nothing inherently wrong with money in politics. Indeed it is a form of political expression that seems obviously protected by the First Amendment despite the rulings by our out-of-control Supreme Court. You might not like the sound and fury of a waterfall beneath your house. But the alternative, a frantic search for precious droplets and a pernicious erosion of the land itself is far worse.

Jack Abramoff is a symptom of the erosion of our political landscape. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the main Republican beneficiary of the scandal is the self-appointed scourge of the crooked, John McCain, the same huge ego who thought he could stop a river and thus brought us a hidden flood of corruption?