Everybody's Doing It

Did you hear the former Illinois Governor speak to the Senate today? After deciding not to appear as a witness where he'd have to actually answer questions, he decided to make a closing statement. After he finished the newsmodel for CNN said that the theme was "the ends justify the means." I guess that's one way to interpret it; he did use that expression as part of his speech. I thought he was looking at something a little different.

At one point in the explanation he talked about how if he was impeached then about a half dozen other governors would have to be impeached, and some US Congressmen, and the Presidential Chief of Staff. His point was that they did the same kind of things he did, or at least the same kind of things he chose to talk about. At another point along the way, talking about the secret tapes of him in evidence, he said something like "you've all heard the tapes, you know what it takes to run, you know what we have to do..." That's not right, but it's close.

So what does that sound like? Sounds like "everybody's doing it" to me.

And you know what, I think by large measure he's right. I mean, I don't know if the members of the Illinois State Senate are nearly as corrupt as the former Governor probably is, but it does seem like quite a bit of what he's being accused of is fairly par for the course for our elected representatives. I guess that's probably cynical, and I will say that I hope for and aspire to be better than that, but politics is about favors, quid pro quo, and influence peddling. Finding the line between legal and illegal is probably difficult. Finding the line between moral and amoral is probably fairly easy to self-sabotage.

Still, it looks like standing in front of a group of politicians, saying "but you all do it too" isn't a reliable means of lobbying them to let you off.

With all the money in the system, and having to move in the circles of people will so much, we set up the game to reward people who cheat and get away with it. So while this impeachment is probably a good thing, we would be remiss if it isn't simply the foot in the door for a series of measures designed to bring about a change to the political culture.

If not, then really all we're doing is punishing someone simply for getting caught.