Todd S. Purdum: The K Street Culture
IN 1872, some Republican elders, revolted by the rampant influence peddling of Ulysses S. Grant's administration, challenged him for re-election. "He has used the public service of the government as a machinery of corruption and personal influence," they complained, and "shown himself deplorably unequal to the task imposed on him by the necessities of the country."
Jack Abramoff's trading room was his Signatures restaurant, not the front of the old Willard Hotel, where favor seekers so besieged Grant that he helped popularize the label - lobbyist - that still clings to their descendants with a pejorative sting. But Mr. Abramoff's guilty plea last week to charges of fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials prompted similar revulsion among some of the Grand Old Party's canniest hands.
"I think as this thing unfolds, it'll be so disgusting, and the Republicans will be under such pressure from their base, that they will have to undertake substantial reform," said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker (who himself had to pay $300,000 to settle a 1997 ethics case). "This is like Watergate."
But will things really change? After all, Grant himself won a second term, despite the failings that would eventually leave his legacy forever tainted, and his chief Republican antagonist, Horace Greeley, died defeated and insane three weeks after the election. Is corruption just a part of Washington's DNA? What else explains the grim resignation of Washington veterans who wonder when, not whether, some scandal will arise?
"The history of civilization, for starters," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, an ethics group. "This kind of problem is faced by all societies throughout all of history. It comes and goes in cycles, and becomes most prevalent when the activities are viewed as O.K. by the society where it's taking place."...
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Jack Abramoff's trading room was his Signatures restaurant, not the front of the old Willard Hotel, where favor seekers so besieged Grant that he helped popularize the label - lobbyist - that still clings to their descendants with a pejorative sting. But Mr. Abramoff's guilty plea last week to charges of fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials prompted similar revulsion among some of the Grand Old Party's canniest hands.
"I think as this thing unfolds, it'll be so disgusting, and the Republicans will be under such pressure from their base, that they will have to undertake substantial reform," said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker (who himself had to pay $300,000 to settle a 1997 ethics case). "This is like Watergate."
But will things really change? After all, Grant himself won a second term, despite the failings that would eventually leave his legacy forever tainted, and his chief Republican antagonist, Horace Greeley, died defeated and insane three weeks after the election. Is corruption just a part of Washington's DNA? What else explains the grim resignation of Washington veterans who wonder when, not whether, some scandal will arise?
"The history of civilization, for starters," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, an ethics group. "This kind of problem is faced by all societies throughout all of history. It comes and goes in cycles, and becomes most prevalent when the activities are viewed as O.K. by the society where it's taking place."...