Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who has promised "the most honest, the most open and the msot ethical Congress in history," has a test ahead of her:
There is so much wrong with the Conyers situation that Pelosi shouldn’t have to think twice about nixing Conyers’ chairmanship. Let us look at how the Conyers scandal epitomizes the ethics mess in the House:
First, releasing its report late on Friday before the New Year’s holiday weekend made it clear that the House “Ethics” Committee intended to minimize public understanding of the Conyers scandal. This is classic Washington Establishment manipulation of the news cycle to insulate itself against public accountability.
Second, Conyers responded to the “Ethics” committee by “accepting responsibility” for a “lack of clarity” in asking aides to work on his re-election campaign while on the official payroll instead of going on a campaign staff, as the law requires, and to do personal chores for him. The allegations came from senior staff members, including a former chief of staff, not interns or other short-term aides who might have questionable motives.
Third, the “Ethics” committee report also concerned a second investigation of Conyers from 2003 on allegations that his aides also worked on the Carol Mosely-Braun presidential campaign and JoAnn Watson’s Detroit City Council race. Would Conyers have applied the same slipshod legal standards to his Bush impeachment effort?
Fourth, the Conyers scandal shows it’s still business as usual for the “Ethics” committee. Pelosi should demand that Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., and Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., the committee leaders who signed off on the Conyers report, be removed permanently from the panel and barred from leadership of other House panels.
Finally, Pelosi should heed former White House chief of staff and ex-congressman Leon Panetta, who said “you can attack one party for having a lack of ethics, but if any of your own members have problems, it dulls the message with the American people, they begin to put everybody in the same box.” In other words, whenever one member of the House has an ethics problem, it damages the credibility of all members of the House, including most especially its most visible leader, the speaker.
Her predecessors Newt Gingrich and Dennis Hastert said the same thing. Recall that Gingrich lost his seat after a House scandal, and Hastert loosened ethics rules and even removed GOPers from the ethnics committee who voted against Tom Delay - before Delay resigned. We'll see if Speaker Pelosi ends up in the same spot they're both in. History serves as a useful precedent here. That whole "culture of corruption" deal? Yeah. There's a reason it didn't work. Rest assured voters are paying attention right now, and if the Democrats are as unsuccessful as the Republicans were at cleaning up Washington, they'll feel it in 2008.
Also, note this: "As they prepare to take control of Congress this week and face up to campaign pledges to restore bipartisanship and openness, Democrats are planning to largely sideline Republicans from the first burst of lawmaking. . . . instead of allowing Republicans to fully participate in deliberations, as promised after the Democratic victory in the Nov. 7 midterm elections, Democrats now say they will use House rules to prevent the opposition from offering alternative measures, assuring speedy passage of the bills and allowing their party to trumpet early victories."
UPDATE: Mark Tapscott has more on Republican fraud and how it hurt them in the mid-term elections. Have the Republicans learned their lesson yet? More thoughts on John Conyers from The Captain. Also see Power Line.
UPDATE II: Via Captains Quarters, EJ Dionne of the Washington Post also notes the importance of reform on the Democrats' political agenda: "If Democrats don't seize this rare opportunity, their party will pay for a long time. Not only will they disillusion their own supporters, but, more important, the angry centrists of the Ross Perot stripe who voted the Republicans out last year will either go back to the GOP or seek other options." I don't have much faith in Speaker Pelosi after the Alcee Hastings debacle, but maybe she'll prove me and other Republicans wrong.
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